Jan Resseger was taken aback when she read that Betsy DeVos warnedthe Education Writers Association not to use her as “clickbait.” For one thing, she was surprised that DeVos knew the word. She assumes that someone on her staff wrote her speech. DeVos, as we know, is not exactly as courant.
Resseger takes this apercu as an opportunity to demonstrate why DeVos is clickbait.
She is running a Cabinet agency that supplies and supposedly monitors billions of dollars for vulnerable children, yet she despises government. How strange is that?
She doesn’t believe that “society” exists, only families and individuals, all yearning to be free of any responsibility for anyone but themselves.
She repudiates any sense of civic duty or the common good. How bizarre is that?
She seeks to destroy the very function for which she is responsible.
Every word she utters appeals to selfishness and greed.
So long as she is in the public eye, so long as she uses her billions to undermine the government she serves and destroy the programs that others need, she will be clickbait, whether she likes it or not.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Everyone, make sure you click on the link and read the whole post. It’s not long, but it is very powerful.
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Yes, read Jan’s post in full!
It is one of her best!
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When speaking, Devos is always carefully to throw in the phrase “all children”, and sometimes “all families”, as in “so that all children will get a good education”, or *”school choice will enable all families will have access to a school that meets their respective needs.”
However, Devos’s ruthless, dog-eat-dog, every-man/woman/family-for-himself/herself/itself, I’m-gettin’mine-and-screw-everyone-else-in-the-process” philosophy, which underpins both her thinking and actions … all of this is diametrically opposed to the the “all children/all families-will-win” outcome to which she pays such lip service.
Deep down, Betsy knows this, and perhaps when she’s in private and lets her hair down and says what she really thinks and feels, she comes clean about this. The millions of dupe and marks and victims of her family’s Amway scam attest to this.
If you’re stupid enough to fall for Amway, then you deserve to lose your money, and if the we, the Devos family, is smart enough, and tells enough lies into tricking you into giving us your money, then the Devos family deserves to get it from you, and live a luxurious life with it.
Thankfully, the Special Olympics controversy forced her to drop the phony “all-kids/families-win” facade, at least momentarily. In essence, her message in the hearings was: (she couched this in “priorities” and “scarce funding,” of course.)
“If you’re a Special Ed. kid or parent, get used to this dog-eat-dog world we live in, and accept the fact that if you and your fellow Special kids/parents of Special kids can’t pay for this Special Olympics stuff yourself, then you’re sh%#-outta-luck, because in this ruthless world, you can’t sponge off your fellow citizens — the folks who are not Special Ed, kids. or the parents of them —* to pay for such frills. So f%#k off and pay for it yourself, or fund it privately, ya moochers!”*
That’s why she blew a gasket at a subsequent hearing during a confrontation with Senator Durbin over the Special Ed. controversy, furiously calling him and others “disgusting and shameful” for using her recent words and actions “for your narrative.” She and her cut-throat, Ayn-Rand-ian philosophy had been outed in the previous hearing, the polling showed the public now hated her for it, and she was not happy about that:
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Isn’t that “neoliberalism” that both political parties have supported for the last 30-40 years?
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saddest REALITY. So much fuss about DeVos, but little introspection about how she was able to so easily jump up onto an already devastating bandwagon
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It is only by pooling our resources that we can potentially elevate all members of a society. We have gone in the opposite direction with DeVos and those of her ilk. By imposing market based education, we are creating a Darwinian culture in which the strong prevail and the weak get crushed. This is the opposite of a civil society, particularly in a country in which income inequality is so prevalent. Our country is supposed to be about a fair deal for everyone. DeVos’ world view is highly impractical, inefficient and undemocratic, but that is exactly what she and other billionaires with weaponized wealth want.
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“By imposing market based education, we are creating a Darwinian culture in which the strong prevail and the weak get crushed.”
Let’s not drag Darwin or his theory into this argument, since he says nothing of the sort.
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I just wish she’d stop bashing public school students and portraying them all as low performers and thugs to promote her ideological agenda.
She offers nothing of value to public school students and families. That’s bad enough considering we’re all paying her HUGE team and they provide no returned value to 90% of families or students, but the very least she could do is just leave our kids OUT of her political campaign to promote charter and private schools.
Every single mention of public school students out of the US Department of Education is negative. It’s not accurate and it’s not fair to portray our children like this. It’s absolutely outrageous that we have to PAY them for this “work”.
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Here’s the US Department of Education site. Look for yourself.
https://www.ed.gov/
We have a political campaign promoting private school vouchers and a “blog” promoting charter schools.
What do public school students get? They get school shooter training.
I’m sick of paying thousands of public employees to smear public schools and promote and market charter and private schools. I would prefer not to do that. Maybe we just dissolve the US Department of Education and replace it with a college lending and student loan collection agency. Not clear what 90% of students are getting out of this other than being used as political tools to promote ed reform’s ideological agenda.
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“Betsy DeVos
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Congratulations to GovRonDeSantis on signing a historic #EducationFreedom bill in Florida today. Florida continues to lead the country in providing students the opportunity to find the right fit for their education!”
Another work week where the ed reformers we’re all paying in government accomplish absolutely nothing on behalf of the 90% of 50 million students who attend the public schools they oppose.
They have no done a single lick of work on behalf of public school students since January, other than holding meetings on how they’re all drug addicts and school shooters.
This is what you get when you hire ed reformers in government. No value for 90% of students. I think they should get off the public payroll and get on Walton’s or Gate’s if their ideological beliefs bar working on behalf of students who attend public schools. This is a rip-off.
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The right fit for most students is a well resourced public school that can adapt to a student’s need. People in Florida should realize that most of the voucher schools are inferior to public schools, and parents have no voice while public schools are accountable to the public. The governor is trying to impose privatization and defund public schools. Those that take the bait will be disappointed.
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If the Democrats in the House hadn’t performed some work on behalf of public school students with a funding proposal this week, the sum total effort since January towards 90% of students at the federal level would have been “nothing”.
This is ludicrous and this is where ed reform has led us. “The adults” contribute nothing to 90% of students and schools other than ideological theories about “competition” and how public school students might eventually benefit from ed reformer’s work promoting charters and private schools due to “markets”
If they’re only going to work on behalf of 5% of schools and students let’s save a lot of money and fire 95% of them. No one in a public school would notice anyway.
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“The world has changed dramatically … and our schools have struggled to keep up,” said New Schools CEO Stacey Childress at the summit’s opening session. “We just think it’s time to update the way schools work so they better prepare students for success in today’s world.”
The solution, according to some, is a focus on innovative school models — particularly ones that use technology to “personalize” teaching based on students’ needs, desires, strengths, and weaknesses.
The gathering was underwritten by deep-pocketed funders known for backing technology-based education initiatives, including the Gates Foundation and the relatively new Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. (Gates is a supporter of Chalkbeat, as are the Walton Family Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, which were also major sponsors of the event.)”
Please don’t fall for this, school districts. Please don’t allow these super-slick marketing efforts to guide investment.
Find someone who is not compromised by membership in the echo chamber to advise your schools, or better yet, just do it yourselves. They are selling product and they can’t just sell it to charter schools, because charter schools are a tiny market and public schools are a huge market.
Ask yourselves why these people only pay attention to public schools when they are selling us something, whether it’s tests or ed tech or fat consulting contracts.
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To Stacey Childress and the NewSchools Venture Fund: The world has changed dramatically. People are waking up to the fact that they are being manipulated by powerful billionaires, and they are coming to realize that they can stop these techno-tyrants by organizing and resisting. People are realizing that they have power in numbers. People are no longer the Play-Dough of the billionaires and will not allow them to make the decisions for all of us.
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Excellent, and I thank profusely Jan Resseger.
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trump has appointed to every head of every agency people just like her. To steal and waste taxpayer money and cause the destruction in each agency. Look at his track record. everything trump touches dies.
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Exactly right. His appointments have been based on Steve Bannon’s desire to destroy the “administrative state,” i.e. to destroy the federal government
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