Peter Greene almost feels sorry for Betsy DeVos.
She doesn’t want to tell anyone what to do because she doesn’t believe there should be a federal role in education.
But she wants to tell people what to do because she has a hardcore ideology and despises public schools. How can she not tell them what to do while telling them what to do.
She is no good at the Bully Pulpit thing because she has no experience, no wisdom, and no reservoir of trust to draw on. She is simply a Very Rich Person with strong opinions.
Peter writes:
”There she sits in DC, unable (and unwilling) to use the department to effectively pursue her own policy goals, and unwilling (and unable) to use the department to support public education in this country. The DeVosian dilemma is that everybody loses, and public education in America loses extra hard. Of course, since this comes on the heels of the King Katastrophe, the Duncan Disaster and a string running all the way back to the Paige Pee-down-his-Pants-leg, we may need to take a hard look at the Department of Education. But that’s a conversation for another day. In the meantime, we’ll just have to watch DeVos struggle between the lever and the pulpit, like a fish flopping sadly on the dry beach of a frozen Great Lake.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ah, Peter,If only the Great Lakes could freeze, but that’s another problem.
I watched DeVos on 60 Minutes with genuine curiosity. I dislike her and her “policies” as intensely as anyone on our warming Earth.
I didn’t feel sorry for her, but didn’t think she was as disgustingly dishonest as Trump or others in the cabinet. My impression is that she is a true believer in her God and the infallibility of free enterprise – not surprising given the source of much of her wealth. She is befuddled that she encounters so much resistance, since she is merely the messenger for the divine – theologically, educationally and economically. I sensed that she sees herself as a martyr, sacrificing and enduring for the sake of all the children who need to be “saved.”
This naive, faith-based conviction makes her dangerous and susceptible to all the other con men who profit from her ignorance. That’s why she’s in the job.
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“I didn’t feel sorry for her, but didn’t think she was as disgustingly dishonest as Trump or others in the cabinet. My impression is that she is a true believer in her God. . . ”
That’s a pretty low bar you’re setting for poor little Betsy. And as always when I see a claim of a “true believer” which god?
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The bar has to be mighty low for her to even see it. And, as a cheerful atheist, I don’t give a damn which little g or big G god is her savior.
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Reposted Peter’s article itself here https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-DeVosian-Dilemma-by-Pe-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education_Peter-Greene-180312-484.html#comment692777
with this comment:
which has embedded links at the above address:
Dr. Diane Ravitch writes that DeVos ” doesn’t want to tell anyone what to do because she doesn’t believe there should be a federal role in education.”
“But she wants to tell people what to do because she has a hardcore ideology and despises public schools. How can she not tell them what to do while telling them what to do.She is no good at the Bully Pulpit thing because she has no experience, no wisdom, and no reservoir of trust to draw on. She is simply a Very Rich Person with strong opinions.”
Diane Ravitch was FORMER Assistant SECRETARY OF STATE is a research professor of education at New York University and the co-founder of theNetwork for Public Education, a grassroots advocacy organization., and the top voice on edcuation in the nation.
Learn the truth from the writing of this brilliant educator, who is Politico’s choice for AMERICA’S 50 MOST IMPORTANT AMERICANS.
How Not to Fix Our Public Schools .commonwealmagazine.org/reform-reform
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.
The Trump Devos Demolition of American Education
*Detroit: The Broken Promise of School Privatization
Submitted on Monday, Mar 12, 2018 at 2:10:19 PM
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The question she really stumbled on was the question ed reformers have to answer though. Have they improved public schools?
Stahl actually handed it to her- Stahl said there have been improvements in public schools, and DeVos should have grabbed that like a life raft because – and this is important!- ed reformers RUN on “improving schools”.
They’ve been in charge for 20 years. At some point they are going to have to answer that question.
DeVos couldn’t say that any public school anywhere has improved because that goes against her ideological goal- to eradicate public schools. But it also creates a problem for ed reform, because if they continue with the “public schools suck!” campaign at some point people will ask what they have done to improve public schools.
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This is the kind of nonsense that comes out of the US Department of Education now:
US Dept of Education
@usedgov
15h15 hours ago
More
School choice is not a classroom in this building or that system, using this voucher or that tax-credit. It’s much bigger than all of that. Choice is about freeing students to find the best way to learn and grow – to find the combination that unlocks their individual potential.
I know none of these people attended public schools but “schools” actually IS about schools. This idea that they can gloss over all the issues with privatizing education and present these ideological goals as “a plan” is just the laziest, sloppiest thing I have ever seen.
In some fairy tale land where schools don’t require funds and buildings The DeVos Plan works. But in the real world where non-billionaires reside this is just nonsense.
We’re paying 2400 federal employees to churn out this crap? Why?
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The USED bit needs an English-to-English translation:
[start] School choice is not a classroom in this building or that system, using this voucher or that tax-credit. It’s much bigger than all of that. Choice is about freeing public monies so that they can more expeditiously swell the bank accounts and egos of the wealthy and their chief enablers and enforcers. Unlocking the combinations that imprison public education inside the cells of accountability and responsibility and democracy will allow those Favored Few access to the Happy Places that have been unfairly denied them for so long. [end]
😎
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This is an absurd statement from the DOE. “Choice” is not the best option for students to learn and grow. Choice creates winners and losers. The winners are the strivers and a few middle class students. There are many more losers under so called choice. The poor generally lose as it is the schools that do the choosing, not the student. Jersey Jazzman recently concluded that poverty has a much stronger impact on students than any choice. http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2018/03/things-economists-should-start-saying.html
Worst of all choice systems rob the most students to serve the least, and there is no evidence that indicates that the resources spent on choice has been money well spent. What we do know is that public education budgets are being sacrificed so that a few students can spend money on schools for which there is little evidence of benefit.
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I saw this brief recap on HuffPost of her 60 MINUTES interview.
In part:
[start]
DeVos claimed that when kids opt to go to private or charter schools, public schools also improve. Then, DeVos admitted she didn’t know if that happened in her home state of Michigan, where she has long advocated for such programs.
[end]
😳
But this is not ignorance of the facts but a determined effort to avoid confronting them:
[start]
“Have you seen the really bad schools? Maybe try to figure out what they’re doing?” Stahl asked.
“I have not,” DeVos confessed. “I have not. I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming.”
“Maybe you should,” Stahl suggested.
[end]
🙄
If she doesn’t know what’s what, how can she know which schools are “underperforming” [whatever that means] and which aren’t?
Link: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/besty-devos-60-minutes_us_5aa5df73e4b086698a9f1117?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313
Hence, this sober and understated line from the above posting: “She is simply a Very Rich Person with strong opinions.”
😎
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YES, indeed. I really had a hard time watching that interview and felt like my head was blowing up from her lies.
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KrazyTA
You are being waaaaay too logical.
“If Betsy Knew”
If Betsy knew
And had a clue
She wouldn’t have to guess
At first, she’d view
Then simply do
What really was the best
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I stand corrected.
😎
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It must be nice to be an ed reformer and have the luxury of not worrying about “systems” and “buildings” and instead present these abstract ideological goals as some kind of bogus “solution” but public school families and employees don’t have that luxury.
Betsy DeVos rejects “buildings”- she exists on a lofty plane of pure “choice”. Sadly, my school district must deal with “buildings” because they have something called “students” who rely on them opening every day.
They’re irrelevant to regular people and they’re so clueless they don’t even know it.
She has nothing of value to offer any public school anywhere, other than the same ideological boilerplate we’ve been hearing since Barry Goldwater.
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Warehousing kids is fine. In October, 2017 DeVos awarded the computer-centric Rocketship franchise $12.5 million for replication and expansion for five years.
The word replication–long embedded in USDE policy–shows how difficult it is to kill the factory/franchise theory of education. That theory also governs the “What Work’s Clearinghouse” evaluations of research.
Bill Gates has long thought good schools should be so standardized you can just plug them into a socket and they work.
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I have a question for the charter crowd. If we had a Secretary of Education who was opposed to the continued existence of charter schools would ANYONE in charter-world listen to her?
That’s how it is for public school supporters. She’s opposed to our schools. I don’t take advice from people who hope to eradicate my son’s school. That would be dumb.
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I think we saw how much ed reformers care about public school students.
Every public school in the state of West Virginia closed in a last ditch effort to get someone in state government to pay attention to the public schools, and it wasn’t even a blip on the ed reform radar.
The same thing is being talked about in Oklahoma. What is the US Department of Education focused on while this public education crisis unflods? Charters and vouchers.
You could close every public school in this country- they could care less. It simply doesn’t puncture the bubble.
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“You could close every public school in the country- they could care less.’
Actually, they’d care quite a bit, and be quite happy, since that’s their ultimate goal: close the public schools, then re-open them under private, for-profit management.
And these people talk about the “free market” with a straight face, when in fact it’s the conservative/glibertarian equivalent of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
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Like: glibertarian!
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It really upsets me that the federal government does absolutely nothing for public schools UNTIL they want to promote their ideological goals on guns.
Then we get grants. We don’t get grants for music or art or literature- we get grants for metal detectors.
These people don’t just have contempt for public schools. They have contempt for public school students.
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Public school parents should read the DeVos “plan”. They’re proposing a TSA-like system for public schools.
That’s because they don’t value public schools. Oppose. Tell them to take their funding and beat it. The last thing public school students need is schools designed by the NRA and Homeland Security.
Thanks but no thanks. Keep it. Spend it on more anti-public school marketing campaigns,
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“The last thing public school students need is schools designed by the NRA and Homeland Security.”
Actually, Betsy the Ditz would probably use her brother’s company-XE (if that is what it is still called).
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Ali Velshi just did a good, short analysis of the DeVos lies on MSNBC. Too bad he’s alone in the television media.
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Peter Greene described DeVos perfectly. It’s very unfortunate for our public educational system and the children and teachers in it.
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More Peter Greene on Betsy DeVos: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/03/devos-in-this-world.html
Greene gets it. It’s not about stupidity. DeVos simply has a different view of how the world should be (how, in fact, God wants it). We fail to listen to her or write her off as a dope at our own peril.
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Thanks for the link, Dienne!!
All should take the time to read this very important analysis of the Devosian way of being.
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