Imagine billionaire Betsy DeVos telling the nation that spending doesn’t make a difference in terms of education outcomes. But she did and she is wrong, as Chalkbeat explained.
For starters, correlation is not the same as causation.
But let’s talk common sense, inasmuch as Betsy already said she is not a “numbers person.”
When parents have the means to do so, they move to high-spending suburban districts. It’s not just for the grass and the trees, Betsy. In high-spending districts, their children have beautiful, well-maintained buildings. They have small classes. They have experienced teachers who are paid well. They have up-to-date science laboratories. They have the best technology. They have classes in history, civics, and government. They have programs in the arts. Their schools have a band, a chorus, dance, film, an orchestra, a string quartet, and more. They have a robotics team, a chess club, a debate team. They have a library with a real librarian. They have a school nurse, a social worker, a psychologist, and all kinds of sports activities.
If urban schools were well-funded, they would have all of this. But they don’t.
Betsy, if you truly believe that money doesn’t make a difference, try this thought experiment. What if you gave all your money away? Where would you be today?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To heck with “not being a numbers person,” I’m convinced she’s not a persons’ person.
Don’t you have to be human before you can be a persons’ person?
I’m pretty sure she’s a human, just not one that is humane. 😆
You are very kind sir.
Reblogged this on It's Not Easy to Have Faith and commented:
PREACH!!!
With all the moolah she has poured into her home state to implement the privatization agenda, and all the dinero she pumped into Trump’s campaign to secure a cabinet post, Betsy is well aware of just how much money can make a difference…for all the wrong reasons.
It’s funny (not) that the mainstream media never, ever points out that its always people with cash registers for brains who are telling teachers that investing money in education is not important.
“Money doesn’t matter”
“Money doesn’t matter”
Intoned the billionaire
“Cuz Yogi Bear is fatter
Than any millionaire”
But Betsy does CARE about HER money. She is in the business of making SLAVES for the oligarchy.
I think there is something that happens to people when they accumulate wealth. They have a disconnect with those who have less. DeVos has never been in a low performing school and has no desire to see them. Hence, the lack of understanding about how proper funding would result in changes that would benefit all students.
I read the following statement by Ben Carson, Trump’s appointee to head HUD. He is now wealthy and talks a flowery talk about helping the poor to get out of poverty. It’s the old ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ that will make everyone feel better. I seriously doubt that his version of ‘unlocking untapped human potential’ and ‘reforming our welfare system’ will benefit anyone.
“To unlock America’s full potential, we need a welfare system of opportunity for the 21st century. The executive order signed by President Trump on Tuesday is a big step in the right direction,” Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson writes in The Washington Times. “Millions of people strive every day to escape poverty. It’s time we reform our welfare system to support them and unlock the untapped human potential in our forgotten inner cities and small towns,” Secretary Carson adds.
Or you can live in a high spending suburban district and get the illusion of all those nice things.
It’s not an illusion: it’s real – it was in our ’90’s-’00’s chi-chi central-NJ district– & still is [they’ve even now got hisch ‘bridge’ pgm for devptlly-delayed, & in-district ed for the autistic].
My 3 boys were different-learning musicians: verbally articulate & creative, but outside the book/pencil/std-assessment mold. 2 had such large gaps between IQ & test/hw performance that they got IEP’s/ resource rm/ accommodations/ self-contained hi-sch classes. The 3rd was yr classic underachiever & got placed in our sch-w/in-a-sch alternative [project-based] cohort where he excelled…
Granted, back in my day [’60’s], these kids would have easily moved on to college because they were smart, could think speak & write well, could prove it w/ [untimed] product… [in ’60’s, project-based learning was prized over test scores; such kids earned hi grades which tempered testing issues like mediocre SAT’s]…
Nevertheless, our hi-spending district went to bat, pounding square pegs into round holes via SpEd/ alt-sch means to ensure college entry despite two decades’ trend of tougher entry due to 2/3 more college-bound students [collapse of mfg/ ‘everyone must get BA’s to be part of the ‘info economy”].
Bottom line: our kids made it into college despite untoward competition thanx to our highly-funded sch sys– meanwhile kids in mid/wkg-class nbhds get in by the skin of their teeth & only if they agree to go into hock for life, & often are reqd to take 1-1-1/2 yrs’ non-credit-bearing remedial classes, meaning they often drop out due to that increaseto their college costs…
Betsy Devos continues to give us the Ammo we need to keep up the fight against the ill willed of the country trying to break. our precious public schools. Devos keeps coughing up the same screw ball statements which has opened the eyes up of many including the parents who were not interested in education and now they are because of Devos and they all are realizing what a joke this woman actually is.
Thanks Betsy and keep up the good work because we all know that vouchers and charters are your love for the country but we cannot afford to destroy our country the way you did to the state of Michigan.
PS people…. do not buy anything with the word Amway on it, its just another scam from our pals from the midwest, the good ole Devos family pushing their agenda on us after they trashed a once beautiful state of Michigan.
The Devos family is just another example of why the US gov should now allow people to earn over a certain dollar amount because once people like the Devos’s acquire all this money, suddenly they think they know about everything including education and we all know that is not the case. Betsy betsy betsy, you better watch out because even Eva moskowitch is looking to dump you.
I disagreed with the argument of your first paragraph when Diane first propounded it, but I’m now convinced that you are both right. People who could have cared less about education policy have been alerted by her nomination and subsequent behavior.
Betsy is the secret weapon of the resistance.
I’m just surprised they haven’t come up with a new line. This is 20 year old ed reform boilerplate. They need to freshen up the ol marketing slogans.
Bill Gates uses the same reasoning and he is supposed to be a wiz-bang with numbers. He has more than once cited slow or no rise in test scores as the consequence of money not making a difference–the standards are just too low and the teachers are not good enough–you name it. He loves computer delivered instruction because those systems can be debugged.
I have never seen any evidence in anything Bill Gates has produced (certainly not his software) that Bill has any interest in debugging. All his stuff is full of bugs. In fact, that’s the defining characteristic.
When I used a Dell computer with Microsoft software, it was very buggy. I had so many anti-virus programs that they were in constant combat.
Ed reformers are still crowing about the huge voucher program they lobbied for in Illinois:
“Illinois has just pulled off a coup by passing the largest new program in the country to offer lower-income families scholarships to attend private schools. The funding comes from donations made by individuals and businesses who receive a 75-cents-on-the-dollar tax credit when they give to scholarship-granting organizations statewide.
Even the bill’s supporters did not expect it to pass, but a perfect storm of politics, budget crises, a politically savvy cardinal, and patient philanthropy pulled it off. Here’s how it happened.”
It’s truly remarkable. Not ONE word about kids in public schools in that state. Ninety per cent of Illinois families are simply not of interest to state lawmakers.
A law that was sold as being “about public schools” was simply a vehicle to get their voucher agenda in. Not one adult in government worked on behalf of 90% of students.
Public school families should fire the whole bunch. They simply don’t serve 90% of families. Hire people who support your schools. These folks don’t.
Public school families should read the speeches DeVos gives to the ed reform echo chamber.
Boy, she’s not real hopeful about public school students. According to the federal government, our kids are violent, bullying thugs who don’t have much of a future.
It’s really outrageous that these adults are comfortable smearing children to push their ideological agenda. I resent paying their salaries. They don’t work for 90% of kids. They should return 90% of their pay.
Emma Gonzales, a student in a public high school, has contributed more to the national interest this year than Betsy DeVos
Can anyone point to one thing Congress or the US Department of Ed has done for public schools this calendar year?
I want to turn the tables. I’ve heard the scolding lectures they deliver to public school employees. I want a performance review of THEM.
What value did they add to US public schools this year? I’d like to see a list.
I’m tired of analyzing the failures of the peons in this system. I’d like to see a report card for the big shots. They’re failing.
Relatedly:
“Why Republicans and Democrats ended up at war
withon America’s schoolteachers.”There. Fixed it for Paul.
Krugman said not one word about the Obama administration’s teacher evaluation system of choice, Value Added Modeling (VAM), although it is right up his econometricks alley and he is certainly smart enough to understand what a lot of bunk it is.
Where was Krugman’s brilliant critique of VAM and of Raj Chetty’s famous claims about the cause/effect relationship between elementary school teachers and lifetime earnings and teen pregnancy?
Non existent, that’s where.
He had to be aware of the claims of Chetty and others because Krugman’s own daily stomping grounds (The NY Times) was writing in glowing terms about Chetty and VAM.
But of course, Krugman did not want to be overly critical of Obama because he was still holding out hope till the last term that Obama would appoint him to lead his council of economic advisers. Question for Paul: How did that work out?
Then again, maybe Krugman is actually just too dumb to understand VAM (though I doubt it)
If one ever needed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that economics is governed by ideology and tribal loyalties rather than by evidence and science, the silence of people like Paul Krugman on VAM and Chetty’s work is it.
Is not being “a numbers person” a euphemism for “I am not an evidence person?”
She believes in evidence that supports only what she already believes.
I wouldn’t call it evidence. I’d call it propaganda. Or ideology. Or calculated, willful ignorance. Or craven opportunism. Not evidence. But that’s just me.
I haven’t seen a single beautiful school building in suburban SoCal, maybe I am hanging out in poor ghettos. Oh, wait, I saw one, in a fully planned community, built from the ground up ten years ago, along with the town square, fountain and and alley. All other look like army barracks.
As for “technology”, school does not need one. Unless there are classes dedicated to computer imagery or video or maybe sound recording, computers are not needed. Even calculators are not needed. At all. At all. The prior decade or two schools were buying expensive $100 graphing calculators, now they buy iPads – the supplier changed, but the principle has not, which is selling to government-owned entity a product it does not need for hiked prices. I saw schools charged twice more or sometimes even ten times more for textbooks compared to market price.
What students need is is a good building made of non-toxic materials, with room having lots of natural light coming from the left, with large enough desks and comfortable chairs that do not inflict pain and do not make the kids look like leprechauns. With sports field not sprayed with Round-Up. With food prepared on-site instead of selling packaged pre-processed junk. Students do not need chainlink fence around the school, they do not need spending six hours or more in this prison, they do not need breaks as short as four minutes, they do not need police officers or “behavior” officers in the corridors. They need better textbooks with real information and free of indoctrination. They need algebra starting from seventh grade. They need physics, chemistry, geography, foreign language starting from middle school and available in any school. They don’t need mind-numbing worksheets, computer-based or paper-based, does not matter. They must be challenged at the whiteboard in front of the class, yes, either bask in prize or humiliated for failure, this is part of the growing up too.
The current system is so broken, that no money will fix it. All the extra money will go for iPads and MacBooks, and on shiny new editions of twenty-year old books that were known to be pulp even then. Pointless giving money to the districts when the bureaucrats are getting kickbacks from purchases. Same as doctors pushing opioids or whatever other poison big pharma comes with.
Do you have any positive ideas, Gruff, or just snarling and sneering at others?
FYI, I have seen magnificent buildings in affluent suburban districts and threadbare buildings in urban districts, only 15 miles apart. That sends a message to students about how much they are valued.
Yes, I have positive ideas, I listed some of them in my message above. Should I have them bullet-pointed?
Oh, oh, how about this great idea: do not accept targeted funding, ever. Say, someone offers $4M for fencing – do not take it. Someone offers $10M for bying “technology” – decline it. Targeted funding is one of the easiest ways to milk the system by saying “we have no money for textbooks, all we have is for putting a double fence with police guard”, and then giving away the contract to a friendly company for a kickback. Clear, unmarked, untargeted funds, publicly openly discussed at schools will be more likely spend on what is really needed.
Yes, indeed, Gruff [& all those things take $, which too many states have been loath to spend on public ed for decades]. As a for-lang teacher, I would only take one exception: if your aim is proficiency in a 2nd lang, that takes multiple yrs, & is acquired most easily [& cheaply] if you start in K when the brain is well w/n the window for ease of lang-learning. You can do it easily w/ 2 15-min lessons/wk, gradually increasing to a 40-min wkly lesson by 6th gr [you need only 1 or 2 FT teachers roving from sch to sch in elem].
Me gusta.
Some further thoughts on the matter of evidence and privatization:
Privatize Schools? Look for Evidence, But Not at First.
Read here:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/9/1747809/-Privatize-Schools-Look-for-Evidence-But-Not-at-First
At my school here in Manhattan, we administered the PSAT and the SAT today. I proctored the PSAT for a group of students whom I serve as a teacher. There were four sections to the test; the second two were on math. One of these math sections, the shorter of the two, required students work without a calculator, and the longer math section called for students to use a calculator.
You can probably guess what my inner-city, underfunded school lacked for this exercise. The administration of this school just blithely explained that it didn’t have calculators for this part of the PSAT.
While this is clearly shameful, what’s even clearer to me is that the administration of this school, like Betsy DeVos, is by its nature incapable of feeling shame. Why bother?
Wow, that is terrible, Mark.
Thank, Flerp.
Thanks, rather.
The real question is why does the PSAT now require a calculator?
David Coleman’s doing no doubt.
The only surprising part is that the kids don’t have to have a credit card to take the test.
Oh, wait…
That’s the SAT
I’m not sure, Some DAM. I never took this test, and by the time I went to college in my early thirties, the school I most wanted to attend–Hampshire College–didn’t require it.
Thanks, Some DAM. Frustrating day here today….
Kind of throws into question the validity of the test results, eh. Aren’t the conditions in which all test takers take the test supposed to be identical???
Oh well, just another of the many invalidities identified by Wilson that render the standardized testing process “vain and illusory”. See: A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
I looked at some of the PSAT problems that use calculators and, while you can do them without one, you are at a disadvantage if you don’t have a calculator.
Also, some of the problems I saw were actually physics problems, so while you could do the problems without knowing physics, if you had had physics, you were at a distinct advantage.
The College Board seems to be making these tests into subject matter tests but the problem is, not everyone has taken the same subjects in high school.
What a complete mess.
A tale told by an idiot (David Coleman), full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
“What a complete mess.” — It is not the SAT that is complete mess, but the school system, where you cannot know for sure what your kid will be learning next year even within your state. And with chem, physics, foreign languages, etc being electives, there is no coherent pool of knowledge. All you can test is basic math. Now this is complete mess.
Gruff,
If you had deeper knowledge, you would know who messed education.
It wasn’t teachers or parents.
Look to the Congress and the Governors and the US Department of Education. Accountability starts at the top.
Who gives a crap about “all you can test”??
The ONLY thing a test should be used for is to help a student determine where he or she is in learning the particular subject matter of a particular class. That’s it.
And by the way: What do you consider a “coherent pool of knowledge”?
I post the Chalkbeat article https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Why-the-school-spending-gr-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Betsy-Devos_Class_Education_School-Reform-180426-578.html#comment698241
with this comment and links to this blog.
Here is a link to all the posts regarding that charlatan Betsy Devos, that Diane Ravitch has put up on her site. https://dianeravitch.net/?s=Betsy+Devos
LEARN the destruction that she sows.
Devos was the Trump pick to fill the swamp so that public edcuation will fail!
As Elizabeth Warrenshows in this searing document, https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/DeVos%20Report%202-26.pdf