During her tenure as Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos has taught the public many lessons, most of which she did not intend. Her radical agenda educated the public about the privatization movement and its ambition to cripple public schools. She taught us that there really are people who put the profits of for-profit colleges above the students who were defrauded by them.
PeterGreene says she taught us why the Secretary of Education should be an educator.
He quotes a recent conference call that’s head with reporters. One thing is clear: she has no empathy or understanding of those who work in the schools. She is utterly indifferent to their knowledge and experience.
He writes:
Meanwhile, privatizers are chomping at the virtual bit to get students shoved into more profitable avenues of education-flavored products, like her old friends at the Heritage Foundation who are cheering her on to keep pushing the product because this is ed tech’s Katrina and by God they are going to cash in or know the reason why.
The Koch-funded Mercatus Center has more of the same. “Leverage the near-ubiquity of cellphones and internet to deliver instruction online,” but near-ubiquity is a lame measure, indeed. I imagine that none of these deep thinkers would like to be shot into space in a rocket that contains a near-ubiquity of oxygen tanks nor live in a home with a near-ubiquity of food. Worried about students with special needs? Senior policy analyst Johnathan Butcher reads the fed instructions as saying, “Give it a shot, but hey, if you have to leave them, leave them with our blessing.” Butcher adds “Parents, taxpayers, and policymakers should not allow traditional schools to claim they do not have the resources or expertise to deliver instruction online” based on God only knows what. And he touts the Florida Virtual School, Florida’s experiment in cyber-schooling that just keeps failing upward because Florida’s political leaders would rather finance a profitable turd than support public education.
In short, the amateurs are out in force, yammering about how schools should now see things their way, even though they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
It would be great, in the midst of all this, to be able to turn to a secretary of education who actually knew something–anything– about the inside of a classroom, who actually had a grasp of the many issues involved in the current crisis. I don’t mean to pick on DeVos, who is basically the Herbert Hoover of education right now– I can’t think of any secretary of education, not Arne “Katrina is super-duper” Duncan, not John King, not Rod Paige, not any of them, who would be worth a spoonful of rat spit right now.
But we could really use someone who knows what they’re talking about and isn’t just salivating at the chance to push some more anti-public ed policies. Of course, what any classroom teacher would know includes this– that when times get tough and crisis rear their heads, you can absolutely depend on the government bureaucrats to be largely useless, and you’d better figure out how to navigate this on your own. Which sucks, but it’s one of the many “hard things” that teachers already do, all the time.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Her ideological opposition to public schools shows up in everything she says.
She always, always assumes bad faith from public schools and the people who work in public schools. She always approaches our schools as an opponent.
It’s ridiculous- it’s nutty to set up the publicly-funded US Department of Education as an opponent of public schools in a country where 90% of kids attend public schools.
Apparently we’re paying these people to be full time critics of public schools- it’s the only work they do. We hire and pay a huge group of adults to act as professional public school critics. Ludicrous, but that’s where ed reform has led us.
I’ve been following the ed reform punditry on public schools in this crisis and what really stands out is that they include NO public school teachers- the people who are doing the work. It’s 100% ed reform “experts” from think tanks and lobbying groups.
It’s a shame it’s such an echo chamber, because our teachers ARE doing some pretty creative things. No one will ever know because the only people we hear from are the professional, full time ed reform lobby.
Just as an example, my son’s high school english teacher is having the kids “present” their work using short videos they all can take on their phones. She’s doing this because about 25% of our kids don’t have internet access. Another has them doing math assignments on paper, then taking a photo of the completed assignment and sending him the photo. It’s been interesting to watch them come up with work-arounds. Imagine if we had government leaders who actually supported them instead of professional critics like Betsy DeVos.
We could have that. We just have to stop hiring ed reformers. Hire people who actually add some practical value instead of people who came in with an ideological mission to eradicate public schools.
“Hire people who actually & some practical value instead of people who came in with an ideological mission to eradicate public schools.”
Yes, absolutely.
As an example, let us compare the career ladder in the NYC BOE (Pre-Bloomberg) and the NYC DOE (under Mayoral control, Bloomberg and DeBlasio).
When I started teaching for the NYC BOE in 1995 the career ladder worked something like this. You would be in the classroom for at least 8 years, probably more, and then, if you were interested in being an administrator, you’d apply to be an Asst Principal either in your subject area or as an ‘AP Admin,’ which meant yoedu dealt with procurement, scheduling, etc.
After NY State authorized Mayoral Control, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein changed the system. Instead of recruiting primarily from among the teaching ranks, they established a Leadership Academy to which anyone could apply. Its stated mission was to training new principals who supposedly could turn around troubled schools, regardless of the reason they were failing.
The Leadership Academy was modeled on a MBA program – a year of courses with an intensive internship component.
Leadership Academy students took summer courses (at Baruch, I think) and then were assigned to shadow a principal for a year as an intern. Not a bad structure at all, but those accepted to the program did not necessarily have much teaching experience and it was not clear whether BOE/DOE experience was a positive or a negative.
Indeed, one got the idea they were looking for outside people and that public school teaching experience was not valued, as if it have corrupted people with non-private sector values. As Business Wire wrote at the time, it was a “14-month training program designed to turn them into dynamic leaders capable of saving New York City’s ailing schools. Called the centerpiece of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to remake the city’s public schools system, the Leadership Academy is a kind of boot camp for principals, where only the strong survive and go on to become transformational leaders.” [https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20040928005008/en/Fresh-Mayor-Michael-Bloombergs-Leadership-Academy-Public]
This type of Social-Darwinist informed Hubris was its Achille’s heel. Part of this was a theoretical error — Darwin himself did not believe in ‘survival of the strongest of the fittest, with its emphasis on individual advantage; instead, he spoke of natural selection at the species level, which for human beings means an emphasis on communication, collaboration and caring for one another. This was ignored to great degree, as was the value of having been waist deep in the nut and bolts of the BOE system.
It was as if teachers would need to go to a re-education camp — especially when it came to analyzing data (mostly test scores) and using it to ‘drive’ instruction. Oh, and BTW, if you wanted to be an AP/Admin, forget about it, those jobs were being outsourced and the Leadership Academy was for ‘instructional leaders.’ And often that leadership amounted to saying to teachers, a la Firesign Theater, ‘Everything you know is wrong. You should be ashamed of what you did in the past and disavow it.’ Not great for building morale.
Yes, some teachers did apply and some were accepted. But you could also apply if you were doing a career transition or you had been teaching in a private school. My principal from the Leadership Academy, who twice drove the school into the ground, had taught at a French school and at CUNY. He was not without ability, but he did not have experience running anything, nor with students who often did not have parental support or were exposed to trauma or whose neighborhood called on them to be resistance and to no comply with school. He thought he had had problematic students because he dealt with remedial students at CUNY, but students who went to CUNY were among our most motivated and forward looking.
As I said, he was not with ability and he grew on the job, but the job is really, really difficult and he was ill served by this system. He would have been much better served if he had to teach for a few years in classrooms similar to those he was overseeing. He would have been much better off if he had a few years as an assistant principal, so that he had time to see what worked and what did not.
The Leadership Academy, which I am told is better than it used to be, still posts dubious statements of “Vision” which downplay obstacles to success. “We envision a nation where every school and school system is led by transformational leaders who prepare all children, especially the traditionally underserved, for success.” Great in aspiration, but questionable in practice.
Fortunately, there are now programs to turn DOE teachers into Assistant Principals, including the Leadership In Education Apprentice Program (LEAP). Still, it shares the same inspirational rhetoric weakness, often employing oxymoronic phrases that contain contradictory imperatives. LEAP seeks to “establish high expectations for rigorous, standards-aligned curricula and instruction that effectively meets the needs of all students.” It doesn’t consider that ‘rigor’ is not the only answer, not the FIRST answer for ALL STUDENTS, that standards don’t tell us everYthing, that many of our students under go trauma, all undergo character development and life challenges, and that all of this should inform our pedagogy.
Actually, Duncan showed us that a while ago, but a lot of people didn’t notice because he was one of the “good guys”.
Duncan had been a big-city superintendent who claimed great success in Chicago but whose “vision” was a disaster, which became Race to the Top.
Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, not superintendent. That title tells you all you need to know about his education bona fides. Before he held that position, I believe the only “education” experience he had was an afterschool coach for a year or two (at a school that he subsequently closed).
and perhaps even more dangerous in his ability to hide behind himself
She’s a DUD -plain and simple, A very, very dangerous DUD, too.
I’m one who feel like her utter inappropriateness for the position has been a net positive. She exposed Democrats for Education Reform and all the billionaires in their movement for what is really underlying their policies. I may be in a minority of being very happy that she was selected (even better that it required the vote of a VP).
But I’ll also agree that she’s served her purpose. Time for a replacement, and yes preferably one who is both qualified and understanding.
I second every word.
Sorry, but in looking for a reason to cheer that Betsy DeVos is our Secretary of Education, you are assuming lots of facts not in evidence and insulting Bernie Sanders and other progressives. Do you really think that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would have continued to spout the nonsense they did in 2016 about how they supported “good public charters” (just like DFER) if not for Betsy DeVos hurting so many children?
On the contrary, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren changed their minds because they started to pay attention. Their support of charters previously had nothing to do with them being yes-men for Arne Duncan’s ideas and everything to do with their own lack of interest in K-12 education issues. Once they finally paid attention (which happened because of good work by teachers and other public school advocates and not because of Betsy DeVos), they changed their positions.
And the DFERs still exist because they only support “good public charters” and distinguish themselves from Betsy DeVos.
Betsy DeVos’ policies hurt so many public schools in a way that they may never recover from. Just like Trump’s policies have hurt this country in a way that we may never recover from. Progressive ideas are LESS likely to happen now that the country has no money. There is no silver lining to Trump. There is no silver lining to DeVos. Those who enabled their empowerment are really clutching at straws.
And DFER still exists and is just as strong as it ever was with more parents having reason to try to escape the public schools that DeVos has destroyed. Just like Biden is what happens when Trump is president. Or Andrew Cuomo. Trump is so bad, he makes conservative Democrats look really, really good to the vast majority off people.
And DeVos just makes DFER look good.
Wish I had seen this sooner, NYC_PSP. I’ll respectfully agree to disagree. DFER was never more powerful and never looked better — at least to those who are uninformed — than during the bipartisan Reform era of the W and Obama Administrations. No other Ed Sec appointment could possibly have exposed their positions like DeVos, but there would have been no difference in Trump Administration policies. No other Education Secretary could have had the gaffes and shockingly weak interviews that she had (though Duncan had some quotes that give her a run for the money).
Nonetheless, I respect your position, which I know others hold as well.
“More than $6 billion will be distributed immediately to colleges/universities to provide direct emergency cash grants to college students whose lives have been disrupted by the #COVID19 pandemic.”
This worries me. We’ve already seen that the Trump Administration distributed medical supplies based not on need but on political interests.
Is that how the aid to schools and students will be distributed? Most of it goes to the states Donald Trump prefers/needs to be re-elected?
I wish we had more rigorous oversight of the money. I don’t trust any of these folks as far as I can throw them. The corruption in the Trump Administration was a huge problem before the virus. We’re going to see it explode now that they have these huge sacks of money to distribute.
My understanding is that it has been largely left up to the colleges and universities to allocate that funding to the students. There are several proposals about how to do this at my university. The one I like best is to allocate the money evenly across students who have X amount of unmet financial need and who say that either 1) they or their household have experienced an income decrease due to the pandemic or 2) they or their household have experienced an unexpected expense due to the pandemic. I think it likely that any student with unmet financial need is likely to say yes to at least one of the questions and therefore likely to get the funding.
The problem with oversight is that it greatly slows down the process. Requiring students to prove their answers to question 1 or 2 would take significant time and expense for both the student and the university. We already know unmet financial need for each of our students, so we can do this quickly with confidence that the money is going to students who have financial need, though of course it is conceivable that some of them have not suffered a financial loss from the pandemic.
After talking to some administrators, I can also answer the second part of your question. A quarter of the money was distributed between colleges and universities based on the number of student’s at each institution. Three quarters of the money was distributed between colleges and universities based on the number of Pell Grant eligible students at each institution. It seems to me that giving institutions that educate more students from low income households more money to help those students is appropriate, though perhaps others would disagree. In any case, this distribution does not seem to be politically influenced, so you need not worry about that.
Has the New money already been distributed?
Do you feel good about the absence of accountability or oversight for $2 trillion in federal funds?
It is my understanding that my university knows the amount of money that will be coming and is expecting to get it in university accounts in 24/48 hours.
If you are going to demand accountability, demand that my students give you receipts for the expenses that they have incurred because of the virus or evidence of income they did not earn because of the virus, we will spend two dollars on accountability for every dollar we give to the students who actually need it. Many who actually need it will be unable to verify, so they will get nothing. We will also spend precious time that my students do not have. As the old saying goes, penny wise, pound foolish.
You, sir, believe whatever Trump says. No accountability, no oversight for $2 trillion of our tax dollars, and you somehow blame students.
Just to be clear, I pay no attention to what Trump says.
In our current situation, speed is far more important than accuracy. The country should not repeat Trump’s mistake in taking too long to deal with the virus when dealing with the collapse of economic activity that has resulted from the virus.
Where did I blame students?
I’m not in charge but if I were I would reopen most schools. Obviously NYC can’t reopen, and Detroit and New Orleans and some other, smaller rural places with really severe outbreaks shouldn’t open, but I think one could safely reopen most schools in May. There would be some risk but it’s relatively low and if we’re keeping Wal Mart open I don’t know why schools should remain closed.
So that’s my unpopular opinion. It’s not based on personal benefit- my only school age child is almost an adult and he’s doing fine with distance learning. I think they should get as many kids back in school as they can, as soon as they can.
The problem is we don’t know what the effects would be.
You say ‘some danger’ but we don’t know how much danger
because we are facing an “Invisible Enemy” — invisible and undetectable because our War President didn’t bother to prepare.
Since we don’t have tests, we can’t detect
What that suggests is we’d be wrecked
if we opened up before that
A lot of people are walking around with the virus
and don’t know it
Maybe a million Typhoid Marys walking around
many of them kids
Kids have ‘naive immune systems’ that don’t register
Corona as a threat. Ironically, they are safe because
their body does NOT attack the virus. It is the hyped up
immune system that kills people. It goes overboard
and attacks the bodies, esp the lungs, instead.
So open schools and then that 1 million becomes
10 million or a 100 million.
We need to test, test, test.
And test
Ironic, because normally when I post here
I come out against tests.
Agreed, Brian.
Without easily available free testing, we are in the dark.
To Ditzy DeVoid, aka Betsy DeVos, aka No-Cluella De-Shill, Younger Sister of Cruella
(to the tune of “My Way”)
Breaks,
I’ve many had,
Like who was Dad,
And whom I married.
Yachts,
I’ve worried not,
O’er life’s great storms
I’ve, heedless, ferried.
I’ve learned
To con the pawns;
To feed upon
Their dreams was child’s play.
And in my work
I didn’t shirk,
To do it AmWay.
Would never have known this wasn’t SDP! (And that’s meant as highest praise to both of you.)
High praise indeed! SomeDAM is extremely, extremely talented.
Who ever thought we’d miss Arne Duncan?
I understand Green’s concerns and share them, but still have a question:
Q: Do you think that if Betsey DeVos was actually an educator that the Trump Administration’s positions would be any different?
A: Clearly not.
What if DJT picked Paul Peterson (Harvard) who also touted the Florida Virtual School ten years ago in the last chapter of his book Saving Schools.
He would repeat the Koch, Broad proposition that we need to ‘begin again’ by restructuring pay and getting rid of the deadwood, even though it is unclear how much ‘deadwood’ there is among teachers –there may not be much at all–, whether the effort to do so would be cost effective, whether increased pay tied to test scores works as an incentive or even whether increasing test scores is something for which we want to give incentives.
On the Broad/Koch/Bloomberg/Klein/Rhee side of the public discourse these questions are treated as inconsequential, the assumption seemingly that the system is dragged down by bad teachers protected by unions, that test scores accurately reflect what we want to happen inside a classroom, that poverty can be outdone by education and that we are, at least in Peterson’s account, headed to a remarkable world in which open curricula and virtual schools will bravely go where none of us has gone before.
Peterson asked “Can technological innovation transform the contemporary American school? Will education be customized so that each child is taught material at a level he or she can grasp? Can information be transmitted online in ‘Avatar-like’ three-dimensional spaces? Will new curricular materials be created by the same open-source techniques used by Wikipedia? Will students co-operate together in virtual projects and compete online in sophisticated academic games? Will teachers become coaches instead of instructors?”
Virtual Learning is just one chapter of his book, but it is two-thirds of the summary, on the book’s web page, which claims that “the possibilities unleashed by technological innovation, when coupled with the economic impact of ever-rising cost of traditional schooling, have created an environment for another educational transformation . . . online learning has the potential to create the highly personalized learning experience that has long eluded school reformers.”
This is the prelude to a new millenium “in which families have greater choice and control over their children’s education than at any time since our schools were founded.”
So none of this is new — the anti-public school is just waiting to pounce on an opportunity.
As for Betsey DeVos, clearly she is not an educator, but just as clearly she is merely a symptom, not the source of the problem. It is the people and forces who have chosen her and if they had chosen an educator, then they’d brag about her credentials.
Or at least one who isn’t a radical Calvinist ideologue.
I agree that DeVos was not the right choice.
HOWEVER:
Education leadership had almost 20 years to plan and prepare for teaching during smallpox or C19 crises. And having that knowledge makes his argument a hard sell when Education Leadership for the last two decades failed to plan and prepare.
What surprises me is that it seems that all the Education Wonks and Education Influencers missed this tidbit during the current pandemic.
If anyone knows an Education Wonk or Education Influencer that has written about leadership failure, please let me know.
Otherwise, I will publish a short post about, “America’s Education Leadership Pandemic, Epidemic.” Working title.
Should be “the leadership failure…”
If it helps, bkendall, very few people foresaw a global pandemic. Only those who work in public health. The question to ask is why the response from the government was so slow once the pandemic was known.
Here is a 60 minutes episode from 15 years ago about global pandemics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP001Dum-Ps
Notice the praise for WHO in this 60 Minutes warning about pandemics. Could you send the link to Trump?
DeVos continues her quest to privatize public education. I am a public school teacher in Buffalo, NY and created a hip-hop “diss” track about her called “Resign Betsy,” and it is my hope that it will create a greater awareness of her destructive nature. I have been trying to contact Diane about this but have been unable to. If someone reading this has the ability to forward her this message, that would be great. Yes, I am aware that I am posting a comment on her blog but cannot find any way to email or connect with her privately. Thanks in advance! Enjoy the video!
MC ZiLL – Resign Betsy