I watched Leslie Stahl interview Betsy DeVos tonight on “60 Minutes” and found it hard to watch.
She has the same talking points that she had more than a year ago. She has learned nothing. She makes claims about the success of charters and vouchers that have no basis in fact. She could not deny that Michigan’s academic standing has plummeted in the past ten years though she did not associate that sharp decline with her control of the state’s education policies.
And she never stops smirking. She gives canned responses and she smirks.
Watch. What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Betsy DeV heading up a “taskforce”?! Really? Betsy heads up a Blue Ribbon Committee? Yuk! She bought her office. She has no skills. This is how to make sure nothing gets done.
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The White House just announced it is moving ahead with its plan to arm teachers and backing off on its intention to raise the age for buying guns.
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I do believe that there teacher shortage is about to get even worse.
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Will never allow this to happen in my district. On an aside…the interview was spooky. She a robot who has truly has no idea what she’s doing.
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Thanks, Michael. She is indeed robotic. She has her canned answers and gives no indication of a thought process.
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I felt the same way. A disgrace to public and private education not to mention charters as well. Did not seems knowledgeable about educating children at all.
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I was bothered by most of her interview. One thing that stood out was the fact that she kept stating that she cares about the kids, but has not visited the poorest performing schools in her home state of Michigan to find out what she can do to help them.
Another thing that stood out was when she wouldn’t answer the question of whether victims of sexual assault on college campuses were equal to those who were falsely accused.
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Actually, she mentored a couple students at GRPS. But listen to this segment of This American Life, and hear how she had no respect for the public school system, and threw money at her mentees problems.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/624/private-geography/act-one
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I had the same reaction you did.
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I felt a strong gagging sensation watching her smug and vacuous responses.
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Yup. And a great sadness.
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In addition to this ….why FLA ! grrrr …. looks like FLA charter school takeover http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2018/7055/BillText/e1/PDF
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I watched it too. She totally flubbed the institutional racism question. All she does is repeat talking points. It is too bad the criticism hurts her. I am sure she experiences no cognitive dissonance.
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“She totally flubbed the institutional racism question.”
Agreed.
But that was a practiced flub—speak what’s really on her mind, and she would be exposing herself to public ridicule for being an ultra-wealthy smug know-nothing that assumes she knows what’s best for everyone else.
😎
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Not to nitpick, but if she spoke what was really on her mind, wouldn’t it just be total silence?
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DAM-
You are hitting it on ALL cylinders this morning!
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This may seem like a dumb question, Abigail, but can you explain the exact mechanism by which institutional racism leads to higher rates of punishment for minority students? Most of the disciplinary referrals I write are for white students, but occasionally it’s for a black student. Am I somehow participating in institutional racism? If so, how? Do all white teachers have unconscious bias? Do you know of studies about this? I’d be interested to read some.
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It was a Leslie Stahl ambush. She interrupted the Secretary several times to interject her own uniformed views. People do not like her because she has taken on the unions. Good for her!
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People do not like her because she is unqualified and she hates public schools, which enroll 90% of American schools. She has no ideas about how to help the schools or the children. She glories in her ignorance.
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Really? She’s an anti-public education zealot that lies about public schools.
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That’s interesting because I know MANY anti-union who are very much against Betsy DeVos serving as the Secretary of Education. Plain and simple: she’s ridiculously unqualified. I honestly do not feel that there has ever been an individual in that position who was strong…whether nominated by a Democrat or Republican President. She, by far, is the absolute WORST.
Wondering: did you mean to say “uninformed” or was “uniformed” the correct word choice when speaking of Leslie Stahl?
Did you watch the Betsy DeVos HELP Committee hearings? If not, you should. First-hand account of how…dumb…she is. If you did watch them…in their entirety…what on earth makes you think that she has a brain?
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An overwhelming number of people don’t like her because she is totally unqualified for the position. She couldn’t even answer the basic questions on academic progress. Remember she is the one who got bailed out in confirmation voting, thanks to Mike Pence’s tie-breaking vote.
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I am sure she experiences no cognitive dissonance. Good line Abigail. Many who hear her do. I did not listen. I was watching c-span books. Brilliant discussions of “cultural dexterity” and racism among other topics.
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Her constant grinning set my teeth on edge! Nothing funny here.
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She always has on her face what I think of as “the billionaires’ smirk.”
Translated: “I am very very rich. You are not. Sorry.”
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There’s a bit of Westworld or Stepford Wives in her mechanical-ness.
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One question to ask Devos:
“Slightly over 90% of U.S. students attend traditional public schools, while less than 10% of students attend private schools, parochial schools, and privately-managed charter schools, yet according to your published schedule, you spent 90% of your time visiting the latter, while ignoring the former? Why is that?”
“What if the Postmaster General spent 90% of his time visiting Federal Express franchises and Federal Express shipment centers? Wouldn’t that be ridiculous?” Isn’t that what you’re doing?
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Nice comparison!
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Still not Barbara Walters level questions.
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Sorry, edit: The questions actually posed were still not Walters level. Apologies!
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Excellent point, Jack.
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There’s an eerie consistency between education with other issues this administration promotes.
Foreign policy: praise China and Russia while denigrating our most reliable, consistent allies.
Environmental, science and health policy: support the most narrow destructive interests at the expense of the general welfare of citizens.
Tax policy: feed the rich with the resources of everyone else who is not wealthy.
And, as the mythical king of Siam said, et cetera, et cetera.
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Yes and the reason she stepped up to lead Trump’s task force on school security is because her family is already invested in privatized security forces in schools. Her family has been trying to privatize school security in Michigan for decades.
In October, a DeVos-backed legislator proposed an “insane” law to “Blackwater-ize” Michigan public schools but now she will be using the Parkland massacre as the “shock and awe” moment to make the idea go national.
http://www.alternet.org/michigan-private-profit-police
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Leslie Stahl did a great job:
“Betsy DeVos: Michi–Yes, well, there’s lots of great options and choices for students here.
Lesley Stahl: Have the public schools in Michigan gotten better?
Betsy DeVos: I don’t know. Overall, I– I can’t say overall that they have all gotten better.
Lesley Stahl: The whole state is not doing well.
Betsy DeVos: Well, there are certainly lots of pockets where this– the students are doing well and–”
That’s a simple question. Have Michigan public schools gotten better under ed reform?
DeVos can’t answer it, yet she spends every work day pushing Michigan-style ed reform nationwide.
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On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Michigan went from middle of the pack to bottom 10 in a decade of choice.
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This is what ed reform offer public school families- 90% of families:
“Lesley Stahl: Okay. But what about the kids who are back at the school that’s not working? What about those kids?
Betsy DeVos: Well, in places where there have been– where there is– a lot of choice that’s been introduced– Florida, for example, the– studies show that when there’s a large number of students that opt to go to a different school or different schools, the traditional public schools actually– the results get better, as well.”
Got that? They’ll pour funding into charters and private schools and miraculously and magically public schools may or may not “improve”
That’s ALL they have to offer for 90% of people. Public schools are an afterthought. Maybe you’ll get some side benefit, maybe not, that’s really all they’re willing to offer.
They have complete and utter contempt for public school parents.
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Isn’t 60 minutes the amount of experience Betsy has had in any job ever?
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Hard to relate with her Rolex watch and pearls…never answers a question!
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Yes. Evasion is her style.
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Wish Lesley Stahl would have asked about ECOT in Ohio bilking taxpayers for millions over over several years, while cooking their numbers to deceive the public about their “success.” Choice hasn’t worked out so well here.
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Sorry, can’t watch her. It would be as bad as watching the trumpster himself or Georgie the Least. No need to torture myself. I’ll rely on you all to fill me in.
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You wish she were self-aware enough to be embarrassed and realize she is in way over her head — but the billionaire bubble likely means she has no idea of even that!
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She is maddening to watch. Drives me nuts. She thinks that if she smiles she doesn’t have to form a sensible answer. She, of course, has no sensible answers. It gives me the chills that she has so much power so much money, and such a narrow mind.
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Diane:
I saw it too, and was riveted. Leslie was amazing in her persistence in trying to challenge and draw her out of the lies and posturing, and it did, I think, reveal DeVos and her danger to all of the schools and children with their families, and all of us. That she continues to be there, with all of the others who have left the revolving door from this administration, is a testament to the obvious needs of herself and monied entourage/family to keep her there. A disaster!
Leslie is to be congratulated for an excellent challenging interview. I hope others were exposed to DeVos in the reality. Channel 13 is to be congratulated.
Shirley Rausher
srausher@nyc.rr.com
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Yes, Leslie Stahl did a fine job.
DeVos was bobbing and weaving to avoid answering direct questions.
She is an entitled supercilious snob.
She proved over the last year that she is unfit for the job, and she showed in the interview that she is a hardened ideologue.
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She’s full of $hit. Charter schools have been ripping off the money for years and everyday you hear about another couple of them going under or the people running it steeling millions. She is in violation, her family has their hands in it and that is against the law.
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I missed it. Was Leslie Stahl any good? I find those journalists generally challenge these reformers with something, and they simply blather on with their talking points.
When I watched the CNN town hall meeting on gun control with the kids from Florida, the “liberal” CNN host, and gun control PR shill Dana Loesch, it was clear to me that if those high school kids hadn’t been there, the CNN guy would have allowed the same old blather to go unchecked. The high school kids didn’t let it go. They called it out strongly for the blathering idiocy that it was and that was a huge problem for Dana who was used to polite “liberal” journalists.
I see the same kinds of interviews with ed reformers and journalists. It sounds like Stahl was better than usual. But did it end up still being a “he said, she said” situation where viewers had no idea which side was correct? Hopefully not.
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The “Washington Post” just gave a summary of DeVos’ missteps. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/03/12/education-secretary-betsy-devos-stumbles-during-pointed-60-minutes-interview/?utm_term=.33f56e34283f
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You can also see the interview on CBS.com.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/secretary-of-education-betsy-devos-on-guns-school-choice-and-why-people-dont-like-her/
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Thank you, retired teacher!
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My record for listening to XLV is 30 seconds.
BDV? Not more than 10.
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10 microseconds?
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nano, nano …
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I agree with Diane. DeVos is almost robotic in her responses. I liked how Lesley Stahl attempted to challenge her, but DeVos slithered through with her same old talking points. I thought the most telling answer was no she hasn’t visited any “ failing” schools. She is absolutely clueless!
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I left a message on the ’60 Minutes’ Facebook page suggesting that if they want to know the truth about education, they should do a story on Diane Ravitch and her work to save public education. Maybe others should do the same.
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Thank you for the invitation to critique tonight’s DeVos performance.
The Secretary dramatically showed herself to be a vacuous, self-satisfied, intellectually shallow, class entitled, right-wing ideologue.
As you note, she continuously smirks: an instinctive, dismissive response to unpleasantness — like a Leslie Stahl blunt inquiry (or a pet’s flatulence).
But, give the Proper Lady her due: she does oversee a large federal department. (Nevermind that it is tragically understaffed, and that many qualified professionals offered positions at the U.S. Department of Education have demurred and swiftly fled — like unemployed but foresighted servants refusing job offers on the Titanic.)
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Interesting comment over on Twitter:
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It would be a blessing if Trump, DeVos and Erik Prince all go down. It would be a trifecta for our people.
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Déjà vu
“For example when Margaret Thatcher wanted to destroy the public railroad system in England, she did [what] is commonly done, which is to underfund it. Once it’s underfunded it will start performing badly. When it performs badly people will get annoyed and want to change it. And then you can say ‘Ok let’s privatize it,” Noam Chomsky
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I find it impossible to listen to DeVod speak. If you do too, you may want to see this edited version with Leslie Stahl’s part intact.
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Good one. LOL!
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You should call it the DeVos shuffle.
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She is UNQUALIFIED, UNQUALIFIED, UNQUALIFIED!!!!!!!!! On Top of it Neurocore! I think she has been programmed by her own therapy.
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Maybe she needs Neurocore
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Ah, lol TRUE …& DeVos couldn’t get a job at the public schools she so readily vilifies.
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Not even as the school janitor.
I’m sure she has never even touched a broom in her entire life and doubt she could even figure out how to turn on an electric floor buffer.
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Michelle Rhee, on the other hand would be right at home in the broom department.
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Stultifyingly inept. She just allocated one million dollars for Broward County district to deal with the crisis there, again showing she only knows how to throw money at things. Leslie Stahl was great, not letting her get away with lies, but DeVos contradicted herself wildly saying you can’t lump all Michigan schools in together after she already lumped every school in the US together.
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I question Her education – what planet? – 5th graders could debate DeVos on her talking points … and hands down, they would win.
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Betsy has spent the last 20 years buying, buying off, or threatening Michigan legislators into doing everything she wants to Michigan’s education system. She has gotten her way on EVERYTHING
The result:
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/02/20/michigan-test-score-gains-worst-nation/98144368/
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
DETROIT NEWS:
“Michigan ‘makes the bottom 10 list on all four measures, and ranks dead last in terms of proficiency growth since 2003,’ said Jacob, who prepared the study for the Brookings Institution.
“A new analysis of results of a national educational test shows Michigan students have continually made the least improvement nationally of scores since 2003.
*”Both analyses looked at data from NAEP and rank states on their academic achievement and growth, said Sunil Joy, assistant director of policy and research at non-partisan Education Trust, in an email. “However, Jacobs’ analysis also incorporates factors like state size, population density, median household income and others.”
” ‘Even when controlling for these factors, Michigan still fares poorly,’ Joy added.
“The study, by University of Michigan professor Brian A. Jacob, of scores of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), also found that Michigan students were at the bottom of the list when it comes to proficiency growth in the four measures of the exam.”
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She does not know how to lead. She only knows how to buy compliance.
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Typical politician. Nothing extraordinary. Boring.
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It was on….I watched it… it was depressing.
Despite her annoyingly saccharine smile, there was something about DeVos that reminds me of Nurse Ratched from the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. It’s like, no matter what we say or do, she has her own “special plans” for us. Oh, yeah. And, the bosses of this insane asylum called America are really the crazy, diabolical ones.
Her smile only makes it worse.
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Couldn’t bring myself to watch it. There was a new episode of Bob’s Burgers. A much more productive use of my time.
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Greg,
Man up and stare into the DeVoid.
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“Staring into DeVoid”
If you stare
Into DeVoid
DeVoid will stare on back
If you dare
You can’t avoid
DeVos, the yawning crack
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I love it….. “devoid”. You’re great. That’s the best laugh I’ve had in a while.
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So painful to watch. My husband walked into the room mid-interview as I was cursing back at the television (and I rarely curse). Clueless…moronic…indifferent…completely unqualified!
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It made me ill
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What’s next?
The Surgeon General promoting the cutting of funding from publicly-funded hospitals — and giving it to totally private hospitals?
“Don’t you see? Sure those hospitals will have a lot less funds, but the competition from the totally private hospitals to which those funds are diverted ultimately drives those defunded, publicly-funded hospitals to improve, and thus, eventually makes people in the publcly-funded hospitals healthier?
Sure less funding means that you have to fire doctors and nurses in publicly-funded hospitals, and thus induce a crippling increase in the patient load, causing the patient-to-doctor, patient-to-nurse ratios to go sky high, but the remaining doctors and nurses will be stimulated to overcome all that because of the competition that they’re now facing from those privately-funded hospitals.”
Huh?!
Is Devos’ brother’s private sector military group Blackwater (or whatever name they call it now) succeeded in driving the U.S. military to improve through the competition that Blackwater brings?
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Read this from a Michigan teachers who has organized opposition to Devos:
https://twitter.com/KaitPopielarz/status/973165067108745216
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Did anyone catch the segment on trauma informed care/Dr. Bruce Perry? I recommend reading his work.
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Oh my, where to begin…DeVos to head a commission to address gun violence! Erik Prince, her Blackwater heading brother, continues to profit mightily from state sponsored violence all over the planet. What is the Prince/DeVos family’s relationship to the NRA? The ironies in all of this are mind-numbing. But we are living in bizarre world now and our task is to keep each other sane as we continue our work to deeply educate young people so that they may change the world.
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Boy, is she a creep. She is proving that she knows nothing. Trump is also proving over and over again that his ‘great intuition’ is faulty as broken barbed wire. It hurts if you anywhere near it.
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Today’s letter to corrupt Senator Todd Young [R-IN] is relevant in light of Trump is back saying teachers should carry guns.
……
3/12/2018 Corrupt Senator Todd Young, read the fears that a teacher now faces. Does $2,896,732 in BLOOD MONEY from the NRA buy you pride or Shame?
The NRA spent $52 million in the 2016 election.
Corrupt Senator Todd Young, I thought you’d like to read what if feels like to now be a teacher in US classrooms. You sit in comfort, knowing that you never will face a gunman in your office. Teachers now are wondering, “When will my turn come to learn whether or not I’ll give my life for my students?” This is not the job of a teacher. Our job is to teach, not show kids how to hide and tremble in fear, a fear that never ends. One child wrote, “What really stresses me out is the fact that I might die in this building.”
Our students are now living in fear. This affects their abilities to learn and thrive.
Are you proud of the fear that now engulfs our schools? Are you proud of the proliferation of killing machines that are engulfing our society? You, corrupt Senator Todd Young are responsible for all this turmoil. You are a coward that sits in your office and knows that you are safe and you refuse to give this country the same freedom to live.
It is not just our schools that are in trouble. It is everywhere humans now go…concerts, movies, church to worship, nightclubs. Who knows where and when the next mass shooting will occur. It will happen because there are too many guns.
YOU, CORRUPT SENATOR TODD YOUNG, ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FEAR THAT PERMEATES OUR CULTURE. Was receiving $2,896,732 worth the price that we all now are forced to pay?
Take pride in how you are responsible for this fear OR do something to change the laws. The US wants strict gun safety laws. Ban assault weapons that have no use except to kill large groups of humans. They were built for the military, not street usage.
Read what one teacher has to say concerning the fear that now permeates her school and herself.
By Belle Chesler
Dear America: You’ve given me an impossible task and condemned me for my failure to perform it. Now, you — or at least the president, the NRA, and various politicians — assure me that I can redeem myself by holding a gun, firing back, and so blasting away the despair. No, thank you: I do not want to hold that gun and cannot be that shield. Neither figuratively nor physically can I save my students.
So what was it about the Parkland killings that tipped the scale? Why hadn’t this happened after Columbine or Newtown? These are among the questions we teachers have been asking one another at my school recently. Perhaps what’s driving this moment is fear of the seeming inevitability, the not-if-but-when of it all. As teachers, we are forced to wonder: When will it be our turn? When will we bar the doors, fight, run, or hide? When will despair be given a physical form in the shape of a teenager with a gun and our school turned into a shooting gallery for the deranged?
At this point, we’ve been practicing lockdown drills for years. We lock and block the doors, then huddle on the floor in the darkest corners of our classroom, 36 teenagers and one adult trying to be as quiet as possible. No phones, no talking, no movement. We wait for the rattle of the door handle, at least one of us cries, and then it’s over. The all-clear.
We turn on the lights, stretch our cramped limbs, and return to our seats. I tell a joke, try to lighten the mood a bit, and resume class. One grim effect of these drills and procedures, though, is to normalize the threat of an act so heinous, so abnormal it’s hard to take in. We’ve essentially desensitized our entire school community to the true horror of what we’re playing out — a fight for our lives. We expect the routines of the classroom to resume once the lights come back on, hoping that the students will have grasped the seriousness of the drill but won’t have internalized the fear. That none of us will. When my students voice the fear that sits inside them in that darkened room, when they give the despair space to breathe in the light, we’re all forced to confront the twisted reality of what we’re doing.
At the beginning of the semester, I gave my new students a questionnaire about their lives. One of them answered the question “What is one thing that really stresses you out?” by writing: “What really stresses me out is the fact that I might die in this building.”
I had no idea how to respond because, honestly, I feel the same way. How do I convey what it feels like to walk into your workplace every morning wondering if today is the day you’ll die there? How do I explain the trepidation I feel when I have to confront that student — the one who’s been making the disturbing art, doesn’t smile or interact with his peers, and whose parents won’t return my emails or calls — to tell him that he needs to tone down the violence in his work? How do I share my deepest fear that this is the kid who will come back for me later, armed and ready to exact his revenge?
How do I express the complexity of the emotions I feel when I’m huddling in the dark with my students, thinking about what it would take for all of us to make it out of the building alive in a real version of the same situation? And how do I begin to think about the worst possible scenario, that the sixteen-year-old kid crouched next to me in the dark is the next school shooter? In the heightened paranoia of my classroom, my students are now suspects…
Nevertheless, the archetype of the teacher-martyr who toils late into the night, sacrificing her personal life in order to focus solely on her students, is one we’ve bought into as a culture. The story we tell is that teachers are superhuman, capable of reversing any tide, remedying any hurt, and counteracting the problems of our society by sheer focus, persistence, and care. If I just devote myself more, put in longer hours, and implement a better curriculum, I’ll ultimately save them all. Being this martyr is a badge of honor in the school itself, a symbol of who is doing the best work. I can’t help but wonder, though: Isn’t martyring oneself by taking a bullet for our students the ultimate expression of this archetype? Isn’t this what is, post-Parkland, now being demanded of us?…
Perhaps valorizing teachers as heroes is simply another way of continually refusing to honor and respect the profession in the ways that actually matter. Heroes don’t need smaller class sizes, benefits or adequate retirement accounts. The truth is, those teachers should never have had to put their lives on the line for their students. It wasn’t their job. We are not warriors, we are teachers. We are not heroes, we are teachers.
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“Fifteen Minutes and counting”
Betsy’s fifteen minutes of fame
Expired long ago
The extra minutes are really lame
Like Palin, doncha know
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good comparison
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I saw the interview on 60 minutes and my impression of Ms. Devos is that she is really a mom…I picture her as this midwestern mother of children, baking all day taking care of domestic issues and the kids at home. This really who she is.
However, Ms. Devos is married to a guy who made it rich and so Ms. Devos expanded out into the outside world and tried to make it really big with the education secretary position. Too bad for her that she is way over her head but I believe her ideology was manifested throughout the years she stayed at home taking care of her children while her rich husband mingled with politicians. And, as it goes, people who acquire lots of wealth some how start to believe that their thoughts and ideas are what is right for the rest of the country but unfortunately that is not the case because money does not equate to intelligence except in the mind of the individual.
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Unless you are actually a Betsy writing under a nom de plume, you are wrong. Betsy was born to a billionaire family and married into an even bigger billionaire family. She has not stayed home baking cookies. She has been a voucher activist for 30 years. She founded the American Federation for Children to intervene in elections in many states, fighting against public schools. She has contributed campaign cash to many senators and members of Congress to promote her agenda. Her abiding passion is spreading her cause and destroying public schools because they are not religious.
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I also doubt it, but if she WERE home baking cookies, they would almost certainly be only half baked (if that) not unlike all her ideas and policies.
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Educators have watched with aghast, shock, sadness, and anger a bi-partisan sinking of the public education ship. All that comes to my mind now is a quote by the character Beneatha from the wonderful stage production titled A Raisin in the Sun: ” Oh, god! Where is the bottom! Where is the honest-to-God bottom so he can’t go any farther!”
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I thought Lesley Stahl did a good job asking challenging questions and sometimes pushing back, but I long for someone to conduct an interview in the style of British journalists who are deeply conversant on the specific issues and are prepared to ask more follow-up questions that break through the robotic talking points. For example, I wish Ms Stahl had drilled down more on the fact that Michigan school test scores have decreased dramatically and WHY. I wish Ms Stahl had gotten into the specifics of the comparisons between US school performance compared to that of other countries and what that comparison really means (eg individual state performance as opposed to US averages etc). But in general, I think Ms DeVos continues to look vacuous and uninformed, another unqualified billionaire put into a position by Trump to forward a harmful agenda. So there’s that, at least.
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I agree. When Stahl asked about test scores, DeVos said they were flat. Stahl said, no, they are not flat. DeVos responded, “but international test scores are mediocre.” Stahl should have been ready and asked, “were they higher in the past?” DeVos would have been stumped. Stahl could then have said, “did you know that US students came in last on the first international scores in 1964?” And she should have drilled down on Michigan, as you said, because scores are down for every demographic since DeVos put her policies in place.
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I wish Stahl had asked her about Gary B. v. Snyder, the civil rights lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of Detroit schoolchildren who maintain in their complaint that Detroit’s schools don’t provide even the most basic of literacy skills. The complaint itself is a horrific indictment of Detroit’s schools. If sb had read that complaint and summarized it for Stahl, the interview could have been really, really interesting.
Also, re: that thing she has with “it’s not about buildings,” which she repeats every time she’s in pubic. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I suspect what she actually means is that she’d like cyber schools to replace brick-and-mortar schools in rural/low-density parts of the country, where charters aren’t viable.
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I have no words. I didn’t believe there could be any woman more uninformed in Trump cabinet than Ivanka. I was wrong.
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Glad I missed this. I was down at David’s getting free farm eggs. More nutritious than DeVos
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Betsy DeVos paid for a title. She has no experience or intention to do the work involved – unless promoting charter and private schools and destroying public education counts.
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I think Peter Greene has nailed it today:
“If DeVos sometimes seems confused by questions asked by worldly interviewers and worldly Congressmen, it is in part because they are following a worldly script that she rejected back in her youth. If she seems confused, it may not be because she doesn’t get it, but because she still can’t quite understand why the rest of us don’t get it.
Betsy DeVos is not a dope. I wish more people would see what she keeps putting right in front of our collective face. She has a vision of what education and government should look like, and if it seems that her vision is dangerous and damaging to the world, that does not matter to her, because this world is not her home.”
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/03/devos-in-this-world.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FORjvzd+%28CURMUDGUCATION%29
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I watched the interview also and was struck by her lack of knowledge Why has she not asked researchers to dig and find evidence to support whatever she thinks and at the same time to discover all the things that are wrong? That’s what one does when one is unable to read educational research. She thinks her cutesy putesy attitude will dissolve all opposition. She is pathetic.
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Still less destructive than Arne Duncan.
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I am no fan of Arnie, the Obama basketball buddy, either. But this De Vos person is a total numbskull and deeply delusional. She illustrates perfectly the Dunning- Kruger effect, i.e., too stupid to know how stupid she really is.
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Agreed about Betsy. She is a disaster and strangely unembarrassed by her ignorance. And not enough of the public seems to be putting pressure on the administration to get rid of her.
This seems to be a clear sign of the total contempt that the Trump people feel for public education and, at the very least, it’s highest and best use is for private profit and/or religious propaganda.
This is a dark road we are heading down and it will hopefully be over in 3 years.
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Trump will never fire DeVos or ease her out. She gave more than $200 million to GOP Senators. She paid for the job.
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Remember, this is a JOKE!! Borowitz is a comedian!!!! I believe this is showing that Betsy is making a fool of herself.
…………….
Betsy DeVos Calls “60 Minutes” a Waste of a Half Hour..The New Yorker
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Furious about her treatment on the CBS news-magazine program on Sunday night, Betsy DeVos spoke to reporters on Monday, and called “60 Minutes” a “total waste of a half hour.”
“I had never watched ‘60 Minutes’ before, but I can tell you this, I will never watch it again,” the Education Secretary said. “I have better things to do with a half hour of my time.”
Calling her interviewer, Lesley Stahl, a practitioner of “gotcha journalism at its worst,” DeVos said that it was “very unfair of her to ask me so many questions about education.”
“She asked me one thing about schools, and then another, and another,” she said. “If I had to answer every question she had about schools, I would have had to bone up on education for a month.”
DeVos said that she was “frustrated” that Stahl neglected to ask her about any of her “really good ideas” for the nation’s schools, such as “purchasing guns for teachers with money that is currently being wasted on books.”
“If a bear comes into your classroom, throwing a book at him will only stun him momentarily, at best,” DeVos said.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/betsy-devos-calls-60-minutes-a-waste-of-a-half-hour
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Here is Seth Meyers on Betsy Devos ( after he nails Trump in his satiric way.
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Susan: Trump is once again proving that he has no idea of what he’s doing. The fact that cheering audience members follow his every word indicates that not everyone understands the huge deficiencies that this IDIOT possesses. He is unsure of what to say but is only good at raving up crowds. He has no policies and only wants the praise that he gets when attacking other respectable people.
DeVos is a totally unprepared and ignorant Secretary of Education. She has no business even attempting to ‘educate’ the populace. Her ideas are absolutely destructive to most schools. Time for her to retire back to all of her yachts and stay well hidden for the rest of her life.
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Carol,
Last weekend she rushed to Palm Beach to board her 150 foot yacht and get away from the riffraff. Twitter lit up with references to her family yacht SEAQUEST
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