Saturday, November 26, 2016

Everybody Hates Betsy


From the New York Times:
Betsy DeVos and the Wrong Way to Fix Schools

...Detroit and New Orleans represent radically different versions of school choice — and the one that seems to work is the one that uses the state oversight that Ms. DeVos opposes.

New Orleans is also important because it is the only city in the country where we can compare the results for charter schools with the approach Ms. DeVos prefers even more — school vouchers. In a study my center released this year, researchers found that the statewide Louisiana voucher program had exactly the opposite result as the New Orleans charter reforms. Students who participated in the voucher program had declines in achievement tests scores of eight to 16 percentile points. Since many of these students received vouchers through a lottery, these results are especially telling.
...
Betsy DeVos: Fighter for kids or destroyer of public schools?
Yes, everyone hates Betsy...except for ideologues who believe public education should be eliminated...looters who stand to profit from the dismantling of public education...and this myopic little twit who has a job-for-life with The New York Times for some reason (from The News Hour):

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I guess it’s — yes, of some comfort, I guess.

Sometimes, the campaign seemed to be, as Mark said, vindictive, but sort of a depraved three-ring circus. The transition period has not been that. He’s nominated people like DeVos or Haley who are competent people, who are more or less professional, experienced people.

They may not be, on substantive ground, all of our cup of tea. They are very consistent with the way he campaigned, a nationalist campaign on education policy, a campaign that is enthusiastic about school choice...


DAVID BROOKS: Yes. First of all, charter schools are public schools. They’re paid for publicly and they’re part of the public system. They just have a more independent structure.

And so I guess I would say, we need a reform movement. We have seen, I think, in the charter school movement started out, whatever it was, 10 or 15 years ago — it’s increasingly gotten better. Charter schools are figuring out how to do this. The charter schools that are most effective are scaling the most quickly, and so there’s got to be a continued move for reform.

At the same time, the teachers unions are pushing at that reform, has had some political successes. And so I think charter schools, choice, and frankly school standards need a champion. And DeVos has been a good pretty champion.

Now, I don’t — she’s not without fault. You have got to have two things in education reform. You have got to have some flexibility, so people can figure out what to do. But you also have to have accountable, basically what the Common Core standards were, some sort of set of national standards, so we can measure.

It’s hard for parents just to measure schools. DeVos has been really good at the flexibility. She’s not been enthusiastic about the accountability. So, she’s a complete — an incomplete operator.

But I do think — I have met her a few times. She’s a normal person, a sophisticated person, in some ways a self-effacing person. And she has been at least a champion of reform, if maybe too much emphasizing choice, not enough, in my view, emphasizing charters.
...

DAVID BROOKS: Just, as I have traveled around from school to school, whether it’s project-based learning or an outward bound curriculum, it’s very hard to tell the difference between charters and public anymore. There’s no fine line.

They’re often adopting very similar programs, maybe with a different administrative structure. But what I’m saying is, you’re seeing reform throughout the movement, in the so-called charters, in the so-called publics, if we’re going to call them that. And that reform dynamism has to be kept going.


11 comments:

Robt said...

If you come from a place that just hates schools because it represents something in your head that aches. That in wealthy circles gives you the mother Terasa mantle without really doing the work or taking time in life to involve yourself. I tis just another overly wealthy person with no context of the chatel. But has a deep desire out of boredom to impose "beliefs" without knowledge and experience on people she and her's shall never have to endure.
Sometimes I look at these folks and think the worst, as they want to undermine any notion of "commoners" getting educated that might compete with their wealthy aristocratic children for employment forever more. That educated commoners might attain a knowledge that could put on display the incompetence and secluded bubble of these folks that their wealth equals private schools that us commoners could never compete with.
Take the Affluence law case of the wealthy child who the courts never held any legal accountability for his actions breaking the law. He could not be held accountable because growing up wealthy to wealthy privileged parents who never taught him right and wrong and always had the wealth privileged advantage of getting whatever he wanted.
So he couldn't be held accountable for breaking the law when his wealth always provided him with that aristocratic privilege.

"All men are created equal", but chose the financial status of the parents you want to be born to carefully.
It is right there in the Constitution folks..........

Unknown said...

"Just, as I have traveled around from school to school......"

Bullshit.

- lifeat45rpm

Unknown said...

driftglass,

If you spent even a quarter of the time writing about the goodness you see around you as you do on David Brooks, the world would probably be a brighter, more loving place.

drbopperthp said...

Drifty focuses his lasers on the heavyweight heathens and poltroons - always has, always will. You want someone to handle the cotton candy and unicorns beat, I suggest you forward your resume - see what he can do with it.

Unknown said...

Charter schools are public schools...

Yeah. Except for the profit motive, the exemption from transparency, and the shareholders always being first the students second, they are public schools.

Robt said...

As with many of the floated fart balloons Trump might nominate.
How many are first round bids. To make the next round of bids smell a little better?

From gingrich and Bolton for Sec. of State to now Mitt Romney.

smell a little better? But it still reeks.

Unknown said...

drbopperthp,

Cotton candy and unicorns? How original.

driftglass has chosen his niche, and he's good at it. If he wants to stick to it, fine. I happen to think he'd be more effective expanding his repertoire, that's all.

BTW, Brooks, Fournier, Dowd, and most of driftglass' other favorite targets aren't heavyweights. They have their time in the spotlight and deserve some scrutiny, but they're players in a much larger scheme. They are what the media puts forward to entertain us while the real power finances campaigns, buys politicians, writes policy, gets out the vote, expands income inequality and rolls back the safety net.

drbopperthp said...

What do you have against cotton candy and unicorns? They're my six year old daughter's favorites. BTW, to the point of originality - I see at least three sentences in your response that definitely fall in the category of derivative, being anything but original. You figure out which three (-not so subtle hint enclosed).

Robt said...

In 2000 Bush V Gore, our owners watched this nation sit still with little grumble. The U.s. Supreme Court override state rights of Florida (the GOP's pillar principle).
The silence from all was heard loud and clear.

They wanted their SCOTUS and they got it after Scalia went and croaked on them.

After all the law breaking from the law and order party. Our owners got their SCOTUS so they can return to being the marketed law and order party to control the masses that they cannot control with their funded grassroots religion. The marketing of Whiteness didn't hurt either. Won't personally affect our owners with the occasional Dylan Roof Church shooting.
Do our owners want us to be more like the Chinese? Redistributing wealth or in our cases redistributing our pittances.
There will be no preparing for the redefining of legal constitutional foundations .
No need for Amendments when you have 5 justices that are disconnected completely from Americans. Live a life of insulation from its people. Look down at those people.
The interpretations of our Constitution is going to get an apprentice makeover.
Seat belts will not help.

Yardley said...

The idea of "public" anything is anathema to these grifters.
Wait till all these dumbassaes that voted for this swine find out instead of getting their factory jobs back, Trump is going to shove an orange so far up their dumper that their chinese made safety glasses pop off. Then the real trouble will begin.

jim said...

Scariest bit John Oliver did (among some real boss motherfuckers) was on American education - graft-harvesting McSchools where Jesus riding a dinosaur would be bloody Yale compared to the literally sweet bugger all so many poor wee Yankee tots are getting for a curriculum. Not even a billion Genius Visas can whitewash away a fuck-up that epic - because in the historical blink of an eye those tots will vote.