Betsy DeVos speaks only to guaranteed-friendly audiences, so she spoke at AEI, a think tank subsidized by her foundation.

Peter Greene reviews her speech here. 

What has she learned?

She has learned that she is always right.

She has learned that ignorance is bliss.

She has learned that all her biases are revealed Truth.

She will do nothing to dislodge the Common Core.

She says, “If the purpose of public education is to educate the public, then it should… not… matter what word comes before school.

Greene responds:

“This, for my money, is an even dumber statement than the infamous grizzly comment. If the word before “school” is “for-profit” or “flat earth” or “Aryan race” or– well, good lord, the list is endless. Does she really mean to suggest that as long as it’s some kind of school, we’re good…”

”First, it takes a special combination of ignorance and hubris to imagine that you are setting a new standard for calling to put students first, as if none of the millions of people who have worked in education never once thought, “You know, I’d rather like to make students my main focus here.” While DeVos has scrubbed a lot of the language that used to be her bread and butter– US schools are so bad they couldn’t get worse, and the whole government school system is just a scam created by unions to get fat checks for so-called teachers who just want to do nothing all day– this line shows some of the old DeVos creeping through.

“Second, let’s think about this. Because the short form of the DeVosian position is, “Here at the Department of Education, we will put students first by doing nothing.” That’s a neat trick, but it goes with that DeVosian disconnect in which the secretary remains unable to imagine a situation where her department would step in and say, “No, you can’t do that” to any school. Does she think that any state or federal agency should have stepped in and said, “No, Mr. Turpin, you cannot open a school where the curriculum is to chain your children in the basement without food and water.” And if the answer is no, as it seems to be, then how does she think this works? If her beloved marketplace is free to be overrun by fraudsters, scam artists, and cheats, how exactly are parents empowered?”