Mercedes Schneider writes here about Betsy DeVos’s single-minded effort to divert public school funding to private and religious schools during the pandemic.
As Schneider documents, DeVos excoriates public schools as “static,” but her own brain is locked in concrete.
She has not allowed a fresh thought to enter her head in at least thirty years.
She wants public money for vouchers, she wants to reduce funding to public schools that desperately need it to reopen safely, she cares not a whit about the 85-90% of students in the nation’s public schools. Nothing new. Same old, same old. Her brain needs air.
She sees the pandemic as a grand opportunity to give choices to kids in public schools, chosen by their parents. She refuses to admit that the $5,000-$7,000 that might be available will not open the doors of elite private schools, but will provide access to subpar religious schools. Nor does she 3ver acknowledge the multiple studies showing that the religious schools she admires provide a lesser quality of education than the public schools she despises.
DeVos is a civic disaster. She threatens the public schools that are the heart of our nation’s communities. No wonder the Trump family did not invite her to speak at the Trump Convention. Even they know she is toxic to America’s parents.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hahahaha ….
Why leave DeVoodoo out of the SHAM?
DeVos is a broken record that keeps playing the same old tune, even though few people are listening to her erroneous claptrap. We have had lots of school choice in the past fifteen years, and all that choice has not improved outcomes for students. Low dollar vouchers cannot begin to duplicate the kind of education that wealthy private schools can offer. DeVos is part of the smash and grab Trump administration that is using the pandemic to create cover for their misdeeds. DeVos’ main objective is to move public money out of the public schools and into private hands of schools with little academic success.
I am glad that the courts are stepping in to impede her biased agenda. Title 1 money is intended to help the neediest, most vulnerable students. Why should public schools that serve the neediest students have to lose 10% of the funding to schools of questionable academics and that show no demonstrated need just because the head of the DOE is prejudiced against public education? One thing we know about so-called choice is that its proponents continue to ask for more and more each year, and they rarely put their plans up for a public vote. !0% of funding loss in the first year will quickly become 20% the next year and so on. What starts a money losing trickle for public school students soon becomes a flood. It is time to stop using public schools as a host for parasitic ill conceived choice schemes.
DeVos’s statements bashing public schools and public schools are entirely consistent with mainstream ed reform though. She uses harsher language to attack our schools and students but there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between any of her approaches and the rest of the ed reform echo chambers approaches.
I think it’s awkward for liberal ed reformers- they can’t distinguish their policies and practices from those of the Trump Administration. Go read any of the DeVos speeches attacking public schools and compare it to any of Arne Duncan’s, or Jeb Bush, or any of the ed reform lobbying orgs or think tanks. They’re the same.
Promote charters and vouchers and bash public schools. That’s “the ed reform movement”. I actually give DeVos credit. At least she doesn’t hide her ideological opposition to our schools and her objective to weaken and then replace them with contractors. She’s proudly anti-public school and anti-public school student and she comes right out and says it.
It’s so great how the US Department have time to go out and do all these anti-public school publicity events yet none of them have managed to do a single practical thing to help any public school, anywhere, in the pandemic.
They’ve accomplished nothing to assist our schools yet they all find endless time to engage in these abstract discussions of “transformation” and “innovation”.
Useless, and completely irrelevant to 90% of students and families in this country. So captured by the ed reform “movement” they’re no longer of any practical use to anyone.
They’re professional, full time public school critics like the rest of the ed reform movement, except in this case we’re all paying their salaries.
You could shut them down tomorrow and there isn’t a single public school student or family who would even notice.
If you’re wondering why the ed reformers in the federal government haven’t managed to get anything done for public schools in the pandemic, here’s why:
“The #SchoolChoiceNowAct… can help families and educators navigate these uncharted waters. The legislation extends critical support to states, families, and schools nationwide looking to get back to school.”
All these public employees were busy lobbying for private schools. That’s why this entire payroll you’re funding accomplished nothing for 90% of students- they were working on their ideological projects.
Not that it matters. Public schools opened or opened halfway or didn’t open and they did it without the help of the Professional Public School Critics Association input or assistance. Irrelevant to actual students and actual schools.
Our kids attend the wrong schools to merit their attention and assistance. Next pandemic plan to have your child in a charter or private school or you won’t get any work out of any of these people.
These are great cartoons.
………………………………………………..
More Cartoons on Re-Opening Schools
by larry cuban
https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/more-cartoons-on-re-opening-schools/
Yes. And all are really spot on. One shows Devos.
Laura H. Chapman: I like the one about the Trump car trying to force the school bus through a COVID-19 railroad type of stop.
Open up the schools…the days of COVID-19 are all over. Time to move on…BS that will kill more Americans.
“Betsy hasn’t had a new idea in thirty years”
Yes, but that was her choice
what “choice” actually means
Betsy is always only for choice because choice is always only for Betsy. She lays claim to all that is on earth and all that is in the heavens. Heaven’s to Betsy. I disagree she chose not to have any new ideas in thirty years, though. She had the idea of putting more guns in school “to protect from potential grizzlies.” That was nothing if not an original idea. Very different. One cannot say she has anything but an eccentric imagination.
I doubt the guns for grizzlies was her idea.
That had to be her brothers idea.
He’s the gun expert.