To bring tonight full circle: Trump has largely punted changes to gun laws to a commission, which will be chaired by Betsy DeVos (arguably the most polarizing Cabinet secretary), who struggled mightily to answer Lesley Stahl’s questions on education policy.
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) March 12, 2018
Thanks to this cabinet for all the regular reminders that being rich doesn’t mean you’re smart or worthy in any way. https://t.co/dtbj4B98oZ
— laura olin (@lauraolin) March 12, 2018
Just a few hours earlier…
Betsy DeVos struggling hard on 60 Minutes pic.twitter.com/2iI52WR79u
— Bubba Atkinson (@BubbaAtkinson) March 11, 2018
… DeVos, who rarely gives interviews to journalists, is a longtime school choice advocate who once said that traditional public education is “a dead end” and who has made clear that her top priority as the nation’s education chief is expanding alternatives to traditional public schools. A champion of using public funds for private and religious school education, critics say she is determined to privatize public education. She has denied it…
More than a year after becoming education secretary, DeVos again had trouble answering questions put to her by Stahl and seemed to contradict herself. For example, the two had this conversation about what happens to underperforming traditional public schools when children leave for alternatives and take funding with them:
STAHL: Why take away money from that school that’s not working — to bring them up to a level where they are, that school is working?
DEVOS: Well, we should be funding and investing in students, not in school, school buildings, not in institutions, not in systems.
STAHL: Okay. But what about the kids who are back at the school that’s not working? What about those kids?
DEVOS: Well, in places where there have been, where there is, a lot of choice that’s been introduced, Florida, for example, the studies show that when there’s a large number of students that opt to go to a different school or different schools, the traditional public schools actually, the results get better, as well.
STAHL: Now, has that happened in Michigan? We’re in Michigan. This is your home state.
DEVOS: Yes, well, there’s lots of great options and choices for students here.
STAHL: Have the public schools in Michigan gotten better?
DEVOS: I don’t know. Overall, I, I can’t say overall that they have all gotten better.
STAHL: No, but your argument that if you take funds away that the schools will get better is not working in Michigan where you had a huge impact and influence over the direction of the school system here.
DEVOS: I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.
STAHL: The public schools here are doing worse than they did.
DEVOS: Michigan schools need to do better. There is no doubt about it.
STAHL: Have you seen the really bad schools? Maybe try to figure out what they’re doing?
DEVOS: I have not, I have not, I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming.
STAHL: Maybe you should.
DEVOS: Maybe I should. Yes…
DeVos is a billionaire fundamentalist fronting for fellow billionaires who want to make sure that ‘the peasants’ aren’t given enough education to let them escape the fundamentalists’ capitalist baronies. Real education should only be available to those who can pay for it!
Unfortunately, while her parents could certain afford to give Betsy the best education, the soft cocoon of Rich White Mediocrity ensured that she’s never actually have to learn more than an accepted scripture of catchphrases and mantras to “succeed.” Much like her crony Donald Trump… who got shipped off to a private military school when NYC public schools “couldn’t handle” his refusal to meet minimal behavioral standards, like ‘do not physically attack teachers who won’t let you do just what you feel like, when you feel like it.’
That’s our best hope, at the moment — powerful as these people are, they’ve got Death Star-class liabilities due to their blinkered insularity. They’re mean and ruthless, but also lazy, pampered, and not trained to persist rather than walk away from the messes they make.
I’ve been bashing heads w the DeVos family’s Taliban-for-hire since 1998. In particular, I helped run the campaign against the 2004 same sex marriage ban in MI, funded by the DeVos family & Tom “Domino’s” Monaghan. To have her so devastatingly exposed makes me very happy
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 12, 2018
Betty Cracker
I’m glad Stahl pointed out that Michigan schools are in shambles after DeVos purchased free rein to implement her “ideas” there. This information was widely available before that incompetent, unqualified boob was elevated to Ed Sec, of course, but it’s not exactly common knowledge. Man, and I thought Arne Duncan sucked…
donnah
Leslie Stahl was all up in DeVos’ face, which was refreshing to see. Betsy DeVos was hired to destroy public education from within and she’s succeeding. Everything DeVos says indicates that government funding will be reduced, and privatizing education will work. It doesn’t work. Charter schools in our area fail on a huge scale because they lack oversight and accountability.
As a minor note, if one agrees to be interviewed on national television, one should do some prep work, like reading up on the topic and understanding how your department works so you don’t flop around like a fish in the interview.
I give DeVos an F.
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: and Florida schools really aren’t in great shape, are they Betty?
Meanwhile, I keep thinking what child’s school yard taunt best suits DeVos, and I keep coming back to “Dummy.”
“Dummy DeVos”
That woman is limited!
Brachiator
Using public money is not privatizing education. It is theft.
And let’s see. A person who is not competent to be Education secretary is going to chair a useless commission which has already been tasked to sign off on fake solutions to gun violence.
Hmm. Since she has a cabinet position, can she still donate big bucks to Trump’s re-election campaign, or will they have to switch her out later with another clueless plutocrat?
The Moar You Know
I’m not big on the tumbrels and executions, but would cheerfully make an exception for DeVos. Of all the hires that Trump has made, she is the worst. An amoral monster.
Walker
Private schools are, for the most part, crap. High end suburban schools produce significantly better students (the resegregation of public schools is another problem).
The college applications that I have read in the past few years from private schools all read as “lazy rich person who has never been challenged in his/her life”
Betty Cracker
@Immanentize: Jeb Bush implemented many of the same dumb ideas DeVos advocates, and for the same reasons (i.e., family grift opportunities, etc.). He still calls himself “the Education Governor” with a straight face. These people are not only greedy and incompetent — they’re shameless!
Immanentize
@Brachiator: She doesn’t give the donations, her family and in laws do. She is in the second generation of useless children like her Prince of a brother.
Nicole
Oh my god, I have so many opinions about funding and public schools. One of the dirty little secrets (though, I guess, not that secret, just no one wants to talk about it) here in NYC is that the charter schools (Hi, Success Academy!) take in kids who are IEP (have learning challenges) and get additional money to fund those students’ needs. They keep the kids past the deadline for the money to be allotted, and then kick them to one of the public schools that are required to take them, but keep the extra money. So, the public school has to scramble to find money for the education the student is entitled to, because the charter school is keeping that extra money the government paid out for it.
I also think PTA money raised should be divided between all schools in a district, but the wealthy white parents would throw fits. Midtown East, which is one of the desirable public schools, raises a million dollars a year from the PTA, while the Title 1 school my son went to for Pre-K struggles to raise $50,000.
It’s a NYPost article, but this gives an idea of how much money the primarily white public schools in NYC raise, vs. some of the Title 1 schools:
https://nypost.com/2015/11/15/school-ptas-soak-rich-parents-for-10000-donations/
And having taught after-school programs at some of the $40,000 a year private schools here, I can attest that there are plenty of rich kids who are dumb as a bucket of hair. And they get coddled because if the school grades them according to their performance, the rich parents will throw a sh*t fit. They don’t care if the kid is actually doing “A” work; they just want them to receive “A”s.
Betty Cracker
@Walker: The Stoneman-Douglas High School kids in Parkland, Florida are the best advertisement for a well-funded, resource-rich public education I’ve ever seen in my life.
Immanentize
@The Moar You Know: she is not the worst, and as Kay points out, really has no actual powers or budget, just the bully pulpit as schools are still a local matter.
Pruitt at EPA is the worst. By far the most damaging bottle in the poison cabinet so far.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
Holy fuck…
Litlebritdifrnt
It has been reported time and time again that Charter Schools are simply a smoke and mirrors way to funnel taxpayer funds to high powered rich people’s pockets. One of the easiest ways is for the school to “hire” a management company to run it, the management company is generally owned by a wealthy local republican who has frequently donated huge sums to his party candidates. The candidates get elected, they create more Charter Schools and the whole cycle repeats itself. The money never goes to education, it goes to the wealthy donor.
Roger Moore
@donnah:
They may be failing at educating students, but I’m sure they’re wildly successful at their main goals of undermining public education and providing grift to well connected charter school companies.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I’m sure they’ll be as scrupulous in following campaign finance laws as they have been with every other law.
SFAW
She seems
smartnicesincerelike a danger to students and good education everywhere.One wonders if public schools will soon be required to sell Amway products to get any kind of funding.
SFAW
@Roger Moore: @Roger Moore:
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
ETA: Although, technically, I guess you DO have faith that they will continue their unfettered corruption. My bad.
Nicole
@Litlebritdifrnt: True. It sucks, too, because the idea behind them was good- small schools that could experiment with teaching methods. But, rich people are going to grift, and it turned into the scam they are today.
We tried really hard to get a friend’s son into the Milton Hershey school last year (so close, but didn’t make it). It takes impoverished kids and boards them from K-12th grade, so the kids live there. It also, starting in high school, lets them earn up to $80,000 in college tuition, via good grades and things. It’s got problems (not much accommodation for learning disabled kids, and the kids grow up away from family) but is decently successful at what it does. It also, to my calculations, costs $100,000 per student. Per year. Which it can do because it’s the main beneficiary of Hershey Foods (crappy chocolate, but when you buy it, you are actually helping poor kids).
It takes huge resources to redirect the ship when poverty sets it on its journey. The fact that charter schools are a way for rich folk to siphon off limited resources THAT THEY DON’T NEED makes me crazy.
Also, the “discipline” in the Success Academys makes me very angry, because it’s really harsh- very much the sit-down-and-shut-up kind. They get reprimanded for fidgeting. And, of course, the population is mostly black. I have actually had liberal white parents express to me, “But those kids need that kind of discipline.” Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.
Kay
You shouldn’t underestimate her, though. She was a VERY hard ball lobbyist. Michigan state lawmakers were terrified of her family’s money and clout. She said jump and they asked how high.
What gets you is how vapid all her speeches are- schools are like Uber, schools are like food trucks. Take the dumbest Tom Friedman column and reduce it to a paragraph and that’s what she spouts. It’s why she can’t answer specific questions and why she repeats these ideologically correct anecdotes. It’s not really “thought” in the conventional sense because she adds no value to whatever she heard and is repeating.
Gin & Tonic
Even here in a blue state, with support for public education, there are plenty of unintended consequences. I’m a school budget junkie (everybody needs a hobby) and I see it first-hand. Schools here are funded at the town level, so in the suburbs the budgets tend to be fairly small, but here’s one situation – schools have always been required to allow students to go to vocational HS – there are only a few, since the infrastructure is expensive, so you send them out of district. This is understood. Recently, they allowed every HS to set up “career and technical education” centers, so you can have, say, a specialized track in computer programming, or pre-engineering or something. Get state approval, and you can accept out-of-district students. So assume Town A, with a relatively small population and a frugal district and adjacent Town B, with a larger population and more resources, offering several CTE tracks. Town A students can apply to go to Town B’s HS. But then Town A, which operates at an annual per-pupil spending of $13k, sending students to Town B, which operates at an annual per-pupil spending of $16k, has to reimburse Town B at the $16k rate. So not only does Town A lose students, typically the more ambitious and involved students, it also loses $3k/yr on each one. To compete, Town A has to offer some CTE program as well, but it’s not funded for that level. Innovative programs, school choice, all good ideas on paper, which just mean the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
kindness
Funny how this administration has made me look more kindly towards the French and how they went about their revolution.
WaterGirl
I was reading Steve Benen just now. I was horrified to read this line from a Benen post about penalties for drug dealers.
This isn’t even the premise of the article, it’s just a throwaway line for background. We are living a nightmare, in which we can acknowledge as a matter of fact the president’s fondness for solving problems by killing people. The President of the United States.
He really does want us to be like Russia and China and North Korea and the Philippines. He truly wants to be a dictator. It’s terrifying.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Agreed.
WaterGirl
Since this is an education thread, and the thread from last night is dead, I just want to thank everyone who took the time to fill me in on the horror that is Betsy DeVos.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
One more reason for the Republicans to hate them.
laura
I remain firm in my belief that Michelle Rhee would have been as bad or worse than BdV.
Can’t have an educated populace asking questions and making demands in our now great again ‘murka.
Roger Moore
@Immanentize:
Is he really ahead of Zinke?
PPCLI
Only incidentally connected to the topic, but worth mentioning. Houle understates how sleazy the “Anti-same-sex-marriage” referendum supported lavishly by DeVos was. (Only so much you can say in one tweet.) As usual with these proposed laws, it was trumpeted by supporters as “about marriage” but was crafted so broadly as to support a whole range of anti-gay actions including making domestic partner benefits illegal at government institutions. During the referendum, this was pointed out repeatedly, and the response (always non-denial denials) by the anti-gay forces was always “it’s about marriage, not about benefits”. I remember incessant robo-calls with this message. Another standard line was to accuse people raising the issue of domestic partner benefits as engaging in “scare tactics”. This was repeatedly stated by the bought-and-paid-for Devos-ite talibangical state Attorney General. “Scare tactics”. They did everything they could to fog up and distract from what the law was really about.
After the referendum passed, the very next working day — and I mean immediately, not even waiting a couple of weeks for cover — the same AG sued the Michigan universities to get them to stop offering domestic partner benefits. By moving that quickly, they made it clear that they already had the suit written up and ready to go as soon as the referendum passed. Even by the standards of the “Christian” Right it was breathtakingly dishonest and cynical. And when the clever lawyers at U. of Michigan found a way to offer domestic partner benefits in a way that didn’t run afoul of the new law, the same sleazebag AG accused them of trying to “thwart the will of Michigan’s voters”.
That is what Betsy DeVos is about, in a nutshell.
terraformer
Like Kansas, where Brownback was given free reign to implement the Republicam wishlist to horrendous results, we’re having to witness DeVos’ mad rush to privatize education and destroy public education.
I’m so goddamned tired of this dynamic of “empirical facts tell us that approach will fail miserably”, yet they do it anyway, people are hurt, and supporters get to just shrug it off and walk away. It’s always policy before data. But, like most Republican efforts, the end goal is always, always, cheap labor and lower taxes.
Ghouls, all of them.
Fair Economist
@Betty Cracker:
There’s a secondary lesson on the incompetence of the rich. As you say, the information is widely available and even though DeVos is clueless she has so much money somebody on her staff should have at least prepared some kind of talking points for this issue. But they didn’t because they are clueless too. The cluelessness of the rich extends to their staff choices and down through their organizations and leaves them unable to do anything right. Plutocracy is also idiocracy.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@terraformer:
Maybe they shouldn’t just be allowed to walk away scot-free. Criminal prosecution?
PPCLI
@laura:
I respect the sentiment, but I have to disagree. Rhee is bad. DeVos is a degree of evil that is impossible to truly comprehend unless you’ve seen her at work in Michigan over decades.
Fair Economist
My son went to a magnet school briefly and I found one of the ways charter schools can kick out the bad students – make it too hard for them. The school had four different bell schedules for the five days of the week and three different ways to get assignments – and this for a K through 8 school. Unless the student was very good at planning or had a parent who could track things carefully it’s impossible to keep up. So the school ends up with only gifted or highly advantaged kids and, oh look! they have great test scores!
Roger Moore
@Nicole:
Having gone to a public school that was very successful with experiments in teaching methods, it’s never been clear to me why this requires a special school to pull off. Maybe they could get some successful innovation in public schools if they abandoned their rigid, teach to the test curricula and let the teachers teach.
germy
It’s a national nightmare that policy is being set by Amway heirs.
OzarkHillbilly
@Litlebritdifrnt:
This particular scam knows no partisan divide. In STL, where GOP politicians go to kill their careers, a number of prominent DEMs sit on charter school boards.
Fair Economist
@PPCLI: Rhee is evil and frighteningly good at it. She set up a system to force teachers to cheat on standardized exams so she could claim her “reforms” were helping when they were actually useless. She got caught, but still managed to parlay her “reputation” into a multimillion dollar consulting business. If DeVos hadn’t been born a billionaire, she’d be a harmless airhead. Not so Rhee.
The Moar You Know
“She sounds like someone who never learned to read trying to give a book report on a book her father burned in the town square two years earlier.”
Best comment so far on the internets.
OzarkHillbilly
@Fair Economist: In STL most of the charter school studentss have terrible test scores, scores that would at the very least have them on a provisional accreditation basis.
germy
OzarkHillbilly
@Roger Moore:
Charter schools are generally (always?) nonunion. It’s about union busting as much as it is about the grift.
No Drought No More
NBC: “Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to Special Counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions”.
If push comes to shove, then Mueller Inc. should offer to put the entire country into the witness protection program. Either that, or the Qatari officials should be reminded that Trump is mortal, while the American people are not. And we’re taking names, and it’s no idle exercise. The American people, and not the great American Traitor, will have the final word in this matter….
Nicole
@Roger Moore: It is, unfortunately, one of the side effects of bureaucracy- red tape and rules get longer and more complicated, and with education getting bigger (due, in part, simply to population getting bigger) it gets harder to experiment in a standard public school. The red tape of bureaucracy is part of the nature of the beast (I read a lot of textbooks as part of my job and the sociology ones all devote some time to bureaucracy as a concept).
That said, charter schools are, and were supposed to be, public schools, just ones that were exempted from some of the bureaucratic rules so they could experiment (see again: supposed to be small). The idea was that the stuff they developed that worked well could be then adopted into general usage by all schools. But they got turned into a money grab.
NorthLeft12
Anne, thanks for the above devastatingly accurate analysis of the 0.1%. They loathe anything that approaches work, let alone hard work, so making this difficult and unpleasant for them is the number one goal.
Of course this does not apply to their hired minions.
cope
It’s not just giving money for charter and private schools that is privatizing education.
Standardized tests created by, administered by and parsed by a handful of large corporations; endless technology “upgrades”; teacher certification tests also created by, administered by and parsed by the same large corporations; collection, analysis and interpretation of big data; consultants and consulting companies providing teacher in-services; privatization of custodial and maintenance services and even the creation or upgrading of state standards and curriculum are all part and parcel of the decades-long fire sale that has been the privatization of public education. I am probably forgetting other instances of this spreading infection but I blame that on lack of caffeine so far this morning.
Having recently retired after 28 years teaching in Florida’s public school system, I have watched this all unfold as slowly and inexorably as the rising of Miami’s king tides.
Finally, this is not a phenomenon limited to public education as has been pointed out by many others more expert in their analysis than I. We are, I believe, watching the results of unfettered capitalism as it utterly changes every single aspect of our lives.
Nicole
@OzarkHillbilly:
That is, definitely, one of the side effects of charter schools becoming a money grab.
Speaking as a union member, I can see the value of non-union teachers in a small (again, SMALL) charter school, in that unions are also bureaucratic institutions and can make innovation challenging to implement, but to work as intended, I think they’d have to be overseen by a union rep, who could then recommend things that could be adopted into the union teachers’ contracts. Instead, it becomes a way to work already overworked educators into nervous breakdowns and pay them crap at the same time. There’s a reason turnover among new teachers is 50 percent. (To make clear; I believe teachers should be unionized)
Although- funny anecdote- a friend of mine teaches in a public school and the school recently got a bunch of new aspiring teachers (starting as student teachers/teaching aides while they continue their own schooling). One of them already quit, because her first evaluation said there were areas of concern for her to work on. It’s her first evaluation, OF COURSE she’s not going to be proficient at everything, but she was so insulted at getting an evaluation that wasn’t all positive that she gave up. Apparently it was the very first time she’d ever been given an even slightly critical evaluation.
I’m willing to wager she grew up middle-class or higher.
gvg
@Walker: Private schools are not all crap. I realize thats not exactly what you said, but it gives that impression. There are very good private schools. always just a few but there are a lot of problems with public schools most caused by people like deVos who are much less rich but vote.
I went to public schools and only had a problem in 5th grade. My sister also went, got excellent therapy for dyslexia etc in school but when she had problems with a bad teacher in 5th grade, our mom, a public school teacher had enough and put her in private school. I have to admit she got a much better education but mine wasn’t bad.
now my nephew was ADHD and dyslexic and NOW the public schools are so underfunded that they get around the requirements to provide help for dyslexia by saying you have to go to their doctors to get certified (long waiting list) AND the student has to fail grade advancement two years! they also won’t grant zoning exemptions to kids who aren’t doing well because ot pulls down the school grades. Basically only good students can have choice. This is a problem because we couldn’t pick him up on time 5:30 if he went to the school close to our house instead of close to where we worked. So he goes to private school which my sister can afford, gets private therapy for reading advancement and the private school has been so much kinder with him. also low teacher child ratio which I think is always better.
that said, there were only 2 of many private schools around here that were actually better than public. most private schools are religious and not even well run religious. I think the catholic one is actually ok.
germy
@cope: How convenient and providential that Betsy’s religious fanaticism lines up perfectly with her profit grabbing instincts.
Can anyone who saw the 60 minutes episode tell me what she said after the man with the Harvard shirt asked her how much money she expected to make from privatization? My wife let out a yell during that portion of the broadcast and so I didn’t hear the reply.
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
With all the Republicans’ policies that really take off within the party, it’s successful because it appeals to different groups. Racists get resegregation of the schools. Religious nuts get state funding for their religious schools. Union haters get to bust unions. Grifters get to grift. There may not be literally something for everyone- I don’t see any obvious benefit for the militarists or energy companies- but there’s something for many different constituencies.
rikyrah
EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW!!!
More human remains found in backyard of missing man, detectives say
Orlando Sentinel
By Bianca Padró Ocasio
Authorities dug up more human remains in the backyard of a home where they found an upper arm bone on Friday, a spokesman with the Lake County, Florida sheriff’s office said Saturday. The parts of human skeleton were found under a lump of concrete on an outdoor fire pit at the residence of Michael Shaver, who has been missing for three years.
Detectives also found some articles of clothing, Lt. John Herrell said. The remains were turned over to the Medical Examiner’s office for identification and to determine the manner and cause of death, Herrell said.
Officials went to check on Shaver in his home in unincorporated Lake County south of Clermont on Feb. 16.
His wife, 35-year-old Laurie Shaver, said she had not heard from her husband since 2015 and allowed investigators to search the home. They noticed what seemed like a fresh layer of concrete had been dumped near the pit, and asked Laurie Shaver for permission to bring a cadaver dog.
OzarkHillbilly
@Nicole: I’ve never met a human being who didn’t have areas they could work on.
Just One More Canuck
???
So she may have unintentionally visited an underperforming school, but her handlers hustled her away before she met one of ‘those people’?
hellslittlestangel
Hats off to Lesley Stahl. Once the rest of the media figure out that there’s no harm — and good ratings — in attacking The Orange Better One’s team of buffoons, they will be relentless. Sic ’em!
germy
@rikyrah: I saw a TV news segment about that last night. They showed footage of the wife, but she didn’t speak to reporters. They just filmed her climbing in and out of her SUV. She didn’t look pleased about the press being there.
When asked about the man’s disappearance, she explained he wasn’t very well liked, so anyone could have killed him.
But buried in her backyard?
Roger Moore
@Nicole:
I’m sure general red tape is part of the problem, but I’m also sure high-stakes testing is even more important. When I was in school, the teachers only had to answer to the parents and the local school system. That gave them a lot more freedom to experiment than teachers who know they’re going to be judged by how their students do on standardized tests put together by the state Dept. of Education.
OzarkHillbilly
@Roger Moore:
Or the children.
Yarrow
@hellslittlestangel: Did the DeVos 60 Minutes interview get good ratings?
Nicole
@OzarkHillbilly: Truth. But some human beings are more able to accept this fact than others. ;) (see also, white folk when how whites have benefited from white supremacy is pointed out to us)
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: There’s an old legend of buried treasure in her back yard. People dig there all the time. She doesn’t pay any attention to them any more.
germy
@Yarrow: Probably not as good as next week’s will.
Nicole
@Roger Moore: Oh, you’re absolutely right; the high-stakes testing is total bullshit and I don’t think there’s a teacher working today who wouldn’t agree with you on that. It’s ridiculous.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly: She might be a good communications director for 45…
OzarkHillbilly
@Nicole: Oh no, white people aret the pinnacle of evolution.
japa21
@gvg: A lot of Catholic schools are quite good, specially those run by the Jesuits. Unlike many of the Christian schools, Catholic schools tend to place an emphasis on critical thinking and are very pro science. Even our local parish school which is K-8 has earned awards for its STEM program. So not all private schools are bad.
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not a big Republican constituency.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: SHS is doing OK, She’s never seen any sign of collusion at all, trump always tells the truth and he’s very popular too.
SFAW
@hellslittlestangel:
Good one!
No doubt the charge will be led by the MH twins — Maggie Haberman and Mark Halperin
MomSense
Devos is an idiot. Punishing “failing” schools by taking away their funding has always been a cruel and inappropriate response to what are usually much bigger and interconnected societal problems.
In the if i ruled the world category of dreams about public policy, I would really like to de-couple school funding from local, property taxes.
Gin & Tonic
@Nicole: Nearly all of those standardized tests are profit centers for the test developers.
Yarrow
@germy: Saw that Trump’s lawyers are trying to stop the Stormy Daniels interview from airing. Edit: Just saw a chyron on one of the news channels. Don’t know more than that.
hellslittlestangel
@Yarrow: Who am I, Leslie Nielsen? Seriously, I don’t have the ratings figures for a show that was on last night, but 60 Minutes currently has its highest ratings this century.
BellyCat
@cope:
The root cause, indeed!
Just look at the Business-ification of Higher Ed (especially at State universities, where Board Members are often entirely comprised of “leaders” of large corporations) for validation. To think this is solely a public school problem is to overlook the larger consequences. For any university program where large amounts of external funding is not available, they are all on the chopping block, with the Humanities and the Arts being the most vulnerable.
Add to this staggering student costs — I had students, for a five year undergraduate degree, with $150k – $190k in student loans! The results are a life of servitude for these kids, whose parents committed the “crime” of educating their non-wealthy children.
Disgusting…
hellslittlestangel
She’s just in the wrong job. She’d make an awesome concentration camp commandant.
Roger Moore
@MomSense:
Good luck convincing any Republican of that. Punishing people for failure and rewarding them for success is a key part of their worldview, even- maybe especially- when the success or failure is inherited rather than earned. You can summarize a huge part of Republicanism as the belief that poor people only respond to punishment while rich people only respond to reward.
hellslittlestangel
@SFAW: Maybe, if there’s money and attention in it for them. That’s all they give a fuck about.
GregB
These people behave like a new royal aristocracy.
If I say something is so, it is so.
Odd that their base supposedly loathes elites when these people reek of elitism and royalism.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Of course, the only appropriate response to punishment is to shut up, roll into a gutter and die.
hellslittlestangel
Yup. And this is not a new philosophy. It’s just as true if you change “rich” and “poor” to “Aryan” and “Jewish.”
GregB
@cope:
The bitter irony is that as this capitalist consumption escalates and causes all of these problems, the right-wing media industrial complex lays the blame for all of these end results at the feet of contemporary liberal ideology.
cynthia ackerman
The aristocrats!
rikyrah
@No Drought No More:
Uh huh
Uh huh
germy
@GregB:
I’ve seen this on the local level.
The shittier things get, the more the public square is degraded, the more things fall apart, the more the fox-viewing commenters on my hometown news sites blame liberals. They leave their comments like little turds all over my local media.
For example:
germy
Revealed: White House officials ‘watched in dismay’ as Betsy DeVos went down in flames on ’60 Minutes’
(RawStory headlines tend towards hyperbole, but this story didn’t surprise me.)
henrythefifth
At what point does her brother, Erik Prince, enter the picture to broker arms sales to teachers/provide mercenaries to “harden” schools? Sadly, I am not joking. That’s probably one of the plans on the table.
rikyrah
Tell it, young man.
……………………
Simply put politians do not care about our generation because young people 18-29 don’t vote and that’s a huge reason why we have the student debt problem, environmental problems and gun violence because we show our political leaders they can get away with what they want NO MORE pic.twitter.com/kZOF1Irlpq
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 12, 2018
rikyrah
#APExclusive: Donald Trump Jr. partners with Texas hedge fund manager who has gained access to Trump administration, @JakePearsonAP reports. https://t.co/YrDUbwjBuw
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 12, 2018
No Drought No More
Charles Pierce esq. today notes: “..No progress is permanent, no achievement lasting. That is the lesson born in the great political retrenchment in the 1980s, when the retrograde was made new again, and it is the only lasting lesson that has been taught, over and over again, through the increasingly volatile politics of the age..”.
No doubt about that; it’s the root of the matter. And if you don’t believe Pierce, then recall the words of a tough and wise old American patriot, and think again:
“A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it”. Ben Franklin said it, of course, in response to a question posed by an American denied the right to vote under the proposed Constitution that Franklin referred to.
Or as George Schultz- he of the aforementioned generation of swine- later phrased it: “There’s no such thing as a finish fight in Washington D.C.”.
(In addition, as Ralph Barton Perry once put it, “The history of American democracy is a gradual realization, too slow for some and too rapid for others, of the implications of the Declaration of Independence”).
Fair Economist
@henrythefifth:
I immediately thought of that as soon as I heard DeVos was heading the school “safety” task force. It’s all about the grift with these folks.
hellslittlestangel
@henrythefifth: Your thinking is so evil, you could probably get a job in the White House.
rikyrah
Russian defector says Putin has a hit out on Chris Steele’s head. Also claims Putin’s ordered the killing of @Billbrowder and several Russians https://t.co/cPeEBpIUQL
— Ben Schreckinger (@SchreckReports) March 12, 2018
rikyrah
@henrythefifth:
UH HUH
UH HUH
rikyrah
Qatar gave Trump and Kushner a ‘gift,’ says ex-NSC official — and now the White House owes them a favor https://t.co/kTCaLxfvzC
— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 12, 2018
rikyrah
DA PHUQ?
Did you all read this?
……………….
BREAKING NEWS: More than 500 people reportedly contaminated by nerve agent used to poison former Russian spy. Prime Minister May will address nation at 12:30PM ET.
— The Anon Journal (@TheAnonJournal) March 12, 2018
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Anyway, on the subject at hand, DeVos is a disgrace. If she had any self awareness, she’d go find a cave and turn into another Gollum.
? Martin
@The Moar You Know: Death is too good for these people – they all believe they’re going to be raptured anyway. Put them in prison for the rest of their life. Make them miserable.
? Martin
@rikyrah: Yeah, the rumor was that the former Russian spy was Chris Steele’s primary source for some of the dossier. Kind of hard to argue that the dossier is fake when Putin is running around assassinating everyone associated with it.
Chyron HR
@rikyrah:
“We think it was a batch of tainted tikki masala. Purge the wogs! Brexit forever!”
Mnemosyne
@GregB:
See, that’s where you failed to hear the dogwhistle. “Elites” is code for “uppity Black and brown people.” They love elites who are white.
MCA1
@Nicole: Even the really well-intentioned, non-grift charter and private schools (and there are plenty; a number of people [not you, Nicole] on this thread are acting like they’re all owned by DeVos herself or something) are problematic for the system overall. They might turn out a lot of really bright kids with a much better education than they were getting in some failing local public system, but it’s not really a fair fight. They get to choose the brightest and most motivated kids, mostly from stable family backgrounds, and they can remove problem students from the system and send them back to the public schools with sclerotic bureaucracies from whence they came. Those public schools who cannot, by law, turn them down and have to find a way to accommodate. The charter school is taking resources away from the public school and taking away only students who use less than their pro rata allotment of those resources. Leaving the public system with a higher per student need.
The root of the problem, as often is the case in our late stage capitalist society, comes from applying “market principles” to a non-market. Education isn’t a market, it’s a public good. It’s human infrastructure. But proponents of charter schools often go on and on about how public schools are failing kids because they’re not exposed to competition and market pressures. So we should provide that competition, and then they’ll get better and leaner and adapt and be less rigid, etc., etc. Except the very existence of that competition makes the game harder for one player. Give me a charter school saddled with 50% below median students and half of the local bad apples and tell them they can never get rid of those students and they have to accommodate them, and that it’s virtually impossible to fully remove non-performing teachers, and I’ll show you a charter school that has the same success rate as the public school from which it’s drawing. Until then, it’s just not a fair comparison.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: LOL. Literally.
edit: You are in fine form this morning.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
I made my own P-hat. I may be female, but I’m neither young nor Chinese.
The sad part is that the founder of the project is Asian-American, so that’s probably where the rumor got started.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@rikyrah: I heard somebody British using language of being at war. This was an attack on British soil, of British citizens. Hard to call that anything but an act of war.
I guess official US position is that Russia is nice and incapable of causing or intending harm. Trump probably asked Putin if he did it and the answer was no, so end of story. Might have just been some 400 pound guy in New Jersey attacking from his Mom’s basement.
germy
@Mnemosyne:
They take a sliver of information, distort it, then run with it. What’s depressing is, these people are my neighbors.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I love this kid! I also love that he has “terrible speller” in his twitter profile.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: That’s depressing. Putin is sheer evil. I hate the right wing for what they are doing to Christopher Steele. I hope he remains safe.
Peale
Say what you will about private schools, but there’s seldom been a mass shooting at one. I could see them doing a twofer on this commission.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: In the article I read on that yesterday, they say the 500 people should wash all their clothes, etc, out of an abundance of caution, but that they are not in any danger. Apparently minute amounts were found in a diner and all those people were in and out of the diner during some critical time period.
MCA1
@BellyCat: Yep. Everything’s a commodity, everything’s a business, there is no higher purpose. The social contract has been replaced with mammon worship. Our undergraduate college and university system has become an “industry” that seems to think of students as customers, and acts accordingly, putting outlandish amounts of money toward “competing” by building fancier dorms and hiring renowned chefs to manage food services. There’s no point in differentiating the actual education one might get at an institution; it’s the lifestyle that matters.
Ohio Mom
A while back, people were comparing American schools to those in Finland. Finland does boast very high school achievement.
If you dig just a little deeper, what you find is that the percentage of Finnish children living in poverty is in the low single digits; the percentage in our country is something like 23%. That is almost a full quarter of our students.
In other words, for a rich, developed country, we have a huge amount of poor children.
If you only look at our schools serving the middle class, we have a very good education system. These schools are proof that we know how to train teachers, develop curriculum, manage schools, and all the rest.
The problem is poverty!
Peale
@Chyron HR: “I have asked the “Asset Management” industry if they really need those Oligarch deposits. They informed me that they do. Therefore, I would like to remind people that from time to time, they’ll just need to risk exposure to nerve agents. Keep Calm and Carry On.”
Boatboy_srq
@donnah: Not so very long ago there was a uniquely British phenomenon known as the “public school boy” – by which Brits meant the product of British “public schools” which are actually quite private entities. Public school boys were notoriously ill-educated and frequently uneducable; but because they had graduated from those institutions were permitted to proceed into business/government/military careers. Early advocates of universal education used British “public schools” as examples of how thoroughly wrong private instruction could get. “Public schools” have since reformed, and are far more rigorous, but the stereotype and the complaint persist.
The admission criteria for the schools DeVos and her kind attended are different and money and religious affiliation mean more than class or connections, but the results are clearly little different.
Feathers
@Mnemosyne: No, of course somebody made a cheap, made in China knock-off pussy hats and had them for sale. I heard about it from the outraged knitters complaining about the sweatshop labor. Of course, that gets picked up on Fox as none of the hats were homemade, libtards sux, etc, rinse and repeat.
Mnemosyne
@Ohio Mom:
As Kay keeps saying, we keep dumping more and more responsibilities on our public schools and then demanding to know why they haven’t solved poverty or childhood hunger yet. That’s not their job! Or it wasn’t until we decided that public schools could fix every social problem we have.
mad citizen
In a hurry with this thread (heading outside into the world), but watching the video clip. Just: phuck these people! It’s so hard to take.
Corner Stone
@Ohio Mom:
Which gets me back to two of my many hobby horses. In this case, free meals and standardized testing. We have ways of lessening childhood poverty but that’s a whole different category. However, if we provide two hot meals a day for every child, break free from the regime of Standardized Testing, inc., and actually taught kids critical thinking skills, IMO we could break the cycle of poverty in a generation or so.
Frankensteinbeck
@GregB:
It is important to understand that the entire conservative movement operates like this, poor and rich alike. A few decades back facts started adding up that no, they are not the beautiful perfect superior few who will reign forever over the lazy darkies, and so they told facts to fuck off. They follow their dogma. Their dogma is what they want to believe. There is no other reality. They cannot grasp that there could be. Half of American voters operate under this paradigm.
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think this is true. From my observation “Elites” is code for “race traitors.” Colored people being too inferior to accomplish anything by themselves, you see.
Mnemosyne
@Feathers:
Well, sure, there’s a cheap Chinese knockoff of just about anything you can name. But the majority of the hats were hand-made by actual American volunteers.
trollhattan
@MomSense:
Everything she utters has another message behind it.
“Nice little school district you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.”
I’m preparing for the day she says what’s really on her mind.
“Either privatise or get rid of your teachers union, capisce? If you don’t the next person you deal with will be my brother.”
Despite, or perhaps because of her Nancy Reagan persona she just oozes privilege and contempt for non-billionaires. Thanks a lot, Amway!
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@rikyrah:
There are times where I wish I could bust Putin’s kneecaps. This is one of those times
Boatboy_srq
@japa21: True; but that is one more reason the FundiEvangelicals reject Catholicism as Xtian, since those schools do not adhere to young-earth geocentric cosmology, four-element physics and four-humour medicine, and say nothing about how the Blessed Puritans handed the keys to Murika straight to Thomas Jefferson so he could write the founding documents for the Last Xtian Nation. Them there Catholic schools dabble in them there eeevil secular studies, and if Gun-Toting Capitalist White Jeebus didn’t personally approve it then it’s just more proof that Papism is Wrong.
Ruckus
@Immanentize:
Is there one who is even in the same ball park as competence? Doesn’t have to understand it or sleep with it but at least has a passing familiarity with competence and understanding of the actual job?
Because my take is that anyone who might be even minimally proficient at their cabinet position would never have even been thought of for that position.
I’m not saying you are incorrect that some are in fact massively evil in their position, rather than just totally incompetent.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
It also applies to (white) race traitors, but Barack and Michelle Obama and their non-white friends and colleagues are also “elitists.” Remember Lady de Rothschild’s rant about that in 2008?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone:
I’m sorry, you’re only allowed one hobby horse. If you have extra, you must share with the rest of the class.
maurinsky
I did a show at Yale many years ago, I was the only non-Yale student in the cast (I saw the auditions and called the producer to see if I could audition and she said sure), and that is when I learned that students who got into Yale weren’t any smarter than me, just had more support and more cultural experience than I did.
stinger
And smile really really hard and make unblinking eye contact while you recite them, and you’ll be sure to win the other person over. Injeezusnameamen.
Scotius
@henrythefifth:
Those bears aren’t going to shoot themselves!
Ruckus
@Fair Economist:
Now that’s a bumper sticker.
rp
I half expect the new RW talking point to be “DeVos’s interview proves that Hillary Clinton would have been a bad president.”
Yutsano
@rp: Give them time…
Corner Stone
@?BillinGlendaleCA: But I’ve been collecting them my whole life! You can have them when you pry them from my cold, crabby rants.
schrodingers_cat
@maurinsky: Jared Kushner and W. are not exactly the best advertisements for Harvard and Yale or their admission standards. RWNJs are okay with affirmative action for the progeny of the rich and powerful.
Walker
@gvg:
Private catholic schools can better than underfunded public schools, yes. But public schools like Stoneman-Douglas High School are more common than people realize. Every state has at least a handful of these. And I have never seen a Catholic school (reading applications from students nationwide) that was better than these well-funded suburban schools.
But you are right, that is not what I am saying. In my experience, money-for-money, no well-funded private school is remotely as good as a public school with the same funding.
Corner Stone
Shit’s getting real over in the UK.
Gin & Tonic
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Theresa May is saying a “military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia” was used, It’ll be interesting and instructive to see what she does. I don’t see how you can describe this as anything other than an act of war.
Mike in DC
Mueller said to be near completion on obstruction of justice probe, but will hold off on reporting it to DAG, will submit one complete report rather than piecemeal. Good.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Where is Smiley when you need him?
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: She will blame immigrants and chain migration, if she is like our Orange Personage in the WH.
rikyrah
Charter Schools are a SCAM.
And, they have tapped out the Urban School Market. They’ve been around long enough, and have enough stories about them, to prove that they aren’t the panacea that they were sold as…
So, of course, the Scammers are trying to find another market…
BUt, they are running into a brick wall.
How you gonna tell people who moved to a particular suburb BECAUSE OF THE EXCELLENT PUBLIC SCHOOLS..
that they should ditch them for the scam of Charter Schools?
Mike in DC
@Gin & Tonic:
Well, they can expel ambassadors and impose sanctions, officially. Unofficially they can go on a spyhunting expedition and prepare their own covert operations against Russia.
WaterGirl
@Mike in DC: Deputy Attorney General?
WaterGirl
@Mike in DC: I googled and am seeing reports that sound different from what you posted. Reading them now.
edit: excerpt from one article:
Yutsano
@WaterGirl: I think the report goes to Rosenstein, who then has to act on it. I think.
But her emails!!!
@Nicole:
There are pilot schools that are often exempted from certain rules and given more control over things like curriculum. To the extent Charters “help” it’s because
1. Teachers like to be paid for doing extra work or working more hours and school systems don’t want to pay them. A charter school gets around that because they can run teachers ragged without a contract and replace them when they wear out.
2. State and local authorities like to put stupid things into laws and teacher’s contracts that hamstring the teachers’ ability to teach. Because a lot of this is about exercising/demonstrating authority over teachers in the public school hierarchy, it’s tough to get these waived even for pilot schools. Charters are pretty much exempt from these (and will likely remain so) due to the liberal application and reapplication of grease by charter school proponents to the pockets of politicians each election cycle.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Yup, ambassador summoned. “I know nothing of which you speak” or something similar, to follow.
ETA Cheryl has put up a thread. All Russia, all the time!
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
You and your crazy conspiracy theories. Just because a former Russian double agent was almost assassinated using Russian nerve agents, you assume the Russian government must have been involved. It might have been some 400 pound guy living in his mother’s basement, you know.
Gin & Tonic
@Mike in DC: If the UK takes any action at all, I will eat my hat. There’s far too much Russian money sloshing around London.
WaterGirl
@Yutsano: The use of gratuitous acronyms is my pet peeve, so that was my way of tying to make it clear that DAG isn’t particularly helpful in trying to communicate something, without being too crabby about it.
Elmo
@maurinsky: That’s true of Yale. Harvard, on the other hand…
(I keed!)
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore:
Kids these days. I mean, whaddayagonnado, amirite?
Corner Stone
@rikyrah:
I think you already know the answer but…legal segregation.
rikyrah
Five juniors at Whitney Young High School score perfect 36 on ACT
CHICAGO 03/11/2018, 08:25pm
Five students at Whitney Young High School, 211 S. Laflin St., achieved perfect ACT scores this year. | Sun-Times file photo
Lauren FitzPatrick
Five Whitney Young Magnet High School students have scored a perfect 36 on the ACT this year, a triumph the selective Chicago high school is touting as a personal best.
Chicago Public Schools officials don’t even administer the ACT anymore, so juniors Jack Fetsch, Jake Gerenraich, Sophie Ljung, Charlie Nevins and Dorothy Tarasul volunteered to sit for the test one weekend last month.
Among the class of 2017, just 2,700 students in the entire country managed a composite 36 score — that’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the 2 million students who took ACT last year, according to the testing company. In Illinois, just 248 of 134,901 students who graduated in 2017 scored 36 points on the four math, English, reading and science components.
That means they correctly answered at least 211 of 215 questions on the timed exam; testing expert Matthew Pietrafetta calls that a remarkable feat.
“To be at perfect or near-perfect levels in all these academic domains indicates a student who has achieved mastery of essential, rigorous, college-readiness curriculum,” said Pietrafetta, who runs Academic Approach, a Chicago-based tutoring company that has done test prep for a number of CPS schools.
…………………………………………
Whitney Young, 211 S. Laflin St., attracts many of the city’s brightest students (among them former First Lady Michelle Obama) who vie to get the district’s oldest selective-enrollment school with near-perfect grades and attendance in elementary school, plus top scores on an admissions exam.
Its average ACT average score was 28 for the class of 2017, third-highest in the city and far above the district’s average of 19.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
It’s going to take more than education to break the cycle of poverty. We need to end discrimination, especially discrimination in and through our criminal justice system. We need to get jobs to where the poor people are so they have a chance to make use of their education. We need to make sure that even menial jobs pay a living wage.
jl
I’m not a Stahl fan. I think she plays this ingenuous little girl act sometimes, and I am not sure why. I saw her get stomped on in a recent segment with a pharmaceutical industry hack when she was doing that. But Stahl seemed very prepared and very good in her interview with DeVos. So, good for Stahl.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
In AZ, Mormons are using charters to get taxpayer funding for Mormon schools. Something Catholics tried — prior to the charter school racket — but failed to do. Clever and well-connected (here) these Mormons.
And DeVos was “devastatingly exposed” according to Dana Houle? I’m not seeing this 60 Minutes thing as in any way devastating for her. She maintains her oligarchic power and vast, unearned wealth, as well as her prestige with rightwingers. She’s either unself-aware enough that being “exposed” doesn’t actually register (she seems that way to me) or, given her lofty status in the pecking order of life, she simply doesn’t give a rat’s ass.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
Sorry, that is incorrect.
All of em, Katie.
TenguPhule
@WaterGirl:
Welcome to my world 13 months ago.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore: Sure, there’s a whole raft of things we as a society should be engaged in to break the issue of poverty. My comment was about feeding and properly educating children who may be in a less privileged population. IMO that education could lead to different attitudes toward societal issues, more progressive solutions, and a foundation that would help lift a large portion of the poor as well as benefit society overall. Education by itself is not going to do it but it’s a start.
Nicole
@MCA1: I agree, too, the root problem is poverty. I liked the Slate article about the Parkland kids and their “1950s style” education, with lots of debate and theater, but my public school teacher friend rightfully countered with “Of course they got this; they’re in a rich white district.” And she’s right.
Yeah, charter schools’ ability to reject students they don’t think will make them look good is infuriating.
Corner Stone
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
Of course she doesn’t give a rat’s ass. She’s had a year to find out one freakin’ clue about public education. She couldn’t even be bothered to have her staff pull together a ten point bulletin of talking points she could repeat over and over. Heck, make it a three point cheat sheet. Knowing nothing about absolutely anything but the grift has served her very well to this point, no reason for her to give a shit now.
ruemara
@Corner Stone: I hope it gets real, costly and filled with consequences.
Groucho48
@Roger Moore:
Yep. A talented, articulate, movivated bisexual Hispanic student spokesperson, inspired by an inspirational, excellent unionized teacher in a public school.
Preyy much everything the right hates in one package.
SpotWeld
I recommend anyone interested in the impact of Charter Schools on a community read the following:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/magazine/michigan-gambled-on-charter-schools-its-children-lost.html
Also look into Mosacica Education and the fiasco that came about when they were contracted to manage a “failed” school district in Muskegon, MI
John Fremont
@SFAW: Besides textbooks, parents will also have to buy Amway Quixtar starter kits.