In this post, veteran teacher Anthony Cody explains how he happened to have a seat directly behind Betsy DeVos at the Congressional budget hearings, and he fact-checks DeVos’ preposterous claim that large classes may be preferable to small ones. No one asked her why wealthy parents who send their children to elite private schools expect and demand small classes. If they listen to our Secretary of Education, they should insist on large classes.
He begins:
“A video of Betsy DeVos responding to questions from Lucille Roybal-Allard of the House Appropriations Committee hearing has gone viral, and has been watched now by many thousands of people. I appear in the background, shaking my head as DeVos asserts that larger class sizes might actually be beneficial since they allow students to collaborate with more classmates, and might allow the best teachers to be paid more. So in this post, I will take a look at the actual research on the subject, and a bit of the history of the idea.”
Rightwing Activist Jeanne Allen slammed Cody on Twitter and advised him to spend his time helping needy students.
Apparently she did not know that he spent 18 years teaching middle school science in Oakland. Cody asked her whether she had ever been a teacher, but she did not respond. She runs an advocacy group-the Center for Education Reform- that supports vouchers, charters, home schooling, and for-profit schooling. She opposes public schools and teachers unions. She works closely with DFER and other anti-public school organizations. That’s her idea of “helping needy students”: not actually teaching them but closing their public schools. Her salary: $217,000.
Read the other comments on this exchange: Mitchell Robinson says that Anthony Cody has “forgotten more about teaching than anyone in your group [the Center for Education Reform] has ever known.” I doubt that there are any teachers on the CER board.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s amazing a dissenter managed to sneak in. DeVos speaks exclusively to charter and voucher cheerleaders.
Public school advocates need not apply for an audience with The Secretary. I’m not even sure public school families are permitted inside the hallowed halls of the US Department of Education anymore. Our schools have completely disappeared from the federal agenda. Unfashionable and ideologically incorrect.
Reform-approved opinions only, please! Roll out one of the 150 echo chamber members for another session of public school bashing.
DeVos thinks solid public schools require a “million dollar” home purchase. She should get out more. I don’t think there’s a residence valued at a million dollars in my whole county and we have many solid public schools. It’s just a lie.
the transparent chasmic distance between those making public school decisions (for the past few decades under various Presidents) and the larger populace argues heavily for the Trump debacle
The deformers SCOFF, because that is ALL they have.
So they criticize Cody teacher extraordinaire and a real threat to them, while pushing stupid stuff. Good grief.
In the meanwhile ….
another charter scandal:
Promesa: Worst Charter Chain or Just the Tip of the Iceberg? – Alan Singer on Daily Kos
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/1/1846797/-Promesa-Worst-Charter-Chain-or-Just-the-Tip-of-the-Iceberg?_=2019-04-01T04:03:19.895-07:00
and …
2. CO lawmakers want to tell teachers how to teach reading. HUH? Ticks me off. These politicians are so ARROGANT and yet so STUPID.
Seeking better results, Colorado lawmakers want to tell schools how to teach reading
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2019/03/19/colorado-legislation-read-act-revisited/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cb_topic_co_capitol_report
I think all the teachers should SUE politicians who tell teachers what to do … politicians have NO CLUE. They aren’t certified nor have they even taken courses or student taught. Good grief. Do these same yahoos think they can tell doctors, dentists, engineers, electricians, and others what to do? NOPE, they pick on teachers … at the behest of $$$$$$ and power.
It’s all so sick.
They should all stop repeating this ridiculous claim:
“In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a remarkable claim: “Children starting kindergarten this year face a prospect of having 65 percent of the jobs they will ultimately fill not yet having been created.”
This statistic bolsters DeVos’s view that schools need to radically change to accommodate a rapidly evolving economy.
But there’s a problem: that number appears to have no basis in fact.
A version of the 65 percent claim has been percolating for some time, across the world. After a number of British politicians repeated some iteration of the statistic, the BBC investigated its source.
That report found the claim gained popularity in a 2011 book by Cathy Davidson, a CUNY professor; this in turn was cited by a New York Times article. But attempts to track that claim back to an actual study have failed, which Davidson herself now concedes, saying she no longer uses the figure.”
How sloppy is this? They are telling public schools to adopt their agenda based on an unsupported statistic they all swallowed and regurgitated.
This is a full time job for DeVos. She has an enormous staff. Why are they repeating this information and giving it the full weight of the federal government?
If this is the quality of their work public schools would do well to completely ignore them. What other ideologically-motivated nonsense are they selling to public schools?
Chiara, you wrote: “They should all stop repeating this ridiculous claim.”
I have come to the conclusion that this is ALL the deformers know and nothing else. They don’t learn; just spout the script they are given to read from the “party line” just as they expect public school teachers to “fall into line.” We can’t; we are teachers and care about our students. We must do what is right by our students, not what the deformers tell us.
Thanks, Chiara. I always read your comments.
“they just spout the script they are given to read from the “party line”
Exactly. It’s how we recognize ed-deformers as politicians rather than educators.
In other “bad advice the US Department of Education hands out” they are promoting students paying for vocational training for food service jobs that barely top the minimum wage.
This is bad financial advice. If you are 18 years please find an adult with a clue about jobs and what they pay – DO NOT listen to these people.
You can get a 15 dollar an hour food service job without paying for 30k worth of training. Betsy DeVos doesn’t know what she’s talking about and either does Ivanka Trump. Find a responsible adult.
Betsy and Ivanka ARE OUT OF TOUCH with reality.
“Betsy DeVos
On my way to Tennessee today to meet with GovBillLee, LtGovMcNally, and state & local leaders to discuss how #EducationFreedom Scholarships could help improve education outcomes for students across the state.”
Except public school students and families, who get absolutely nothing and are in fact completely excluded in the huge national, coordinated voucher push.
Some students “across the state”. But not the +/- 90% pf students who attend the ideologically incorrect public schools. None of these thousands of federal and state employees return any value to them.
The price for remaining in a public school is none of the public employees you’re paying will do a lick of work on behalf of your kid.
We should think about hiring people who intend to do their jobs. If they serve 10% of students they should get 10% of their salaries.
We should think about hiring people who intend to do their jobs. If they serve 10% of students they should get 10% of their salaries.
YES!!
Chiara and others. The stat on kindergarten and jobs for the future is from McLeod, Scott and Karl Fisch, “Shift Happens,” https://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.
The stat, called popular” is recycled in a report, paragraph one from the World Economic Forum “The Future of Jobs.”
In the USA there are multiple groups promoting job prep as the number one obligation of K-12 to higher education, with corporations and select foundations pushing that aim over all others… while enjoying tax cuts, of course.
For example, Jobs for the Future (JFF) has received 35 grants for a total of about $122.5 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation dating from 2002. The Pathways to Prosperity Network, which includes JFF, has received funds from the Carnegie Corporation of New York $450,000, the James Irvine Foundation (about $12 million), the Noyce Foundation (before it closed in 2015), and SAP, an international software company.
One of the most audacious and ugly initiatives from JFF is “Pay for Success in K–12 Education” wherein venture capitalists overtly hope to make money from turning K-12 education into a financial product completely eliminating public voice and oversight. This initiative is under development in four states with leaders from Harvard) https://www.jff.org/what-we-do/impact-stories/pay-for-success-in-k12-education/
This national network of interlocking programs, foundations, and corporate groups has an agenda including but not limited to vocational education. The agenda is connected with school choice, and fresh claims that the business community is not only entitled to determine educational policy but also has the expertise to get the most bang for the buck.
For example, a new non-profit, “Ohio Excels,” has just been announced. The Founding president is Lisa Gray, a long time shill for the B&M Gates Foundation, Philanthropy Ohio, and others. “Ohio Excels,” has a policy agenda for public education that has not been shaped by public discussion. It has appeared out of the blue and in the multiple press releases the word “public’ is tossed around freely along with a clear policy priority for “choice” in education.
Ohio students are viewed as part of the “talent pipeline” that CEOs say they want. The promos for Ohio Excel are filled with the typical imagery of failed public schools, dishonest educators who do not have high academic standards, and so forth. https://ohiochamber.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/OhioMatters_Jan_Feb_2019_web.pdf
There is also a bizarre target for Ohio post-secondary job-readiness spelled out as the responsibility for K to higher education (college degree or marketable certificate). “By 2025, 65 percent of Ohioans ages 25-64 will have a degree, certificate, or other postsecondary credential of value in the workplace.” I tracked down the source of data in support of this target, one that strikes me as arbitrary.
This “imperative” is taken from data presented by the Lumina Foundation’s publication A Stronger Nation through Higher Education (2014). The report offers a projection for “desirable postsecondary attainment” based on based on a straight line projection from the rate of increase in postsecondary attainment from 2011 to 2012 (US Census Bureau 2010-12 American Community Survey). Postsecondary attainment includes completion of a college degree or earning a postsecondary certificate with “economic value.” Ohio pp. 149-151 in a https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/a-stronger-nation-through-higher-education-2014.pdf
Something is really weird about this date of this report, replete with graphics for every state’s status in postsecondary attainment. At the end of this 2014 report we learn that all of the research and data collection came from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, 2018–a non-profit funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in “National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.” The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems has data-dashboards galore and some resemble those for K-12 education. Gates is smiling, of course. He is the “data quality” guy who seems not to have a concept of the worth of anything, least of all the concept of academic freedom and experiences beyond measure.
Ugly is the right word for Gates.
Heck, why don’t we just scrap public school and just send everyone to trades school?
This social impact investing crap reminds me of the classic movie “Network,” when big honchos sat Howard [“I’m Mad as Hell”] down to explain the big picture: it’s OK for oil interests to buy up US assets, because money that flows out inevitably has to flow back in (never mind that reins of power have switched places).
It’s really not an exaggeration:
“TENNESSEE (AP) – U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is coming to Tennessee to visit a public charter middle school.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says DeVos will attend a roundtable discussion at LEAD Cameron in Nashville on today.
Lee is a Republican who took office in January. He wants to make it easier to open high-quality charter schools and shutter poor performing ones. He’s also proposed boosting the number of parents who can use education savings accounts.”
Ed reform offers absolutely nothing to public school families. They now completely exclude public school families and students from their publicly-funded political campaign events promoting charters and private schools.
Look at their proposals and try to find anything at all for children in existing public schools. There’s nothing.
Ludicrous. But this is where the echo chamber led us.
Large classes might work if each classroom has an army of parent volunteers and reading and math specialists plus the obvious desks, computers and class supplies to enable children to collaborate with their peers. In reality, that it hardly the case. Try running a private school and tell the parents that their child will be in a class of 30-40 students and watch that school dissolve–especially, when you tell mom/dad they have to volunteer in the class. Money and computers cannot replace a good teacher.
Earlier today, an article by Pedro Rivera, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education was posted at “The Hill”. It was refreshing to see his original content and not the retread of villainthropist talking points.
As expected, the deformers who added comment bashed Rivera and urban schools in some far fetched tie-in to unions.The deformers use the KISS tactic- keep the message simple for the stupid.
One of my favorite sayings (I have it on a t shirt) is, “those who can, teach; those who can’t pass laws about teaching”.
Betsy DeVos attended Holland Christian High School. This ‘private school review’ says that the school operates with an average class size of 21.
Hmmmm….
Oops! Link here:
https://www.privateschoolreview.com/holland-christian-high-school-profile
Read the one review at the end of this description of Betsy’s favorite school: https://www.privateschoolreview.com/holland-christian-high-school-profile
“This school is full of non-healthy Christians and you should name it Holland School of Unsaved Lost People. Also, the teenagers that go there are rich and unwilling and mean. Its all upper class people with big houses and lots of money. Thank you.”
– Posted by Student/Alumni – aaron
People spend 60 grand a year for private schools with class sizes from 10 to 15 in which their kids are given an enriched educational experience. I do not see these well to do people paying for class sizes of 50.
Diane, I have a lot of names I would like to call Betsy, but I have respected your no salty language policy over these many years.