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Thursday, November 21, 2024
Department of Redundency Department
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
NH: Defunding Special Ed
Is educating students with special needs getting expensive for your district? If you're in New Hampshire, Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut has a message for you-- "Too bad, Sucks to be you."
Frank Edelblut was a businessman, venture capitalist, and one-term NH state representative before he decided to run for the governor's seat. He was beaten in the primary by Chris Sununu, son of former NH governor and Bush I White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. Edelblut gracefully conceded and publicly supported Sununu, who then appointed Edelblut to the top education job, despite Edelblut's complete lack of anything remotely resembling education experience.
All of Edelblut's children were home schooled. As a legislator, he backed vouchers and as a candidate he backed personalized [sic] learning. As education high mucky muck, he has continued to back all manner of ed reformster nonsense, including the ramming through of vouchers over the objections of actual taxpayers.
Instead, Edelblut wants the state to consider whether it can provide special education services more effectively and for less money. He said parents and educators frequently tell him they are unhappy with the services provided.
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
So Linda McMahon Is New Ed Secretary
Yeah, she looks nice |
Sunday, November 17, 2024
OK: More Mandatory State Religion
Walters cited a September 2023 incident in which a Skiatook school removed Bible verses from a classroom at the urging of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which contended it was unconstitutional for a public school to allow religious displays. At the time, Walters said the removal was “unacceptable.”
Note the term "unacceptable," as if Walters is saying the fault is not that they broke some law, but that they personally displeased him. That's the language you use when you want people to understand that we're not talking about the Rule of Law, but the Rule of You.
“It is no coincidence that the dismantling of faith and family values in public schools directly correlates with declining academic outcomes in our public schools,” Walters said in a statement Tuesday. “In Oklahoma, we are reversing this negative trend and, working with the incoming Trump Administration, we are going to aggressively pursue education policies that will improve academic outcomes and give our children a better future.”
Walters taught AP History; he knows this is ahistoric bunk. But it fits in with his other activities; calling church-state separation a “myth,” ordering Oklahoma districts to teach from the Bible, buying Bibles with taxpayer funds and trying to open a Catholic charter school. Those Bibles they bought-- 500 Lee Greenwood "God Bless The USA" bibles, endorsed by Dear Leader.
Walters followed that up with a mandatory watch party, demanding that all schools show all students a 90 second video, in which Walters announces the new department, complain about the radical left, say they "will not tolerate" the erosion of religious liberty. Also, "we've seen patriotism mocked and a hatred for this country pushed by woke teachers unions." I guess he cut out the part where he says "like the teacher standing next to this screen, who is evil and woke and out to get you, so don't pay too much attention to her today." Again with the "we will not tolerate that," which I guess is the royal "we." No mention of actual laws so far, just the royal preferences. He wants everyone to be patriotic and their religious practices to be protected.
Then comes the prayer. He says students don't have to join, but he's going to go ahead. He folds his hands and bows his head.
Dear God, thank you for all the blessings you've given our country. I pray for our leaders to make the right decisions, I pray in particular for President Donald Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change to the country. I pray for our parents, teachers and kids that they get the best education possible and live high quality lives. I also pray that we continue to teach love of country to our young people, and that our students understand what makes America great and that they continue to love this country. Amen.
And cut. Also, Walters wants districts to send the video to all parents.
Many districts have indicated they will not be showing the video, and state Attorney General Gentner Drummond says Walters has no authority for any such demand.
"Not only is this edict unenforceable, it is contrary to parents' rights, local control and individual free-exercise rights," said the attorney general's office spokesperson Phil Bacharach.
Not the first time Drummond has told Walters to back it up a step. But history suggests that Walters will just ignore and end up in court over it, which won't really matter, because he's already made his points-- people in positions of authority can too lead prayer in school, teachers are terrible commies, that it is people in power and not laws that rule the land, and he's just the kind of guy that Dear Leader should want with him in DC. Undoing the edict doesn't really unring any of those bells, and the fight looks great on the audition reel for the Presidential transition team.
ICYMI: Blue Skies Edition (11/17)
Saturday, November 16, 2024
November 14, 1960
Heritage: How To Make More Babies
While no silver bullet can increase the married birth rate, developing pro-family policies is essential if Americans want to maintain their political and cultural traditions, avoid economic decline, and strengthen national defense.
Spoiler alert: by "pro-family policies," they do not mean what you think that means. This will not be a discussion of how to provide support for young families, nor will we talk about how the US trails the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to family leave. We just love to talk about supporting families in this country as long as it doesn't inconvenience employers or involve spending taxpayer dollars.
Sure, some governments try financial incentives and subsidized services. But that, they argue, doesn't work all that much. Besides, raising kids has always been expensive. So with a quick wave of their hands, they dismiss any economic concerns that might be holding young folks back.
No, they argue, "the decline in the number of children is driven primarily by values and priorities." Kids These Days lack the moral fiber to have kids these days. Why, back in 1970s (when, they remind us, that birth control pill was first legalized) the standard of living was lower, the GDP was lower, but people were popping out babies left and right. Now people have more wealth and less inclination to spend it on children.
Now, there's a ton of research out there about this very question, but Greene and Burke aren't going to bring any of that up. Some of it actually offers some support for their idea that we're seeing a slightly selfish values shift (and some of it says "Shut up, Boomer-- you're the selfish ones"), but it also brings up a host of other concerns, including economic worries, the environment, the general state of the world. But never mind any of that. They have a different thought.
"The general standard of living and overall societal wealth" are up compared to 100 years ago, they point out, and at this point I, a non-academic non-sociologist, would question how those "general" terms break down. Averages hide a lot of highs and lows, and lots of folks don't get to participate in "overall societal wealth." But never mind. People are getting married later than they used to. If you know actual young people, a hundred possible explanations may spring to mind, but we aren't looking at any of that, because Greene and Buke have a different culprit in mind.
College. Specifically, college financial aid.
People are spending more time in college. "Much of the trend can be explained" by the "subsidy-induced explosion" of college enrollment, and college campuses don't include many young student parents.
Put plainly, massive and unnecessary education subsidies are artificially steering people into delaying or even foregoing marriage and children.
Has college enrollment exploded? Has college financial aid exploded? How "non-existent" are married parent students? These all seem like points for which actual data exist, but none will be mentioned here.
And if you were getting to make the excuse that the job market demands increased skills and education, Burke and Greene say no, it doesn't. Only a third of secretaries have degrees, compared to 9% in 1990, which proves... something? There are too many "excess" credential requirements, and too many subsidies keeping too many people in college for too many years, postponing markers of adulthood.
I have more questions. Like, if college is the culprit, what part of the population does that affect? About five seconds of research reveals that roughly a third of the adult population had a bachelors degree. So what about everyone else? Are they slacking off, too, or is the college crowd just dragging the numbers down all by themselves?
Finally, a Heritage post about education wouldn't be complete with a demand for privatization:
Finally, to reverse the tide of declining fertility rates, it is necessary to consider barriers to parents educating their own children in ways that increase the likelihood that those children will have pro-fertility values.
They call this "universal education choice," but it is clearly meant to be one particular education choice. They want it for "all families" which of course means "wealthy families already using private schools."
Let's Drag Religion Into It
Here comes the Institute for Family Studies, another Bradley and Koch funded right wing outfit creating a basis for policies right-tilted folks want--in this case, traditional straight parents raising children with mom at home. IFS has connected the lower birth rate with a decline in religious connection. Church attenders make more babies, and fewer people attend church so the decline accounts for “virtually 100% of the decline in fertility in the United States from 2012 to 2019.”
Now, other countries with higher religious observance don't have higher fertility, admit the authors, but that's because the politics, economics, and culture are different. There's a lot implied and suggested by that observation; the authors will not be examining any of it. We're just going to leave it at the idea that religiosity differences affect fertility differences with countries, but not between them. Because, I guess, there's no such thing as meaningful political, economic, or cultural differences within a country. It sure would have been interesting to examine, say, fertility differences between the different sub-cultures and regions of the US, but we're not going to do that.
Anyway, religious people put more value on children, making parents "more greatly appreciate the personal, societal, and even eternal benefits of having more babies" and therefor not mind the cost.
Now we get to some big time baloney.
When the government compels parents to enroll their children in school and then provides secular, public schools as the only tax-supported option, it is erecting a significant barrier to parents giving children a religious education.
This is simply not true. I've made the long argument before, but this time, let me offer a simple observation. If we're looking for data, let's consider that the decrease in religiosity in this country has occurred at the same time as the rise in school choice. Most of the religious people making this argument themselves came through public school with their religious devotion entirely intact. That's because not telling you what to believe is not the same as telling you what not to believe. Public education leaves the religion spot in a student's life wide open for the family to fill in as they like.
Conservatives like to argue that they don't co-parent with the government, but this complaint amounts to a demand that the government should co-parent with them, to back them up on a faith that apparently they can't inculcate and grow in their children without someone else's help.
Then there's this:
Families must be able to afford to pay twice—once in taxes supporting the district public school, and a second time for private school tuition—to be able to access instruction that matches their faith and values.
No. Families don't even pay for tuition the first time. That's the beauty of the system--nobody pays all of the tuition ever. This is especially true for some quiverfull family with multiple children. Do they also suggest that it is unjust for folks with no children at all to pay taxes? (They do not). But the unspoken premise of modern choice is that education is a service provided to families; it ignores the notion that public education is there not to serve only families, but to serve the public as a whole.
Nor do religious private schools serve even a large number of families. The authors argue that vouchers put religious private schools on a level playing field with public schools. They do not, at least not as long as private religious schools retain the right to reject and expel students for any and all reasons. And not only do they pick and choose which families to serve, but they frequently fail to serve society by failed and unaccountable teaching.
Greene and Burke argue that religious private schools make children more likely to grow up religious, and gee, that's a pretty thought, but it also shows for the gazillionth time that this is not about actual school choice at all--it's about replacing a public system with a particular, limited set of values. It's about taxpayer subsidies for private religious schools. "Parents should have a choice of schools--as long as they choose a properly religious school."
Education savings accounts, tax-credit-supported private school scholarships, and vouchers should be viewed as key pro-fertility policies. Lowering barriers to families selecting a school of their choice, including religious education for their children, increases the odds that parents will have children and that a larger share of those children will retain religious beliefs and practices that boost marriage and fertility.
"You know, Ethel, I wasn't really planning on having children, but now that our state offers school vouchers, let's go ahead and pop out a bunch."
Early family formation and damn that college racket
Greene and Burke lead with a bunch of stats showing that the median age for getting married and for having children are higher than they used to be, and pair that with the assertion that "fertility is significantly reduced for people who delay" those activities.
Now for some research slight-of-hand. The next paragraph will start by saying that while "many factors" contribute to the late start, "one of the most important is the longer period of time that people spend in school." This is followed by a lot of stats showing that people spend a lot of time in school. Is there anything to connect the cause and effect, other than putting sentences together in one paragraph? There is not. Data about what percentage of late starters are college-educated? Nope.
They note that grad student population increased from 2.9 million to 3.2 million from 2010 to 2021. So... those 300,000 grad students are the cause of the nation's fertility drop? They blame that hop on the Grad PLUS loan program. That has "likely" played a key role, they argue (without data). Some number of people are spending 6 to 10 years in higher education. What number? "Most of them" put off marriage. How many?
We do finally at some data. 43% of women with degrees wait till 30 to have children; of high school diploma women, the figure is 8.5%. Of degreed women, 22% will never have children; for diplomas, it's 11.5%. How do men figure in this?
The authors decry businesses that "chase degrees," which they do in part because those damn "overzealous" enforcers of civil rights have "made it exceedingly difficult for businesses to administer job-related pre-employment tests, and I would love to learn more about this thing that I've never, ever heard of before, but there is no source cited for this widespread practice. But you know-- emphasis on degrees over merit has tricked people into pursuing credentials that they don't need, but which keep them from taking advantage of their peak baby-making years. It's that damned government "free" money in the form of loans (which are kind of the opposite of free money, but if they want to argue that 19-year-olds don't fully grasp that, I won't disagree) and those loans create a huge debt load that further delays baby-making.
Here follows an assortment of data to support the notion that college is expensive and doesn't pay off for lots of folks. Again, I won't argue this.
Now, you might think that a logical conclusion here might be to argue that the government could hand out more grants instead of loans, or that colleges should be restructured to be less money-grubbing, or that government needs to address the economic weaknesses that result in so many people stuck in so many crappy jobs that pay subsistence wages while still allowing employers to demand credentials just because they can further fueling the notion that a college education is important for involving life in the bottom of America's economic barrel.
But this is the Heritage Foundation, so no. Instead, the proposal is for the government to stop helping people go to college and just start working at a young age so that they get straight on to that baby-making. I am sure that everyone at Heritage, and their many fine rich donors stand behind this and refuse to put any of their children through college, insisting that they get out there and get a job. But I get the feeling this is aimed at the poors.
Proposals to cut subsidized student loan programs should therefore be seen as key pro-fertility policies.
The actual agenda here-- "An Education Reform Agenda to Increase the Married Birth Rate and Support Families"
Here's what Burke and Greene say the states should do.
Adopt Universal School Choice.Revive Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs) to Expand Apprenticeships.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Eating Our Education Vegetables
While accountability appealed in the abstract, its allure curdled pretty quickly once voters saw it in practice.
Hess called this Eat Your Vegetables education policy and goes on to explain how visible and immediate sacrifice tends to beat out invisible and long-term reward, and that's what happened to education reform ideas from the BO days.
I have an easier explanation (maybe two, actually).
The accountability systems of the BO era were not Eat Your Vegetables policy. They were Eat These Sharp Pieces Of Plastic That We Swear Will Be Good For You. Also, when you complain that the shards of plastic are hard to swallow and aren't much like vegetables, we are going to accuse you of being against vegetables because if you had to eat them everyone would see what awful teachers the unions are trying to protect.
Teachers are all about accountability; it is baked into the job, right down to the instant accountability of the classroom--deliver a crappy lesson and your class will punish you for it immediately (not by critiquing your pedagogy, but by making your life miserable for 45 minutes). Teachers are not opposed to accountability.
But the Big Standardized Tests foisted on us were not good accountability tools. They did not--and still do not--give a useful, accurate, fair, valid or reliable measure of student achievement or teacher quality. I cannot say this hard enough (and I've been saying it for decades). Watch students take these damn things. Read the questions. Look at the crazy-pants results (last year Mrs. Teachburger was distinguished and this year she's in need of remediation). Read books like The Testing Charade by test expert Daniel Koretz. Sift through the many kafkaesque tales of teachers evaluated by the results of a test on a subject they don't teach taken by students they don't have in class.
BS Tests were like examining elephant toe nail clippings and using them to assess the elephant's hearing.
You get my point. If not, reference the sixty gazillion posts I've already made on the topic. TLDR: the accountability systems created and nurtured back in the BO days did not actually provide accountability.
Also-- if we see the ed reform world as Team Burn It Down and Team Make It Work, with educators far more sympathetic to Team Make It Work, test-based accountability faced another problem because it harbored so many people who pretended to be Team Make It Work ("We'll use these accountability measures to locate weak areas and provide resources to strengthen") but turned out to be Team Burn It Down ("Your scores are too low, so we're going to charterize it and/or encourage everyone to flee").
The other problem with accountability vegetables is that opposition has emerged from the school choice crowd, which has largely resisted accountability and whose new allies, the culture panic crowd, doesn't care for accountability at all.
Hess posits that further discussion of the education menu benefits from "setting aside the main course of culture-infused policy fights" and just talk about the side dishes, which has a kind of "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play" feel to it.
Hess consigns Career and Technical Education and teacher pay to the sugar-frosted stuff list. I'd argue that they're essential parts of making the system work well, but I think his point is that they are sugar-frosted because they (and some other items) are easy political sells (though teacher pay is a good example of an issue where politicians need only express support without ever actually delivering). He tosses some other items into the discussion (wisely sidestepping reading wars) including, of course, choice, which is complicated because the benefits and adverse consequences are both immediately evident (I'd argue that the benefits are both small and visible only to a small number of beneficiaries).
Hess ends by making his predictions for the years ahead (remember, he's bravely doing so before the election). First, there will be a tug of war between political promises and actual costs of things. Well, yes. And the sun will probably rise in the East as well.
Second, we might see budget cuts, but Hess argues there's "no obvious appetite for them." Now we know there's a huge appetite for them among billionaire unelected Presidential advisors, so we'll see how that plays out. Right now I like George Will's line-- "The world's richest man is about to get a free public education."
Third, he sees an uphill battle for accountability fans, and makes a last pitch Eat Your Vegetables ed policy. But here's the thing, over and above all my bitching about the accountability we were served in the BO days-- it was never, ever about eating vegetables.
Educational accountability is hard--desirable, but really really hard. The whole pitch in the Bad Old days was that it would be really, really easy. "We'll just give students a single standardized test. It'll be quick and simple and hardly interfere with the school year at all. And it will generate a bunch of data! In numbers! And that magical absolutely trustworthy and valid data will make it easy to see who's doing the right thing and who's doing the wrong thing, and that magical data will make it easy to design policies that will totally fix all our education system."
Accountability was never vegetables. It was pitched as a bucket full of sugar that would make the medicine go down, and it turned out to be those damned shards of plastic.
If accountability hawks really want to try this again, here's my advice. Rewind way, way, way back. Back to the point where some damn person apparently said, "Instead of talking about what we want to measure and discussing how we could possibly measure that, let's talk about what we can measure in ways that generate easy, sexy data points."
Then start over.
Answer some basic questions. What is the purpose of education? How can we tell whether that purpose has been achieved? How can we use instruments that are valid and which do not immediately trigger Campbell's Law? Who are the intended audience for the accountability system results, and what do we expect they'll do with those results? And how will we manage the inevitable shortcomings of whatever system we come up with (pro tip: pretending they don't exist won't help)?
Yes, these questions are incredibly complex and difficult, but we now have 25-ish years of demonstration that when you try to skip past them or shortcut your way to an answer, you end up with junk, a wheelbarrow full of Twinkies that have been left in the sun too long, a pile of stuff that neither nourishes nor delights.
I swear-- go after accountability that provides real, valid, reliable measures with actionable results, and educators will gladly snap it up like a hearty meal.
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Curiosity Saved The Cat
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Is It Time For Conservatives To Get Back To Ed Reform
It’s also an opportunity for thoughtful conservatives to re-evaluate past missteps and even make amends. That means engaging with public school teachers, a group that has borne the brunt of conservative ire in recent years. As I argued recently in National Affairs, while it’s true that teachers’ unions have often been obstacles to meaningful reform, there’s more common ground between conservatives and teachers than most people realize on a host of issues including teacher training and pay, school safety, student discipline, even curriculum.
Well, yes. It has been a couple of decades, starting with No Child Left Behind operating on the premise that a bunch of teachers were everything wrong and failing in public education, continuing with Common Core premised on the idea that no teachers could do their jobs without careful direction, and all the way up through assertions that teachers are satanic groomers and pedophiles. Not all of that is the fault of conservatives, but is true that conservatives--or anyone else--who wants to work with teachers (and they all should) will have to first apologize and second prove they aren't there to punch teachers in the face again.
The bigger obstacle is hinted at in Pondiscio's piece. Choicers may have gotten voucher bills in many legislatures, but vouchers were on the ballot in three states and they all lost, decisively. The path to implementing vouchers remains what it has always been-- around the voters and through the legislature.
The presents a problem for conservatives, because the folks in legislatures are increasingly MAGA, and MAGA is not conservative in any traditional sense of the word. Sure, they have some of the language down, but consider, for instance, the Trump MAGA plan for education, which boils down to 1) we want to dismantle the department of education because the federal government should have no control over local schools and 2) we would like to exert total control over what local schools may and may not teach.
Actual Queen of Rumania |
One key problem with choice has been accountability. Market forces do not create accountability, certainly not the kind of accountability needed to protect the educations and futures of young humans. Likewise, the argument that we can't "just trust" public schools with all those taxpayer dollars, but handing those dollars to private or charter schools is just fine-- that's not particularly conservative accountability. But MAGA is not real big on any accountability at all, which means more choice legislation that forbids taxpayers from knowing how their money was spent.
That's why I have my doubts about conservatives finding a path back to the heart of education reform, because that path is being guarded by MAGA, and if MAGA is conservative, I am the Queen of Rumania.
But there is a useful piece of an idea here, because I'm going to argue that you can in education find plenty of conservatives involved in education. The place is schools.
Conservative and liberal and education
I have been surrounded by conservatives my whole life. My grandmother was a staunch GOP legislator in New Hampshire for much of her life, and my father was a faithful Republican as well. My ideas about conservatives come from direct contact, not what the liberal media says about them. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about political labels, and I have never fully understood exactly how political labels track onto sides of education debates.
Free market conservatives are a fine old tradition for conservatives; I think their belief in the invisible hand is sometimes sorely misplaced, but I get it. The supposed leftie allies of ed reform? That never tracked for me. Democrats for Education Reform was a deliberate attempt to manufacture a palatable political package for Democrats. Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates-- liberals? Neoliberals seem like Friedman's nieces and nephews.
Trying to track a Dem-GOP divide in education seems fruitless, particularly now that MAGA has squeezed most actual Republicans out of their own party. Too many actors are just muddying the waters by using party affiliation to cover their actual affiliation, which is to power and money.
In education, let's instead divide the teams up this way-- Team Burn It All Down and Team Make It Work.
Conservatives and liberals, nominal Republicans and Democrats can be found on both sides of the debates. But I would argue that "Let's take this time-tested institution and simply trash the whole thing" is not a particularly conservative point of view. Likewise, I think we would find among choice fans both people who want to trash the current system to make room for choice and people who want to use choice to make the system work better. Unfortunately, MAGA and the culture panic crowd are largely Burn It Down--and they just won an election.
As for public schools-- most everyone working in the school wants to make it work better (I suppose it's theoretically possible that there are schools which everyone believes cannot be improved, but I doubt it). Preserve and improve the institution is a fundamentally conservative position, and if you look closely, I believe you'll find that most schools have adopted policies that draw objections not because they are trying to embark on a leftie crusade, but because they believe those policies will help the school work better. Teachers mostly support free lunch and breakfast for students not because they want to promote socialism, but because students are easier to teach when they aren't hungry.
In other words, education debates can go so much better if folks worry more about the goals and less about which team jersey the policy is wearing.
This is not to say that there isn't a huge divide between the Burn It Down and the Make It Work folks, as well as some huge and definitive differences of opinion amongst the Make It Work crowd. And as with every issue in America these days, the entire field is clogged with unserious people who are simply trying to find an opportunity and angle; red and blue don't matter much to someone focused on green.
So what were we talking about, again?
Could traditional ed reformsters from outside the Burn It Down crowd get involved in the education debates again? Are there bridges that can rebuilt and fences mended? Can any of it be done while Trump is unleashing God-knows-what over the next few months, and the Burn It Down crowd rules the discussion? And would you like to argue that all I've said is void because you disagree with my definition of conservatism?
Lots of maybe's there, but I do know this-- the last few years we've had lots of really loud reformster voices hollering nonsense. It surely wouldn't hurt to have more rational voices concerned about education rather than politics, and maybe not burn everything down.
Sunday, November 10, 2024
ICYMI: Catch Breath Edition (11/10)
I have nothing to add. I can't read any more hot takes about the election (they are mostly crap) and I have just about arrived at the point of getting past grief and getting back to the work at hand. But I have a few pieces from the week for you.
Backward, in High HeelsWhat Next?
Larry Ferlazzo examines metaphors for management, and it doesn't have anything to do with election, so there's that.
Friday, November 8, 2024
Betsy DeVos Has Some Thoughts On Trump 2.0
The environment is completely changed.
I think more members of Congress and [their staff] are more informed about what education freedom really is, and what it means, and how it can actually be implemented through a federal tax credit, not creating any new federal bureaucracies or departments or agencies or anything.
People don't have to support federal vouchers. Just legislators.
Of course, as folks who work in government, legislators and their staffs are also smart enough to know that this "not creating any new federal bureaucracies or departments or agencies or anything" stuff is pure baloney. DeVos is proposing a program where taxpayers deposit money in a fund, somewhere, and then get tax credit for it, somehow, and then money from those funds are distributed to private schools, through some process and all of it monitored somehow, maybe even a process for deciding which private providers are eligible. It would have bureaucracy out the wazoo, and add to the federal deficit, too, though I don't suppose anyone cares.
She also sees Title IX on Trump's radar, because there is no panic like trans panic (like all good trans panickers, DeVos doesn't really care about trans men).
She also sees fixing FAFSA as a priority, and she's not wrong.
But of course top of the list is getting rid of the Department of Education. "De-powered" is her term. She uses the talking point that they just want to push the money out to the states to use as they think best. This talking point never includes the part of Project 2025 where Title 1 funds are supposed to be zeroed out entirely.
Klein calls her on her resignation after the January 6 insurrection, an occasion on which DeVos did a fair imitation of a woman whose principles include respect for the country and the processes that keep it safe. But she would like to take all that back now. Here's what she said on January 7, after saying they should be highlighting their great accomplishments:
Instead, we are left to clean up the meds caused by violent protestors overrunning the U,S, Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people's business. That behavior is unconscionable for our country. There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.
Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgement and model the behavior we hope they would emulate. They must know from us that America is greater than what transpired today. To that end, today, I resign from my position...
Here's what she told Klein:
If you recall, my resignation was specifically out of concern for putting myself in the seat of young kids and families. There was an opportunity to lead in a different way, to say things at more opportune times. I felt strongly that we had accomplished many good things, and that we should be talking about those things as we left office.
I know that President Trump has a heart for America and Americans. And he has a very tender heart for kids and families who want the best for their kids.
Also, as she has now said several times publicly, she would be "very open to talking" to Trump about coming back (if he backs her preferred agenda). Way to stick to those principles! Not that she'll be invited back-- she was there likely on the pull of Mike Pence, and that plus her January 7 letter probably flunks her on the Loyalty to Beloved Leader test.
She has other folks in mind that would be great for the job. She thinks an ideal would be a governor "who's led their state in reform issues," and I'm trying to think of a privatizing governor who would like to take his career on a side trip through Trump's education department.
Her advice for the new person is basically "set the same goals that I would." Klein also asks if DeVos has advice for them if they face angry crowds, though I reckon that it would be hard to find someone with less experience dealing with The Rabble than DeVos (an ineptness that scored her a lot of fair and unfair abuse). If DeVos demonstrated nothing else, it was that rich folks used to buying political compliance aren't very good at actual politics.
DeVos says "change is hard" (by which I think she means "making other people change is hard") and "you just have to be willing to deal with the noise and stay focused on the vision for students." This is doubly hard when you think every other person is just a source of noise.