There are good charter schools and I have donated a few thousand dollars to one that takes severely economically and behaviorally disadvantaged high school kids that would be lost otherwise. There are probably other good charter schools and they would have a hard time surviving if not for public support. These schools are not looting the public treasury in any way that I object to. What I do object to is that in general charter schools are a lot like privatized prisons. Not subject to the same rules as public schools. The teachers do not need accreditation (wtf?) They can discriminate based on many factors and reject students with disabilities. The public schools operate under this “inclusion” law that results in classrooms with 5% of the students requiring 85% of the attention of the teachers at the expense of the rest of the class. When my wife threatened to call this little girl’s mother she was told “you can’t call my mom because she’s dead. My daddy shot her and he’s in prison”. The tragic stories I have are endless. These kids need psychologists and resources that are becoming harder to get due to policies like those of the Republican looters. Also if the better students go to charter or Catholic schools, of course the public school’s test scores will suffer as does the pay of the teachers burdened with societies rejected and neglected. The public schools need more money to deal with the bottom of the barrel, not less. I see why Betsy DeVos needs bodyguards.
struggled to explain
Devos is the best example of why religious based schools should not be.
Truly a fox for every hen house.
I’ll paraphrase this quote from Webster (an arch Republican), “I would rather educate the child than the adult, for sure enough, I will be obliged to do one or the other.” Can’t find the original offhand, but that is close.
This is like one of those post-apocalyptic movies where cannibals take over the burned-out shell of the White House and dress in tattered suits and pretend to be the government. Just because some ex-Wendy’s server with a necklace of ears pretends to be the Secretary of Education, that doesn’t mean you can just act like everything’s back to how it was Before.
Interviewing this woman as though she were the Secretary of Education in the historical sense of that term is the wrong approach IMO. People looking for reassurance will ignore the words and think “look, a boring TV interview just like in the old days. This is normal!”.
It seems like these aggressively unqualified appointees should never have been confirmed by the Senate, but I guess, back at the start of the Emergency, people were thinking “if we don’t confirm these barrel-scrapings, they’re just going to somehow find someone even worse”.
Exactly. The corporate media’s kowtowing treatment of this cretinous, bloodsucking horde of vultures and hyenas is further evidence that the nation’s “fourth estate” is a morally bankrupt, frightening absurdity.
Her true belief is that education should be monitized to the max for the benefit of the rich (investors).
Just another grifter at the public trough. At the same time, her brother Eric Prince has been grifting the DOD since before the Iraq war started. Whomever taught these despicable leeches how to game the system and come out winners did very well. Their parents should be proud of them. I’m sure their parents are proud.
It’s difficult to keep them from being appointed when the right wingers control almost all sectors of the Federal government and have a majority on every committee that make these decisions. We can thank the ignorance of the Amerikan people along with the influence of foreign bodies illegally swaying our elections. Overall I blame the Amerikan people. They can’t help themselves.
God, who knew we’d miss the good ol’ days of Bill Bennett.
It was about a month before I realized her name wasn’t Betty Davros, and now I can’t help but always read it that way.
I always think of DeVry…
(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images via NY Times)
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m voting a solidly progressive ticket in every election possible through at least 2020, in the desperate hope that we can get enough prog dems into office that there’s a chance people like DeVos will actually face the possibility of prison time for the blatant corruption they’re willingly taking part in.
I have to agree with @milliefink here. Your open-mindedness is not par for the course in evangelical, rural and suburban christian enclaves. There is a deep distrust of public education indoctrinating children with liberalism, communism, the “gay agenda” et al and, at the same time, outrage that there is no direct indoctrination of their beliefs such as creationism and other anti-science claptrap masquerading as faith.
You may be zealous in your belief, but you seem to keep that to yourself and respect the beliefs of others. The evangelical Christian zealotry I grew up in and which dominates the religious discourse in this country, is radically intolerant, paranoid and reactive and gives absolutely zero craps that this is a secular nation.
The American Dolores Umbridge.
I wish I could say that this level of failure would move the needle toward the imminent end of this regime, but it’s become clear to me that the Know-Nothing 30% in this country see a disastrous performance like this and only see their own histories reflected in it.
Ironically, the founders of laissez-faire capitalism actually believed in public education (citing China as an example) since they understood the value of a universally educated workforce.
I’m not sure I fully understand the modern neocon obsession with eliminating public education but it’s probably the marriage of its racist faction (since non-whites are highly reliant on it) with its religious fanatic wing (since public schools must be secular by law).
Well, to be fair, that was early-stage capitalism…
“I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.”
Translation: “The schools that aren’t doing well have bad students who can’t be saved, so screw 'em.” Coincidentally, those bad students also don’t match several of her own demographic categorizations.
