It is no secret that the DeVos family controls state education policy in Michigan. As Betsy DeVos has acknowledged, when they make campaign contributions, they expect to see the changes they want.
Since DeVos took control, education in Michigan has been in decline. The state has hundreds of charter schools. Accountability is minimal. DeVos likes it that way. Michigan is the only state where 80% of charters operate for profit. That means less money for instruction because investors come first in a for-profit business.
Last year, the New York Times Magazine ran a very good article about the charter mess in Michigan. It points out that 70% of the charters are in the bottom half of state performance. So much for “saving poor kids from failing schools,” more like privatizing schools for profit without regard to the kids.
“The results have been stark. The 2016 report by the Education Trust-Midwest noted:
Michigan’s K-12 system is among the weakest in the country and getting worse. In little more than a decade, Michigan has gone from being a fairly average state in elementary reading and math achievement to the bottom 10 states. It’s a devastating fall. Indeed, new national assessment data suggest Michigan is witnessing systemic decline across the K-12 spectrum. White, black, brown, higher-income, low-income — it doesn’t matter who they are or where they live.
You will not be surprised to learn that Michigan is systematically underinvesting in its school. Choice is a replacement for adequate funding.
You will also not be surprised to learn that Michigan has a major teacher shortage.
New teachers don’t want to teach in Michigan.
This is why Betsy DeVos, when asked about her home state of Michigan, changes the subject to Florida.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Michigan’s reckless free-market free for all education climate should be a cautionary tale for other states. Allowing arrogant, biased billionaires to dictate policy is never a good idea. Michigan has been more interested in creating a market for investors than providing a quality education for its young people. Vice’s coverage of education in Michigan showed many abandoned public school buildings and disgusted parents that were fed up with the lie of choice. When charters are the only choice, parents have no choice at all. Michigan’s grand experiment has been an abject failure. The government, which should be protecting our young people from meddling, biased billionaires, is serving poor young people up on platters to poke, prod and discard. DeVos has been rewarded for all the destruction she and her family brought to the state by being appointed a member of #45’s cabinet.
To update Tacitus, “They create a desert, and call it reform.”
Ed reformers actually COULD have supported public schools in addition to their preferred charters and private schools.
But they don’t actually support students who attend public schools, so they put them to the bottom of the ideological wish list.
I’m actually old enough to recall when this “movement” hit the Great Lakes states. The promise they made to the public was they would “improve” public schools.
Twenty years later the public is finally asking when they get around to doing that.
If they had ran on what they planned to do they never would have been elected. So they decided not to run on that. Instead they ran on vague gobbledeygook about “great schools” and the hope was we wouldn’t notice they never actually return any value to the public schools 90% of kids attend.
The promise was that public schools would be forced to improve to compete with the obviously superior charter offerings. You are the better authority by far of what their stated intentions were, but I think they took no responsibility for the continuing viability of public schools. Market forces were supposed to weed out the weak players. Of course, “market forces” made sure who was going to be the winner in this rigged game and it is obvious that public schools were to be the losers.
The so-called market is deliberately rigged when billionaires and corporations line up to influence the outcome, and they unfairly buy politicians eager to fill their war chests.
There’s a reason the data mavens in the ed reform “movement” never look into what ed reform has delivered for PUBLIC school students. It’s because it’s “nothing”. In fact, in the Great Lakes states they have actually done harm to existing public school systems.
So we get another 150 studies on charters and vouchers and this strange insistence that what happens in public schools is somehow irrelevant to “public education”.
From the report’s summary or “Results” page (p. 16):
“The number of new certificates issued has declined by 33% since 2012 and by 62% since the peak in 2004. This decline mirrors nationwide decline in certifications and enrollment in teacher preparation programs.”
Holy sh–! A 62% decline since 2004???!!!
Could you imagine what would happen if this happened in any other field: doctors, nurses, police, etc.? It would be a full-blown emergency, and prompt urgent, immediate action
Again, this is at:
Click to access Final_Draft_5-year_certificate_trend_with_endorsement_code_appendix_ada_601771_7.pdf
Here’s more from the same “Results” page:
“The decline in number of new certificates issued/teachers entering the profession is far steeper than the decline in Michigan’s student or teacher populations. The decline in certificates to teach at the secondary level has been sharper than the decline in certificates to teach elementary.”
So if you live in Michigan, and your kid is in high school, he or she has — or will soon have — ZERO chance of being taught by a certified teacher.
If I were a parent in Michigan, I’d be going thermonuclear over this.
Instead, we have Betsy Devos’ husband Dick blathering away about how, right now, all the people in Michigan— kids/parents at public, charter, private, etc. — are all “winning”, as a result of the reforms he and his wife Betsy have implemented.
Watch this video:
Apart from his politics, is Betsy’s husband not the creepiest guy going? He comes off like a Bond villain saying stuff like, “Mr. Bond, there’s nothing that you can do now to prevent us from detonating the nuclear device.” then flashing that calm, creepy smile.
Compare the above video of Dick Devos to this clip of Bond villain Ernst Blofeld:
(at about 1:23 on forward)
(at about 1:23 on forward)
Seriously, just add a scar on Dick’s face and the similarity is uncanny.
Here’s more of that VICE program:
Dick’s business success is proof he’s one of God’s Elect. Because Jesus preferred the rich and powerful.
Yeah, baby, always be closing for Jesus, because God wants you to be rich.
Now, as long as we’re on the topic, I have some Florida time shares you might be interested in…
I thought Dick DeVos’ response to the reporter’s question about the impact of charters on public schools was delusional, or he’s a skilled liar. Charters improve public schools because they make them compete! Seriously?
He also showed them his aeronautic academy with its overwhelming white faces, but he assured the reporter that an African American had qualified as a pilot trainee. Big deal! Let’s harm and step on many at the expense of a few. That is the DeVos’ agenda.
correction Let’s harm and step on many to elevate a few at the expense of many.
One more thing about Dick Devos’ claim that everyone “wins” with “competition.”
Huh?
This has got to be one of the great oxymoronic statements from corporate ed. reformers and Trumpsters — right up there with Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.”:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x
DICK DEVOS: (during Vice interview, aired 6-8-2018)
“The nature of competition in education is that potentially everybody wins.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Oh really? Let’s check the dictionary.
Webster’s defines competition as “the act or process of trying to get or win something (such as a prize or a higher level of success) that someone else is also trying to get or win.”
In other words, one of the parties wins and gets what they want, while “someone else” loses and gets nothing.
For a guy who runs a notorious pyramid scam (Amway) that has made him a billionaire at the expense of millions of victims who were lied to and tricked into getting involved in Amway … for a guy whose family founded a total and blatant Ponzi scheme, in which all but those at the top of the pyramid “lose,” this is quite a statement.
Watch any Amway convention speech. They tell that same lie that “everyone wins” … but they always sneak in that weasel-word adverb “potentially,” just as Dick did with the VICE interviewer. Notice how had that ready to go when asked.
His use of the adverb “potentially” is his way of giving a literal truthful answer to a question about whether competition is a good thing for public schools.
For example, there exists a “potential” or possibility that the NFL will amend their rules so that the Super Bowl can end in a tie, with both teams each “potentially” getting the trophy, with Super Bowl rings for players on both teams.
Not bloody likely, but yeah, that “potentially” can happen.
Do you want to know what Mr. and Mrs. Devos REALLY think about how competition works?
I’ll let Devos’ fellow Mdwesterner and billionaire, the late Ray Kroc of McDonald’s (as portrayed by Michael Keaton in THE FOUNDER.) tell the real concept of “winning” to which the Devos’s and the rest of corporate ed reformers subscribe (not the manipulative lie they tell to interviewers and their victim chumps):
( 0:50 – 1:06 )
( 0:50 – 1:06 )
*”I want to win, and you don’t get there by being some ‘Aw-shucks, Nice-Guy’ sap. There’s no place in business for people like that. Business is war. It’s ‘dog-eat-dog’, ‘rat-eat-rat.’ If my competitor were drowning, I’d walk over and put a hose right in his mouth.”*
And that’s what the Devos’s and all of their fellow corporate ed reformers want to do to public education — try to drown it, then while it’s drowning, *”put a hose right in his mouth.””
Oh you think that’s an exaggeration? Try to find a traditional public school in New Orleans — a truly public school, one that is accountable and transparent to the public via an elected school board, and that educates all the public.
They were wiped off the face of the Earth, because when the New Orleans public school system was figuratively “drowning” after Katrina, the corporate ed reformers, when they had the chance, “walked over and put a hose right int its mouth.”
That’s what they all think and are feverishly at work trying to do — the Devoses, Eli Broad, Nick Melvoin, Ref Rodriguez, Reed Hastings, Ben Austin, the Waltons, Bill Gates, etc.
These people are evil, pure evil.
NEVER FORGET THAT!
Don’t ever assume good motives or intentions on their part, because they don’t have them… every single one of them.
That’s what defenders of public education are up against. Don’t ever forget that.
That’s the plan for Puerto Rico. It’s the next New Orleans. “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It makes oodles of money to monetize poor black and brown students. They’ll come for the middle class too, if we let them.
Agree, Jack. These deformers are evil to the MAX … INDEED!
Retiredteacher: precisely. The Armageddon in MI was already well underway courtesy off-shoring mfg starting in late ’70’s — by ’07 [start of Great Recession] they were already a shadow of former self: small wonder that ’07-17 saw the plunge in MI school achievement from middling to bottoming out — & during same period, DeVos-promoted ‘school choice’ like a vulture picking the carcass.
Good post. Michigan is the “how not to” example. I know because I teach in Michigan.
The last link to the Michigan Department of Education chart has made its way through our union local. The state has now, unintentionally, provided teachers with power. With no ready to work teachers out there, our evaluations are meaningless. They can’t really fire anyone. (I won’t rehash all of the things the state legislature has done to kill the profession but I will stay that it runs counter to the concept of free market ideology.)
Lastly, the concept that charter create competition that is good for all schools is such a mythology. Detroit is the proof. No charter cap since 2011. 53% of Detroit students attend a charter. And still the lowest test scores in the country. And losing ground.
You are right, Steve K. The entitled want “HELP” who are schooled in being subservient. “Know YOUR PLACE” is what this is about.
Here is Michigan: https://talkpoverty.org/2018/06/08/michigans-governor-sign-bill-kicking-families-like-mine-off-medicaid/
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Discover why Betsy DeVos, when asked about public education in her home state of Michigan, changes the subject to Florida.
Just a quick thank you for keeping Michigan in the “How Not To” spotlight.
For many years, Michigan was the proverbial frog in a pot of heating water–things were getting bad gradually, so the frog didn’t notice it was being cooked. Now, the entire public education system is a boiling vat. Parents are beginning to notice.
Thanks also for reminding folks that MIchigan used to be at or near the top of the heap in all important indicators: teacher qualifications, compensation and professional autonomy, financial support for public schools, and other markers of investment in education. We had two of the top ten graduate schools in education in the nation, and a half-dozen excellent regional universities producting teachers–we were a teacher-exporting state.
Not any more. It took the DeVos family and party allegiance some twenty-five years to destroy public education, but they did it, and they’re still doing it.
Reblogged this on Pressing Adams and commented:
More on lack of accountability within the Education/ Public Funded variety…