Yass And DeVos On The Attack

If AFT president Randi Weingarten had to pay rent on all the space she occupies in some right-wing minds, she would be bankrupt in a week. I don't really understand why, for instance, some on the right decided to adopt the talking point that Weingarten personally kept school buildings closed during the pandemic, or why she is depicted as the mastermind behind every pro-public school stance taken by teachers unions. NEA president Becky Pringle doesn't have to take this kind of shit, nor does Pringle get critiqued on her personal family dynamics. 

Maybe the theory is that it's easier to personalize policies you oppose. Maybe they think Weingarten makes a good target. Maybe she really does just get under their skin by being so unapologetically pro-public education. Maybe she bothers them by being an uppity female (I've heard her speak and she is kind of shouty). 

After the end of the Democratic Convention, Jeffrey Yass and Betsy DeVos, two Very Rich People who are devoted to the privatization of education, felt the need to team up (or at least assign someone on staff) to write a piece that ran in City Journal-- Democrats Heed Randi Weingarten at Their Peril. Because, you know, if the Democratic Party does pro-public education stuff (finally), it will be because Randi Weingarten talked them into it. Think I'm exaggerating (again)?

The Democratic National Convention is over, but the party’s attack on families who want better education for their children has just begun. The Democrats’ platform, adopted last week, is even more radical than the 2020 version. It unequivocally states that the party opposes education-freedom policies that empower families. Paired with Kamala Harris’s running-mate pick of teachers’ union loyalist Tim Walz over school choice semi-supporter Josh Shapiro, it’s clear that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is calling the shots.

Yass and DeVos then play all the old hits. "While national Democrats kowtow to teachers' union bosses," the "overwhelming majority of public-school students" and "struggling to learn and falling behind." Some states are "empowering families to find better schools." These (not Democratic-run) states are "rejecting a union-first, students-last platform."

This tired baloney, indifferently sliced. The overwhelming majority of public school students are not falling behind. Choicer states are not empowering families, because they only get the choice that private schools allow them to have. They even write the laws to protect the private schools' "right" to discriminate freely against any students who are not the right faith, the right sexual orientation, even the right level of achievement. The supposedly-beloved right of the student to choose is subordinate to the right of the private school to operate--and discriminate-- as it wishes. This is not students first. 

Nor does this sort of choice favor "better" schools. Decades of research tell us that charter schools are on the whole no better or worse than public schools. And research tells us that, at least by the lousy measures favored by reformsters, voucher results are far worse. 

It is possible that by "better," Yass and DeVos mean "don't include Those Peoples' Children" or "freely indoctrinates students in my favorite religious ideology." In that case, we'll have to discuss the actual meaning of "better" when it comes to schools.

Nor do they address the feature of universal of vouchers that has become so popular--using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school choices that the wealthy have already made, which rather falls outside the "non-wealthy folks need money to escape their failing public schools" narrative.

Yass and DeVos point to the victory of Glenn Youngkin and the defeat of Andrew Gillum and blame Weingarten for both. They do not explore any of the other issues in the elections. Though if they want to talk about the voters, they might discuss how no voucher policy has ever been approved by a state's voters, hence the need to install friendly politicians who will implement vouchers anyway.

They point to Philadelphia and Detroit to say, "Look at all the charter users there." Philly has its own history of disaster and mismanagement, but DeVos should well know the policies she helped promote to cripple Michigan schools so that choice could look more attractive. Tim Walz should know better, they suggest, because charters started in Minnesota and the union leader (I suppose they mean Albert Shanker) liked them fine, which he did before they turned into money-grubbing businesses instead of a chance to teachers to expand their work.

And Kamala Harris gets the old "shame shame" for sending her step-chldren to private school for $50K a year. How can she oppose policies that would low-income families to make similar choices. Except that no policy proposed by Yass and DeVos would give poor children those same choices. They will also attempt to shame Chicago union leaders and members. 

Yass and DeVos cite a survey by EdChoice (formerly the Friedman Foundation), a group devoted to pushing choice policies. Unsurprisingly, their research shows that 75% of the public support Education Savings Accounts (super-vouchers) when asked a totally not loaded question. Also in that survey-- lowest choice policy support is for charters, and the big surprise--only about 25% of parents are aware of whether or not their state even has ESAs. 

But if Yass and DeVos are so certain that there is massive public support for vouchers, why not push to put vouchers on the ballot? But here comes the finish.

Democratic leaders will apologize for not using your preferred pronouns, but they’re not sorry for requiring your children to attend a government school system that fails to teach what a pronoun is in the first place. Families are waking up to this fact, and they’ll increasingly wonder why the Democratic Party stands with teachers’ unions over struggling children. The party ditched Joe Biden out of cold electoral necessity. Maybe it should think about doing the same with Randi Weingarten.

Credit where credit is due--somebody wrote a sharp first line for that paragraph, even if it disconnected from reality. 

It's the disconnection from reality that gets me about a piece like this. It's not just that I think they're wrong on the issues (though I surely do) but that their narrative is so bizarrely off target. 

Who is this article for? Is it meant to convince someone, because to make useful, convincing statements about your opponents, it's handy to understand what actually motivates them. I suppose if you're super-rich and you're used to simply overpowering your adversaries, you don't spend any time trying to understand them. Maybe they were just trying to work out some thoughts they have, which is what I'm often up to here, but I'm a retired teacher with a blog, not a gazillionaire writing for publication in a serious albeit right-tilted publication. 

I'm going to go with the "reinforcing right wing narrative" answer. That leaves the question of whether they actually believe this baloney or if they're just using it as a political posture. Neither is particularly admirable. 

It cannot be healthy to let an obsession with Randi Weingarten haunt your days and nights. Hope these two feel better soon. Randi, too-- it has to be exhausting having the entire Democratic Party kowtowing to you all the time.