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speduktr says:

May 15, 2018 at 12:34 am

One of Mercedes’s best efforts. Straight from the horse’s mouth, DeVos managed to make her hypocrisy manifestly clear.

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- Jack says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 9:21 am
  
  One wrinkle to the for-profit college story that often gets left out:
  
  a majority (or a significant minority) of the people being ripped off by the for-profit college crooks whom Betsy’s cronies — whom Betsy is enabling since taking office — have been ripping off are … wait for it ..
  
  … veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  
  Some of these men and women are suffering from PTSD and/or permanent physical injury, and ARE financially destitute or very financially insecure, from a low-income family/demographic/ethnicity/part of the country.
  
  When you add these facts to the mix, the evil in play here is truly mind-boggling.
  
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  - dianeravitch says:
    
    May 15, 2018 at 10:41 am
    
    Jack,
    
    Others ripped off by for-profit college scams: widows of veterans
    
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  - speduktr says:
    
    May 15, 2018 at 12:43 pm
    
    I remember one of my low income students coming to me all excited that a college rep had come to speak to him and his parents. He was so happy that someone wanted him. Rather than burst his bubble myself, I told him he should talk to one of the college counselors. I had a suspicion that they were being set up. His grades were abysmal; he had abdicated long ago. I can only hope that he pursued opportunities at the local community college, which is quite good. If I had been more than his advisory teacher (typically 10 minutes a day), I could have tried to build up his confidence and his motivation to try again. If I was just an economist, I can’t see how I could ignore the waste of “human capital.”
    
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  - ciedie aech says:
    
    May 15, 2018 at 1:09 pm
    
    Wherever there is governmental money, there we find a growing pool of ever-more-deregulated sharks.
    
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SomeDAM Poet says:

May 15, 2018 at 4:37 am

To Serve Man”

When man is served
On silver plate
A fine hors d’oeuvre
Is human fate

“Philanthropy”

They “Love the human kind” —
Of flesh, served on a dish.
The cannibals, you’ll find
Are real philanthropists

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carolmalaysia says:

May 15, 2018 at 6:43 am

DeVos: “Public service isn’t self-service. It’s about serving others. For me, it is in the moral obligation to expand educational opportunities for each and every child.”

What was she drinking when she made that comment? Whatever it was, she forgot about ‘each and every child’ after she sobered up. Her glorious kingdom of Christ or ‘choice’ to fix poverty for every child is a bucket of patooty.

[Jesus would never support anyone like her. He believes in true helping of the needy not stomping on them for being poor.]

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- SomeDAM Poet says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 9:28 am
  
  What would Jesus do?”
  
  What would Jesus do?
  Run away, of course.
  Bets would make him blue
  So J would ride a horse 🏇
  
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Chiara says:

May 15, 2018 at 6:55 am

“School that took ECOT students wants poor scores ignored”

The online charter that took some ECOT students after ECOT collapsed due to mismanagement and corruption now wants a special amendment that holds the new charter school harmless from the test scores of the students transferring from the old charter school.

The amendment was written by a lobbyist for K12.

Public schools took ECOT students for decades because they shifted in and out of the online charters- there’s constant churn- but they never had a lobbyist to get a special law to hold them harmless for the ECOT student scores.

http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2018/05/14/School-that-took-ECOT-students-want-poor-scores-ignored.html

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- Threatened Out West says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 6:59 pm
  
  My school gets students from online “schools” all the time. Some the day before, or the day of, testing. We are never “held harmless.” Why should charters be? Ludicrous.
  
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Chiara says:

May 15, 2018 at 7:15 am

DeVry only paid 49 million for defrauding tens of thousands of students over decades:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/07/05/devry-pay-49-m-students-misleading-ads/452189001/

They got a great deal from the federal government. They paid out about 2k each to some students and for that payment they got a get out of jail card.

Now, less than 2 years later, they’re running the US Department of Education.

It wasn’t a punishment at all- they were rewarded for robbing tens of thousands of low income and first generation college students and saddling them with lifetime debt they’ll be paying on until the day they die.

As a reward for decades of defrauding the most vulnerable college students, we promoted them to management positions in the federal government, where now we ALL get the honor of paying their salaries.

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Chiara says:

May 15, 2018 at 7:48 am

This is the Frontline documentary series on for profit colleges. They’re running it again in response to the Trump Administration corruption:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/as-devoss-education-dept-shifts-focus-revisit-frontlines-reporting-on-for-profit-colleges/

Pass it around to students you may know. They desperately need good advice and they will believe the US Department of Education is trustworthy- they shouldn’t believe that.

Dick Durbin, Senator from Illinois, has done great work on this. He really deserves credit because so many people in Congress are captured. It can’t be popular among his colleagues, this work. In order to do the oversight work he does he essentially has to call out his colleagues for taking bribes. Must be a little awkward.

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Chiara says:

May 15, 2018 at 8:20 am

“A senior U.S. Department of Education official hired straight out of the for-profit college sector helped dismantle regulations designed to protect student defrauded by for-profit colleges into taking out five-figure loans on promises that they would get good jobs — a move that could benefit his former employers, according to emails obtained exclusively by ABC News.”

A Trump Administration spokesperson said yesterday that they were not dismantling the unit- that ending enforcement was due to “attrition”.

Betsy DeVos better stop scolding us all on her superior moral values and get busy putting together an excuse for why they told the public a story that wasn’t true yesterday.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-profit-college-executive-shaped-education-department-policy/story?id=55108981

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Chiara says:

May 15, 2018 at 8:28 am

Speaking of “unaccountable” former Obama Administration employees take no responsibility at all for their role in gutting public schools:

“Joanne Weiss
This article offers a clear explanation of how states have ended up at war with their teachers. I’m not a Krugman groupie, but he gets this one exactly right.”

Why did so many public schools fare so poorly under ed reform leadership at both the federal and state level? Why are they such lousy advocates for PUBLIC schools?

No one in the Obama Administration noticed that these states were gutting public schools? Maybe one of them could have said something? I guess they were too busy attacking public schools themselves to bother with the unfashionable “public sector” schools.

I hope public schools don’t pay Weiss as a consultant. It would be a shame if they got snookered twice- once when she was in government and again when she goes thru the revolving door.

Stop paying these people. Get some value for your money.

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- dianeravitch says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 8:42 am
  
  The other thing about the Obama administration: the deafening silence as state after state eliminated collective bargaining. No one showed up in Wisconsin in 2011 when Scott Walker was crushing unions. Obama palled around with Kasich after he tried to kill unions and was stopped by a referendum.
  
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  - retired teacher says:
    
    May 15, 2018 at 8:54 am
    
    How Obama acted when teachers were under assault was my first major disappointment in Obama. After seeing Obama’s interview with Letterman, I realized he is biased against public schools. His mother home schooled him for a year as a child because he “wouldn’t get an education in the public schools.” His scholarship at a private school ensured he would never go to a public school.
    
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  - carolmalaysia says:
    
    May 15, 2018 at 9:25 am
    
    I had to look up more on Obama and his schooling.
    
    Politifact: …”Indonesia is a Muslim country, and Obama attended a public school there, which taught a small amount of religion. CNN, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune investigated the e-mail claims by visiting the school and interviewing former teachers and students who were there at the same time as Obama. These investigations found a public school where students wore Western clothing and prayer was a small part of the curriculum. The Chicago Tribune reported the school was “so progressive that teachers wore miniskirts and all students were encouraged to celebrate Christmas.”…
    …….
    Punahou School
    From Wikipedia,
    
    Punahou School (known as Oahu College until 1934) is a private, co-educational, college preparatory school located in Honolulu CDP, City and County of Honolulu in the U.S. State of Hawaii. 3,760[2] students attend the school from kindergarten through the twelfth grade.
    Founded in 1841, the school has a rich history and a wide variety of programs. The school’s most famous alumnus, Barack Obama, graduated in 1979.[3] Along with academics and athletics, Punahou offers visual and performing arts programs. In 2006, Punahou School was ranked as the greenest school in America.[4] The student body is diverse, with student selection based on both academic and non-academic considerations. In 2008 and 2009, Punahou’s sports program was ranked best in the country by Sports Illustrated[5]. In 2017, Punahou’s sports program is ranked number two in the nation by maxpreps.[6]
    
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  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    May 15, 2018 at 9:50 am
    
    The Missing Comfy Shoes”
    
    Obama’s comfy shoes
    Were nowhere to be found
    When unions sang the blues
    In old Wisconsin towns
    
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- Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 10:50 am
  
  YES, indeed! You got it right.
  
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LeftCoastTeacher says:

May 15, 2018 at 8:36 am

DeVos: “I’m more misunderstood than anything.” I agree. It is very difficult to understand her, whether she’s writing or speaking. She never mastered words. She never makes sense.

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- SomeDAM Poet says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 9:18 am
  
  She may be misunderstood but she is also misunderestimated, like George W. Bush.
  
  And the former might be quite purposeful in order to achieve the latter.
  
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- Christine Langhoff says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 11:20 pm
  
  LCT –
  
  One hundred thousand likes!
  
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retired teacher says:

May 15, 2018 at 8:48 am

DeVos’ responses are a circuitous path of double speak. She is not dumb; she is sly like a fox. She weighs and measures her comments so they will not come back to haunt her. In a bind she goes back to her speech about individualism. Her role in the for profit college business she deserves the title of “queen of the kleptocrats” in Trumplandia.

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- weigh her thoughts? says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 10:00 am
  
  “She weighs and measures her comments so they will not come back to haunt her”‘
  Well did she weigh her comments when Leslie Stahl from 60 minutes asked Devos if she ever visited a public school and Devos said no. Leslie Stahl said maybe you should and Devos said “maybe I should”.
  Not a good example of Devos weighing her comments so as they do not come back to haunt her.
  
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- SomeDAM Poet says:
  
  May 15, 2018 at 10:39 am
  
  “Mobius Betsy”
  
  Betsy is a Mobius loop
  Repeating her suggestion
  “Choice and vouchers” that’s the scoop
  No matter what the question.
  
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