Politico Morning Education reports that Betsy DeVos has become a huge hit among Trump’s devout followers, those who despise the American government, public schools, and taxes for any services. It doesn’t mention whether the base wants Trump to get rid of the government-funded military, the government-funded highway system, NASA, the FAA, the Food and Drug Administration, Social Security, Medicare, the National Parks, and the rest of what their taxes pay for. I’m afraid to ask.
DEVOS WAS DEPLOYED “LIKE A ROCK STAR” ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN TRAIL,as the president makes a concerted push on education issues. Michael Stratford has a super sharp story from Pennsylvania that you’ll want to read.
— ” The campaign is using DeVos, a devout Christian, to beef up ties with voters who see her as the fiercest defender of conservative education policies like vouchers and free speech on college campuses,” Michael writes.
— “They want government control of everything — your health care, your wallet, your child’s education,” DeVos said of Democrats while on the trail this week.
— That kind of message is resonating with Pennsylvania voters, said Bernadette Comfort, the chairwoman of Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania and an advisory board member for Women for Trump.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Notice how DeVos is the only one of Trump’s original team (I believe) who has survived this far? She’s absolutely essential to him because she’s his link to the evangelicals (whom he doesn’t actually give a rat’s patoot about, but they come in handy for him).
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Right you are.
Betsy is the missing link
‘Twixt Fundies and The Don
Best to not dismiss or think
That Betsy is a fawn
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Betsy is a true believer in the mission of advancing “God’s kingdom.”
Trump’s God is Mammon.
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That would seem to be a distinction without a difference in Betsy’s case.
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Betsy for the Fundies/Evangelicals. Barr for the Opus Dei Catholics.
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She’s blatantly anti-public school:
“West Virginia and Kentucky passing their first-ever charter laws. North Carolina empowering special needs students with Education Savings Accounts. Arizonans are loving their ESAs, too.
And then there’s Florida. Students in the Sunshine State have more mechanisms for education freedom than anywhere else in the country. Public charter schools, tax-credit scholarship programs, education savings accounts, vouchers. And yet, there is still unmet demand. Thousands of students are on lists hoping and waiting for a tax credit scholarship.
So, leaders there continue to press on with more education freedom. They recently passed, and Governor DeSantis signed into law, the Family Empowerment Scholarship program. It will serve up to 18,000 more students in its first year, and thousands more in the years to come. Florida leads as a model more states should emulate.”
Go read any of her speeches. Public schools are only included so they can be described as “failing” – DeVos actually goes further than the ed reform echo chamber has gone- she doesn’t just attack public schools, she attacks public school students. Our students are the kids she urges other students to “escape” from – she depicts all of our kids as bullying, drug addicted low performers.
It isn’t subtle. She’s been a far Right political operative her whole adult life and these speeches are blatantly anti-public school propaganda.
https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/prepared-remarks-secretary-devos-american-legislative-exchange-councils-2019-states-nation-policy-summit
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Betsy has actually one thing going for her
She is upfront about her dislike of public schools — quite unlike her predecessors at D Of Ed
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Nah. She is popular on the campaign trail because she has 10 yachts. Time for entrepeneurs to make some Betsy T-Shirts.
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I kind of get a kick out of how nutty it is to make Donald Trump the poster boy for “the superior moral education in private schools” – really? Donald Trump exemplifies this? How so? 🙂
I literally tell my high school son “you may NOT behave like the President”
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I used to worry that public school students and families would hear government officials like DeVos bashing their schools- undermining the work their teachers and parents do with ignorant, politically motivated smears.
Then I realized public officials like DeVos are completely irrelevant to public school students, since they pretend public schools and public school students don’t exist, so none of our kids will ever hear these charter and voucher marketing campaigns she produces.
The bad news is our kids are excluded because they attend the hated “government schools”. That’s the good news, too. She attacks their schools, but she’s also irrelevant to their schools.
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I’m hoping we can reach a kind of truce with ed reformers in government- they won’t support our schools or assign any value to our students, and in return we don’t have to adopt their expensive, fad-following experiments or pay any of them as consultants.
Win/win.
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Whenever I see how important Betsy DeVos is to Trump’s base and how much she will help his re-election, I always remember the woman Trump really owes a debt of gratitude to: Eva Moskowitz.
Poor Betsy DeVos — her confirmation as Secretary of Education was in doubt. But Eva Moskowitz made it her personal mission to give interviews and speeches and write op eds demanding that the Senate confirm DeVos.
Eva Moskowitz made it her personally mission to normalize and legitimize Betsy DeVos and make it much easier for Senators on the fence who could now point to how DeVos was going to be so great for students because Eva Moskowitz who knows exactly what is necessary for students told them so over and over and over again.
Betsy DeVos says “thank you Eva!” Donald Trump says “thank you Eva”.
Eva Moskowitz should certainly feel very proud of herself. She should certainly be crowing about how much she has done by helping to insure that Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education.
Eva Moskowitz gets enormous credit for her hard work on behalf of empowering Betsy DeVos and the entire DeVos agenda. And her highly paid staff at Success Academy get all credit for being complicit and promoting Eva Moskowitz so she could use her profile to make sure Betsy DeVos helped Trump get re-elected and of course, impose there DeVos way on education just as Moskowitz fought so hard for her to be able to do.
If I agreed with Eva Moskowitz about how important it was that DeVos be confirmed as Secretary of Education, I’d be thanking her, too. Eva Moskowitz deserves the thanks of all grateful Betsy DeVos fans. And so do her minions at Success Academy who were complicit (oops, I mean who worked so hard to promote Eva Moskowitz as the savior of children who would never ever say anything that wasn’t absolutely true.) The minions on Eva Moskowitz’ staff seem like those people who work for Trump and DeVos who justify all their complicity by telling themselves that it’s all worth it if a few chosen students benefit.
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NYC Public School Parent, I don’t live in NY so I am curious if Bloomberg took any position on the DeVos appointment. He was/is a huge Eva fan. Do they share the same attitudes & ideas about the DeVos agenda for education policies?
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That would be a good question to ask Bloomberg!
Mayor Bloomberg, you took resources from public school children and gave them to Eva Moskowitz even though other charters that didn’t regularly receive multimillion dollar donations (and thus had far less funding) were paying for their own space.
When Betsy DeVos’ confirmation was in doubt, Eva Moskowitz made it her personal mission to write op eds and give interviews demanding that DeVos be confirmed because they share the same values and share the same ideas about what needs to be done to schools. Should voters assume you would appoint a Secretary of Education like Eva Moskowitz who worked so hard on behalf of DeVos because she believes that what DeVos wants is what this country should do?
Mayor Bloomberg, will your favorite charter school CEO, the woman who endorsed Betsy DeVos and worked so hard to make sure DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education because that charter CEO believed that the DeVos agenda was right and good for kids, be your pick for Secretary of Education?
Should voters assume that a vote for Bloomberg is a vote for a continuation of Betsy DeVos’ agenda – the agenda that was so heartily endorsed by your very favorite charter school CEO, Eva Moskowitz?
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Bloomberg has supported the charter and high-stakes testing agenda. He has supported pro-voucher causes, eg, Douglas County, CO
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Eva Moskowitz penned this lovely explanation of her admiration of Betsy DeVos in this column in the NY Post, January 30, 2017:
Why we need an outsider like Betsy DeVos as education secretary
“…..DeVos believes in delivering excellence and accountability at every level and across all forms of K-12 education — whether it be district or charter.
For the past two decades, she has worked passionately to expand access to great schools for families across the country regardless of ZIP code or background, often in the country’s poorest neighborhoods.
Future generations have much to lose — but plenty to gain — in the next four years, and they will have a strong ally fighting for them in Washington, DC, when Betsy DeVos is confirmed.”
By the way, every word in this Eva Moskowitz’ penned op ed is absolutely true according to the standards of Moskowitz’ generously compensated minions at Success Academy who insist that she would never ever lie or try to mislead and the public should trust every word out of her mouth because Eva Moskowitz only speaks the truth.
And I think this column demonstrates the judgement and values of Eva Moskowitz, and shows what is in her heart. And it also shows why she got so much money from Trump supporting billionaires.
Presumably it is why Mike Bloomberg adores her so much as well — I assume he loved the idea that Eva Moskowitz is passing on her values and teaching thousands of children exactly the values that she demonstrates in this column. Truth. Honesty. The Betsy DeVos American Way.
I assume that it was DeVos’ work in Michigan to impose the values that she and Moskowitz shared as “outsiders” on schools in Michigan that caused her to be so admired by Eva Moskowitz.
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I’d forgotten about that love letter Eva penned about DeVos’ “values.” It’s been plain as the daylight that when Eva kicks kids with disabilities out of her schools that she & Betsy’s shared values are about inflicting trauma on families who don’t fit their standards.
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“I’d forgotten about that love letter Eva penned about DeVos’ “values.”
Yes, the reason that people with no ethical or moral core get away with things is that people “forget”. Every education reporter in NYC has also conveniently forgotten.
This wasn’t just Eva Moskowitz saying that she thought that DeVos was an okay choice. This was Eva Moskwitz conducting a personal public relations campaign (and it included far more than this one op ed) to legitimize DeVos — offering over the top praise that was supposedly coming from a democrat who really, really cared about poor children.
I think this op ed and the huge effort Moskowitz took to insure that DeVos was legitimized and confirmed by the Senate demonstrated exactly how deep her concern for children is. Either Moskowitz has the most horrible judgement of what must be done to children – whatever DeVos wants — or she simply sold out America’s children knowing that there would be financial rewards down the line. If there is some other plausible explanation, I don’t know what it could be. And her top administrators at Success Academy went right along with the DeVos legitimization campaign with their silent complicity. As usual, throwing children under the bus under the guise of “helping children” seems to be a requirement for working at Success Academy. Their preferred “ends” always justifies the means.
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” The campaign is using DeVos, a devout Christian, to beef up …” How do you just say that? Is it responsible journalism to just go about labeling people as devout Christian? I think my friend Dave is a pretty devout Christian, and he regularly posts suggestions about the depravity of this president. To label someone a devout Christian is to cuss (that is southern for talk bad about in some way) all the other people who are trying to be a good one and who do not agree with her behavior.
Now I am not trying to suggest that everybody has to agree with me or my friend Dave to be a devout Christian, just that throwing that label around like you would fireman or farmer is irresponsible of a journalist. There must be some other way to identify someone as a person granted status within certain circles of the faith. Maybe it could read “The campaign is using DeVos, a professed Christian, to beef up …” Or maybe “The campaign is using DeVos, an influential member of the Christian Right, to beef up …”
I can think of a lot of things I would call her, but my friend Dave is a lot more indulgent when it comes to being nice to people who disagree with him. They say John Tetzel sold indulgences, but Dave gives his version away free. Grace, he calls it. Like Betsey DeVoss gives away all those billions of dollars she has so poor folks can get access to health care. This is why we do not have a problem with health care in this country, I suppose. Wonderful people like Betsey live on their bare billions so everybody can get good health care.
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The hypocrisy of such “good Christians” is overwhelming. Such good people have no problem taking advantage of the poor and working class through Scamway and useless for profit college degrees that sink people into endless debt. They are often pro-life, but they are unwilling to support social safety nets for the neediest, most vulnerable among us. They support segregative pro-choice for schools, but they reject a woman’s choice over her own body. There are many such examples of this right wing personal blindness in privatized prisons, support of the death penalty and the criminalization of being black in America. Vote blue, no matter who!
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Retired teacher,
You made me laugh again and I sure needed to. You wrote: “Scamway.” That’s perfect.
Betsy DeVoodoo is indeed “Scamway” to the max.
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My first reaction was, “Gross!”
But then I read the article which includes this good point:
“Some of DeVos’ sharpest critics welcomed her role as a Trump campaign surrogate.
Lily Eskelsen García, the head of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, said that DeVos on the campaign trail could be a boon to Democrats.
“If you were the Democratic Party and you wanted to plant a seed, send out telepathic waves, for the opposition to do the most foolish thing they could possibly do, you would say, ‘Use Betsy DeVos as your surrogate, send Betsy DeVos out there,’” she said.
‘It’s not seen as partisan,’ Eskelsen García added. ‘She is seen as unqualified and bad for children, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.'”
Let’s hope so for the sake of our children and our republic.
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DeVos is a polarizing figure. I hope she turns off some of the more reasonable republicans.
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By the way I watched Bernie’s Town Hall on CNN last night. He finally got to elaborate on his education plan. He has raised a lot of money, and his average donation is at $18. His #1 donor group: TEACHERS. When teachers look at DeVos, they know they have to be counted. They cannot afford to stand on the sidelines
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It’s so ironic that Trump, of all people, should be playing the televangelist this carnival season. Of all people. This is the one holding prayer meeting in the Offal Office and calling for prayer in schools. This would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
An extraordinarily well-financed Trump Ministry of Truth is working insidiously, at the local level, to create a post-Truth world.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
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The dirty political games are already starting. There was an organized attack by trolls to tie up the phone lines of the Iowa Caucus in order to interfere with reporting results. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/4chan-iowa-caucus-sabotage_n_5e3ca6d1c5b6bb0ffc0e01b9?fbclid=IwAR1CGGYnqmtEMgNNYABJzYrhKugKUkm8tyAeTpE4IsSJHxmOJ0_M1-Naz9o
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I saw that story. This carnival season, we shall see dirty tricks at a level never witnessed before. No doubt about it. And, of course, Trump has the whole of the GRU to help him cook up this stuff.
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USA religion becoming “alternate facts”
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Oh the irony that a man who has lived as Trump has would be presenting himself as Defender of the Faith!!! And it’s not surprising, of course, that the man who gave you Trump University would choose the woman who married into the Amway pyramid scheme fortune to run his Department for the Privatization of US Education, formerly the USDE.
Trump MiniTru, from its gleaming headquarters in Virginia, knows what it is doing. Ditzy DeVoid, aka Cruella DeVille’s younger sister, Clueless, plays VERY WELL to the Fundie base. She can do events around the country indistinguishable from an Amway mutlilevel marketing pyramid scheme convention.
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Both of these “good people” can easily ignore that fact that Americans are dying from lack of access to health care. Let’s us not forget they accept placing young children in cages away from their parents. These young children will likely be scarred for life from the trauma of it all.
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Exactly. Just how consistent with the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth are those things?!?!?!?!
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Trump MiniTru: Because Truth is what your leader says it is today
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Bob, as to your comment up there at 1:39 PM: The DNC had the hand in the Iowa mess.
Troy Price (IA State DNC Chair) & Tom Perez should be made to HAND COUNT EACH & EVERY SINGLE IOWA BALLOT in FRONT of SANDERS & WARREN (& whichever else) CAMPAIGNS.
Even w/the cheating app (& read Lee Fang’s excellent Intercept article from 2/40–I’ll give the title later), Sanders still pulled ahead,
Also, watch Democracy Now at democracynow.org from the last 3 days (& there will most likely be more tonight). If any news is real, it’s the news that’s reported by Amy Goodman (&, remember, she interviewed Diane whereas Rachel Maddow ignored her),
Juan Gonzalez & Namir Shahk (sp.–I’m sorry).
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Here’s the link to the Fang Intercept article:
“New Details Dhow How Deeply Iowa Caucus App Developer was Embedded in Democratic Establishment.”
Nevada Dem Party had also bought the Shadow app, but have announced that they will NOT use it (nor, reportedly, will they use any other app).
The DNC & IA Dem Party shot themselves in the foot, here…w/no help from 45.
As shown before, & to quote from a Tyler Perry movie title, they “can do bad all by” themselves!
&–one more point–to reiterate & agree w/points Dienne repeatedly makes in her comments &, as pointed out by Diane, perfectly in Slaying Goliath–whereas Obama could have really helped American children/public education, he & his very, very bad (evil, even)
choices–Arne Duncan, John King, RT3 (NCLB on steroids), more “standardized” testing, the est. of “National Charter Schools Week” (as I recall, the same week as Educators’ Week!, another slap in the face), the public degradation of Central Falls High School staff & students
(that reminded me of the wretched Wm. Bennett coming to Chicago, holding a press conference in a flush area downtown, & pointing his finger, roaring, “Chicago has the worst public schools in the nation!”…then walking away, & doing nothing to help, as if the statement in & of itself was a valid point. What did we pay him to do–?!), the failure of Obama to help by “pulling on his walking boots” & getting out there w/”the people” (as he did NOT do w/the teachers in Madison, WI), & on & on, ad. nauseum.
To (badly) mis-quote the famous Marlon Brando, “I coulda been a contender” speech (On the Waterfront), Obama could have been an education hero.
But he wasn’t…
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It’s hard for me to believe anything written in a “news” site that is still trying to convince me that Trump did nothing that was impeachable and the entire impeachment effort was purely political by a corrupt Democratic party.
There were certainly problems in Iowa, but to ignore what was a concerted dirty tricks effort by Republicans to undermine the caucuses by jamming up phone lines is very dangerous.
Hindsight is 20/20. I could use the same logic to claim that Obama won a second term because he was a rabid charter supporter and people loved Arne Duncan. It isn’t true, but Obama was a charter supporter and Arne Duncan had been Sec. of Education for years and Obama was re-elected, so my logic is just as sound as the logic that claims that only XXX (insert Bernie or Biden or Buttigeig) can defeat Trump.
There are always “mistakes” in campaigns and there are dirty tricks. And there are efforts by the right wing to propagandize those mistakes to distract from their dirty tricks is playing right into their hands.
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Oh–& I do agree w/everyone’s open about he-who-never-belonged-in-the-WH, but I also call foul (MOST foul) on the DINOs, who will most certainly be largely responsible if we have 4 more years.
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The only people responsible if we have 4 more years will be the people who voted against the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is.
Just like the people who are responsible for Trump are those who would not vote for the Democrat in 2016 because having Trump as President and the Republican agenda empowered didn’t bother them as much as having a Democrat.
And that propaganda is going to be heard whether the nominee is progressive or moderate.
It’s the kind of propaganda that uses false labels like “DINO” or “left wing Commie” that should not be repeated unless you are a right wing troll.
Bernie may very well be the nominee and if so, I have no doubt that there will be the usual right wing troll effort to smear his good name targeted to whatever group it works on. The moderates will hear that Bernie’s ideas are too frightening and he will socialize all industry, the progressives will hear that Bernie has always been a fake progressive and hear about how his wife and stepson got enriched by corrupt favoritism, and the African-Americans will hear about how Bernie is really racist. The people who want gun control will hear that Bernie has a history of supporting gun rights and don’t trust him. And every union worker will hear about how they can kiss their union health insurance goodbye.
Who will be responsible if those voters believe that propaganda?
Who will be responsible when Republicans succeed in striking traditional progressive voters off the rolls?
Who will be responsible when the William Barr investigation into Bernie Sanders finds many “troubling” and “questionable” things?
Not Bernie. Not progressives. Not Democrats. Not Nancy Pelosi. The people responsible are every person who doesn’t vote for whoever the Democratic candidate is and instead post non-stop to change the subject whenever there is criticism of Trump to repeat whatever the right wing attack on the Democrat is.
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I meant opinion, not open, of course.
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Beyond the money, Betsy has the D.C. echo chamber going for her.
If it’s not on NPE’s radar, Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic and Jesuit institution of higher education in the U.S., should be. Walton heirs, Bill Gates, City Fund, etc. finance Future Ed which is housed in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown. Last month, Future Ed posted Chester Finn’s article, “Accountability Without Testing = Trouble”. And, two other recent articles were, “The Case for Standardized Testing” and, “What Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Get about School Reform”.
Diane Ravitch was subject of a 2017 post at Georgetown’s Future Ed site, “Diane Ravitch’s Problematic Polemics”.
In an example of the hypocrisy expected from things, Catholic establishment, a self-promo type of article at Future Ed. stated the following, there’s “support for giving at-risk students a leg up- receive more spots in coveted schools.” Georgetown is in the news today related to the largest amount spent in the admissions scandal to get coveted spots for the kids of the former CEO of the largest investment firm in the nation.
BTW, the photo array of the 11 member Future Ed advisory board shows 8 men, one black person.
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Did you notice that in his State if the Union Address, Trump called Public Education Government Schools?
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Yes, and I note we have a government military, a government fire department, a government police department, government highways, government national parks, government agencies regulating food safety and drugs and airlines. Government So Hal Security, government Medicare. Does he plan to shut them all Down?
So what?
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The advisory board of Future Ed, an organization funded by Gates, Walton heirs et al., housed at D.C.’s Georgetown University, has, as expected, a heavy dose of connections to Stanford (the think tank with students) and harvard Graduate School of Education.
A few of the bio’s for board members- (1) director of the Arnold-funded ERA at Tulane-New Orleans (2) a founding member of Mayoral Academies which creates charter schools in partnership with mayors- Rhode Island (3) a board member of BES (4) a guy affiliated with the Stanford Institute for the Evisceration of People’s Retirement (5) a guy formerly with Teach for America and current member of a board of a regional charter school in Mass. (6) and defying belief at its existence, a guy associated with the Stanford CENTER FOR ETHICS IN SOCIETY.
Georgetown and Stanford, ensnared in the admissions scandal- Harvard, known for Jeffrey Epstein, the largesse of Jared Kushner’s dad, and Roland Fryer.
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