It turns out that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos didn’t provide details on the plan to privatize America’s schools during her big speech Monday night. She mostly just insulted people who disagreed with her while offering simplistic, misleading comparisons and platitudes.
If you hear nothing else I say tonight, please hear this – education should not be a partisan issue.
Said the woman who has dedicated millions of her family’s fortune to waging partisan warfare on the public education system.
If we really want to help students, then we need to focus everything about education on individual students – funding, supporting and investing in them. Not in buildings; not in systems.
Apparently DeVos hasn’t heard of economies of scale. Schools can afford math teachers and language teachers and art teachers and science teachers and gym teachers—or could, before Republicans started slashing budgets—because every student’s share of the education budget is pooled together to afford those things, where one student’s share couldn’t cover a full teacher’s salary, let alone teachers for multiple subjects plus classroom supplies plus a building to learn in (we call that a school, Betsy).
Defenders of our current system have regularly been resistant to any meaningful change. In resisting, these 'flat-earthers' have chilled creativity and stopped American kids from competing at the highest levels.
Flat-earthers, said the woman whose display of ignorance at her education secretary confirmation hearing shocked the nation. Quick, someone ask her about climate change.
American kids compete at the highest levels when they are in states that come the closest to fully funding public education and have lots of rich kids, because in the United States, economic inequality is educational inequality. In 2016, Massachusetts scored at the top of reading and second on science in the major international educational achievement test and it resisted the DeVos program by voting strongly against lifting a cap on the number of charter schools allowed to open in the state.
If a menu is full of bad options, then do you really have a choice at all?
Said the woman who wants to keep adding options to the menu while cutting the amount of money being spent. “Hey, this chicken dinner skimped on breasts; it’s mostly cheaper drumsticks. And the side of vegetables is mostly cheap, boring stuff like carrots and peas. I’m going to make this meal better by serving surf and turf with asparagus and avocados on the side, and also I want more choices so how about some black truffle macaroni and cheese and a raw bar and arugula salad and chocolate-covered strawberries and creme brulee. Doesn’t that all sound good? By the way, the budget is going to be less than we spent on the chicken and carrots and peas, but rest assured everything will be the highest quality—no worries about eating those raw oysters—and also everyone will get plenty to eat. Trust me!”
DeVos has no substance to lean on. She’s got nothing but hatred for public education and a lot of money to buy powerful friends. It showed at her confirmation hearing when she was talking about potential grizzlies and revealing that she didn’t know that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was federal law, and it shows now when she has a staff who should be able, in theory, to make her sound like she knows what she’s talking about.