Betsy DeVos Is Failing Hard

In the midst of all this chaos and confusion, it's perhaps easy to miss how thoroughly Betsy DeVos is doing a terrible job as Secretary of Education. And by so many measures.

There's the business of managing college loans. DeVos, you may recall, has been pointedly spanked by the courts for going after students who owe money on their college loans even in those cases where the law clearly states she's supposed to lay off. She doesn't like loan forgiveness for people who enter public service or for folks who were ripped off by predatory for-profit colleges, despite being repeatedly told that the rules don't care how she feels about them.

Now she's doing it again by directly violating the CARES act. The CARES act mandates a full stop on garnishing wages for unpaid student loans, but the department has told the courts that they continued to do so (and blamed it on employers).

Meanwhile, after months of standing around offering zero guidance to schools navigating the coronavirus crisis, she has joined Trump in demanding that schools open in the fall. As in, regular bricks and mortar style opening, all the time. In the spring, she was all about opening virtually, which was at least consistent, since DeVos has long been an advocate for virtual schooling. Now, suddenly, virtual schooling isn't good enough. This is going to make it hard for her to return to advocating for cyber-school, but then consistency isn't turning out to be her strong suit.

Take her spirited belief in keeping the feds out of state business. That was her north star for a few years, and the heart of her criticism of the previous administration. Now she has decided that using federal arm-twisting and extortion to force state compliance with her personal policy goals is super-okay.

And nothing says federal overreach like her threat to withhold money from states unless they open up schools the way she wants them to.

DeVos's current behavior is also a great example of why it's a problem to have someone in the office who neither likes nor trusts the public schools she is theoretically supposed to lead and assist. To bolster her argument, DeVos has cited a CRPE study that shows about 1 in 3 districts was actually doing "real curriculum" over the spring pandemic pause. She actually mis-cited that as 10%, but the problem remains. DeVos seems to have concluded that the gap was the result of districts that are lazy, uncommitted, unambitious, or just happy find an excuse not to do their jobs, and so she has further concluded that what's needed are threats and punishments.

Someone who actually trusted and supported public education might have wondered if maybe challenges with technology or issues with training or even the department's own unclear guidance were making it hard for schools to work it all out. Nope-- DeVos just figures that public schools need threats and punishment more than resources and support. If a teacher stood in a classroom and declared that Pat is failing tests because Pat is lazy and trying to get out of doing the work and nothing was needed to teach Pat except lots of yelling a detentions and maybe no lunch until Pat gets those grades up, we would correctly conclude that this is a bad teacher who should get out of the classroom.

It's a fundamental problem-- when you put somebody in charge who neither likes, trusts, nor understands the organizations she's supposed to serve, you get lousy leadership. The person who believes that the building should be demolished is not a good person to have in charge while the building is on fire. When that person is also someone who has no real leadership background beyond whipping out her checkbook and saying, "I can either write something to help you or I can start backing your primary opponent," and that just makes things worse. And when it's also a person who doesn't believe they really answer to anybody...well, the bottom line here is that Betsy DeVos is very bad at her job at  moment when it would be really nice to have someone in that office who doesn't stink.

What school districts need right now is people at the top who ask, "What do you need? How can we help?" Schools need support, assistance, resources. Instead, all DC can offer is threats, baloneyand cluelessness. DeVos is failing hard, and everybody else is paying the price.

Trump and DeVos Can't Make Up Their Damned Minds About Schools

It doesn't seem all that hard to figure out how Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos feel about public schools in this country. And yet, they seem oddly conflicted.

DeVos famously called public schools a "dead end." Just last week, reflecting on the SCOTUS decision, she opined that the history of American education is "sad and static" and "too many students have been discriminated against based on their faith and have been forced to stay in schools that don't match their values."

Trump is admittedly a tougher read, since he's mostly ignored the topic, at least until he worked out that being pro-voucher would be good for some Catholic votes. Just last Friday he was standing in front of Mount Rushmore declaring--

Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but that were villains.

So schools are awful, terrible things that ought to be shut-- wait! What's that?

Trump tweet-hollers "SCHOOLS MUST BE OPEN IN THE FALL" and DeVos tweeters back, "American education must be fully open and operational this fall.”

And they really, really mean it because they promise to get schools the resources to safely--ha! No, just kidding. But Trump does threaten to cut school funding for any schools that don't open, and DeVos backs him up, slamming adults who are just too chicken and insist on making excuses. And Mike Pence has stepped up to let us know that the CDC is going to rewrite the guidelines for school re-opening so that it won't be so hard or expensive.

So apparently schools are not evil drains on America, but essential infrastructure that is so essential that getting schools open again is far more important than battling a pandemic or keeping students, teachers, staff and family members safe. Schools are not dead ends, but so hugely important that nothing should stand in the way of getting them open. OSHA, the CDC, worried parents and teachers--none of them are as important as getting schools open again. Indoctrination is good, and we should get back to it? I was making stuff up before and now I would like to make up different stuff?

Who knew that Trump and DeVos thought schools were this important? I suppose the cynical view here is that they don't give a rodent's posterior about schools, but just want to get babysitting services up and running so that all the meat widgets can get back to work making their corporate overlords richer. Or the cynical view that Trump needs things to look normal to bolster his election. Or the really cynical view that by forcing public schools to open without the funding or resources they need to do so safely, the feds can drive worried parents away from public schools and into the waiting arms of the various privatized options.

Well, it's possible that everyone in public education is now discovering that the feds like us, they really like us. That schools are super, super important and not really awful after all. That Trump and DeVos have had an education epiphany. It's a mixed message puzzler, for sure. We'll see how education stands in a month or two.

Teachers Face A Summer Of Soul Searching. What Do They Do In The Fall?

This originally ran in early June. No signs that things are looking up at all.

We know a handful of things.

We know that virtually nobody wants to continue the pandemic shut-down crisis school model in the fall (with the possible exception of ed tech companies that hope to keep cashing in on it). Elected officials across the country are calling for schools to open again, a position that’s easy for them to take because A) everybody is suffering from full-on pandemic fatigue and B) none of those officials will have to deal with the actual issues of opening schools.

We know that nobody really knows how dangerous re-opening schools will be. Will students become super-spreaders, sharing it at school and bringing it home to vulnerable family members? How great a risk will teachers be running? 

We know that “official” guidance on how to open schools is in short supply, and that what is out there is, for teachers, mind-boggling. The average teacher’s reaction to CDC guidelines is an eye roll powerful enough to shift the earth’s axis. Teachers have conjectured repeatedly that the members of the CDC must have never set foot inside a school, but that’s not the CDC’s job. Their job is to figure out what safety would require. Somebody else will have to figure out how, or if, that can be done.

Finally, we know that based on everything we think we know right now, the price tag for safely opening schools again is huge. Lots of folks are trying to run numbers, and everyone agrees that the figure will be in the billions—many of them. And simply throwing up our hands and going back to some version of distance learning is, we already know, not much of an option—unless we pour a bunch of money into getting it right. 

Teachers know, in their guts, where this is headed. They have seen versions of this movie before. For instance, in 1975 Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which promised every student with disabilities a free appropriate public education. Knowing that meant extra expenses for school districts, Congress promised funding to back IDEA. They have never, in 45 years, honored that promise, and schools have just had to find their own way to meet that unfunded mandate.

And it’s not just the big things. Teachers routinely spend their own money to help plug the gaps in support from local, state and federal authorities. We’re having a national conversation about controlling the spread of coronavirus in classrooms where teachers still have to buy their own tissues and hand sanitizer. We’ve already seen problems with adequate protection and supplies for actual medical workers. Many teachers have a sinking feeling about what is coming.

It will look like this. There will be considerable discussion about what measures should be taken and what measures can be taken. It will be punctuated by discussion of the cost. Congress may, perhaps, toss a little money at the challenge. In the background, there will be the voices of teachers pointing out things like, “With the recommended social distancing, only six of my thirty-two students will fit in my room.” The discussion will go on without them.

By August, elected officials will give themselves credit for discussing things, as if discussing a problem actually solved it. Some will insist that Covid-19 is no worse than the flu and we have to put America back to work. Others will admit that the money they approved is not nearly enough to meet the demands. District administrators will complain that they don’t have the necessary resources, but they’ll still get no more help.

And by fall, individual teachers in individual schools will have to figure out how to do the best they can with the little that they’ve got. The district guidance they get will range from restrictively stringent to hopelessly non-existent. Mostly, they’re going to have to figure out how to cope on their own.

This is not, in and of itself, unusual. It’s what teachers do—figure out how to McGyver a million-dollars education out of three paper clips and some toothpaste. But this time it’s different, because this time it will be a matter of life or death.

So this summer, teachers will ask themselves a whole new set of questions. Can I stand it if I’m required to do more of that online junk that I hated so much last spring? Can I withstand the depressing sight of children daily spending recess in isolated bubbles? If I’m in a high-risk group, will it be safe for me to go back under these conditions? Will doing this job mean I can’t visit my aging parents this year? What do I do if the district tells me that even though X, Y and Z are necessary to stay safe, I can’t have them unless I somehow get them myself? 

It would be great—absolutely great—if elected officials responded to the current situation by saying, “There is nothing more important than our children’s education, so we are going to do whatever it takes, spend whatever is necessary, to make sure that every single schools has every single resource it could possibly need to make its students and staff safe and secure and able to concentrate on the critical work of educating tomorrow’s citizens. We will spare no expense, even if we have to cut other spending, raise taxes on some folks, or spend more money that we don’t actually have.”

Nobody who has been in education longer than a half an hour expects that to happen. Classroom teachers will, as always, have to pick up the slack themselves, only this time it’s not yet clear how much slack that will be or how much it will cost, and many teachers may decide the cost is more than they can afford. Teachers will have a lot to think about this summer.

Originally posted at Forbes.com    

ICYMI: Pet Recovery Day Edition (7/5)

Our current dog is impervious to pretty much everything other than people on our front porch. But my previous dog spent every July 4 cowering under a shed, and every year I think of him and all the pets like him. This year, a number of things derailed our usual Fourth celebration, including the cancellation of local fireworks. But today can still be a rest and reflect opportunity. And I have things for you to read.

Watchdog Report Shows DeVos Still Screwing Around With Stimulus Money   

You know that I sometimes paraphrase these headlines, right. Here's Wesley Whistle at Forbes with the latest in DeVosian misbehavior. 

Rule Followers, Unite! And Stay Alive...   

Nancy Flanagan spins off some meme wisdom.

Summit Study Follow Up (They're still shady)   

So, NEPC wrote a study that suggests that Summit Education is big on claims, low on actual evidence. This made Summit (even though they had steadfastly stonewalled NEPC while they were trying to do the study), and they wrote a rebuttal. Now you can read NEPC's rebuttal to the rebuttal, pointing out that Summit's "defense" repeats all of the problems they were called out on in the first place.

9 Things To Make Black Lives Matter In Our Public Schools

The Grio asked a slate of writers to contribute to this list, including Andre Perry and Jitu Brown.

Education Dept Left Social Security Numbers Exposed   

Along with everything else they've been up to, it turns out the department left a bunch of borrower SS numbers exposed on the web for at least six months. Yikes. From the Washington Post.  

America's Schools Are Named After Some Horrible People  

Rick Hess (AEI) at EdWeek makes a case for renaming the schools named after Confederate heroes. 

The Schools Situation Is A Complete Crisis.    

I have shied away at ICYM from the new sub-genre of "We can't open schools but we must open schools but we can't but here's how to do what can't be done" because, as I'[ve said repeatedly, solutions will be specific and local. But this is a pretty good example in plain language, from CNN of all places.

How Schools Work    

This one, too. Jersey Jazzman lays out some of the details that crafters of these nifty plans have overlooked (because they don't nbecesarily know them to begin with).

City Schools Trapped in Death Spiral   

York, PA schools are in a mess and have been for a while (extra notable because that's our governor's home town). Here the editorial board of the York Dispatch points some fingers and names some names about how this happens, and how bad it is.

The McNamara Fallacy and the Problem with Numbers in Education    

This Chronotope piece from 2015 recently resurfaced and it's worth a read-- a good explanation of how devotion to data over everything else leads to things like catastrophic land wars in Asia. Lots for education to learn.

Success Academy Parent: SA "Discriminatory, Hurts Public Schools."    

A Success Academy parent contacted Mercedes Schneider about problems with the infamous charter chain. Pushing kids out. Classroom bias. 

Trump Comes After Public School Teachers

Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but that were villains.

One of the big pull quotes from Donald Trump's historically shallow paean to the idea of American exceptionalism on July 3rd at Mount Rushmore, an attack on public education and the teachers who work there echoed at other points in his speech.

There was never any doubt that we'd end up here, never any doubt that he would come at teachers.

There can't be more than 11 undecided voters in the country right now, and very little likelihood that this campaign will be about winning folks to one side or another. It will be a contest to see who can get the most people to actually vote. That means energizing the base, which in Trump's case means a steady diet of "They are coming to get you, and only I can protect you from them." The "they" includes all those brown and black folks (you know, except for the "good" ones) and anybody who wants to say anything critical about the country, or about this President. They are coming to get you, and only the strength of Beloved Leader can stop them. Also, Jesus, freedom, America.

So why teachers?

Well, the administration has been clear on its anti-public education bona fides. But it has also been clear about using private school vouchers as a means of currying favor from the Catholic Church, by far the largest beneficiary of voucher programs. Trump and DeVos have both been painfully clear that they want to quid pro some quo when it comes to Catholic school support and Catholic votes for Trump.

Then there's the matter of the unions, which provide much of the financial and organizational backbone of the Democratic party (okay, "backbone" and the Dems don't really go together, but you get my point). So anything to weaken them helps feed the hard right dream of one-party rule in the US.

It seems like an odd choice, given that large number of teachers voted for Trump. Why risk turning them off? Probably because there is no risk--at this point it's clear that the Trump base voter can't be turned off by anything. Literally anything. I expect that teacher Trumpers will look at any criticism of teachers and say, "Yeah, he's right. These jerks I work with are awful. He's not talking about me, though." It's a version of the old question of why asshats have friends--because the asshats friends say, "Well, sure he's an asshat, but I feel certain he'll never be an asshat to me."  This is one of the great tricks narcissists can pull off-- to make you feel so charmed that you can see every one of their terrible faults, but feel certain that you are exempt from their effect.

An attack on teachers is also part of the attack on all sources of authority outside of Beloved Leader, as in the point last night where he blamed all the rioting on "the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions." In other words, there are no institutions you can trust, no source for evidence that can be believed, because They have corrupted them all. Only Beloved Leader remains pure.

So, yes. There was never any question that Trump was going to come at public school teachers, all busily teaching children to hate America. Expect more of the same in the months ahead (including from the students of Trumpers that are in your classroom). 2020. Hell of a year.

Baradaran: The Neoliberal Looting of America

Mehrsa Baradaran, who wrote The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap (a properly self-explanatory title), had a great piece this week in the New York Times-- not directly about education, but involving many points that folks in the education world will recognize. "The Neoliberal Looting of America" is behind the usual paywall, and if you have means to get past it, I recommend that you do. If not, here are a few key points.

Baradaran traces the history and growth of neoliberalism's "ideological coup" that transformed our society, rising out of post-war concerns about them damn commies, rising through the sixties, until

By the 1980s, neoliberalism was triumphant in policy, leading to tax cuts, deregulation and privatization of public functions including schools, pensions and infrastructure.

Ronald Reagan aimed to unleash "the magic of the marketplace," and "neoliberalism led to deregulation in every sector, a winner-take-all, debt-fueled market and a growing cultural acceptance of purely profit-driven corporate managers." The rise of private equity firms have squeezed every last drop out of some businesses (see Toys R Us, J Crew, Hertz, etc). And while Baradaran notes that 2019 was the best year yet for the Captains of finance, she also notes that time has been hard of some of their favorite theories. See if you can recognize some of these terms from the neoliberal assault on public education:

An examination of the recent history of private equity disproves the neoliberal myth that profit incentives produce the best outcomes for society. The passage of time has debunked another such myth: that deregulating industries would generate more vibrant competition and benefit consumers. Unregulated market competition actually led to market consolidation instead. Would-be monopolies squeezed competitors, accrued political power, lobbied for even more deregulation and ultimately drove out any rivals, leading inexorably to entrenched political power. Instead of a thriving market of small-firm competition, free market ideology led to a few big winners dominating the rest.

Perhaps the ultimate argument against the privatization of public education, the championing of choice, the childlike faith in putting the invisible hand in charge of an education marketplace is that beyond the questions of ethics and morality and the mission of public education in this country, above all those arguments, is the fact that it simply doesn't work. It doesn't produce better schools. The profit motive does not drive better educating. Competition does not drive excellence. Even if the neoliberal promises for education are made in good faith, they simply don't deliver.

Baradaran offers some examples, like the banking collapse of 2008 in which the feds picked up all the risks on the theory that the invisible hand would "discipline risky banks without need for government oversight." This is another huge falsehood that neolibs love; Baradaran doesn't quite name it, but it's that belief we've heard over and over, that no accountability system is needed because the market will hold people accountable. Except it doesn't.

We've been trying neoliberal market-driven invisible-handy McKinsey-embracing privatization for at least half a century; it has been really good for folks at the top, and lousy for everyone else. Baradaran's prescription is simple--take things that belong in the public sector back to the public sector.

We can have competitive and prosperous markets, but our focus should be on ensuring human dignity, thriving families and healthy communities. When those are in conflict, we should choose flourishing communities over profits.

Amen to that. Nobody in the US should have to do without basic services, such as education, just because they can't make some hedge funder a few more bucks. And now I'm going to go order Baradaran's book.

Oh Good Lord In Heaven We're Going To Mess With College Loans Again

One hallmark of the DeVos era has been a deep devotion to debt-- specifically the debt of students who tried to go to college, and making sure that Those People don't try to wiggle out of it. She has stayed close to companies in the debt biz, a biz that she has her own ties to.

All of this is why some folks have looked askance at her stated desire to shake up Federal Student Aid, the gazillion-dollar operation that helps finance so many college educations. At one point she wanted to spin it off into a stand-alone business, perhaps because that would insure that no future politicians would mess things up by forgiving student debt.

Now she has announced new contracts with some fun new playmates in the loan biz, and also, some no-more-new contracts for other loan biz folks who had previously thought they were doing okay. The stated purpose is to give FSA customers some world class service, and as one such customer may I just say "Oh Good God in Heaven can't you just leave this stuff alone!!??!!"

My older children graduated from high school in 2004 and 2006, then moved on to higher education of one sort or another. I made it a year or two, and then it was time to start borrowing, kicking off an experience that I have mostly blocked out of my memory because Sweet Jesus on a unicorn!

When I started, you had to deal with a bank to get the loan, which meant finding a participating bank with a pile of money, which involved filling out FAFSA etc, a royal pain of its own and heaven help you if you're divorced and not, as I was, co-parenting with someone who feels cooperative. What I didn't really understand at the time was that I was dealing with a bank, and a financial aid office, but also some loan outfit, but also the feds. I am not a stupid person, but I constantly felt like one trying to navigate that stuff. And naive-- believe it or not, there was a time when I was deeply worried that I would be so extended that the banks wouldn't lend me any more money. Ha!

So I started paying back one set of loans (one separate loan for each semester) and then child #2 started school, and we started over with getting money, but somewhere in the next year or so the feds decided that it would really streamline things to make the financial aid offices take point on the process which, well, I love those folks, but banker/loan officer was not necessarily the job they signed up for.

And the paying back. For a long time, I got little payment coupon books, and that was a helpful system except that during that phase the banks or ,loan companies would pass the time by selling loans back and forth to each other, creating new coupon books and putting new account numbers on the individual loans and not actually saying anything to me about it not buried by that cool technique financial institutions have of sending out 5,972 pieces of junk mail, within which is concealed 1 item you actually need. Anyway, it was during all this shuffling around that I discovered that I had been double paying on one loan and not paying another at all for like, six months.

And the phone calls-- the endless phone calls-- from shady operators who wanted to help me consolidate my loans. Blerg.

Eventually, things settled down. All of my loans anded up in the hands of AES and Great Lakes, and the paperwork was clear and in plain English, and then they had websites that were also clear and easy to use (though for years I made AES send me paper copies anyway, because passive-aggressive crank).

After all these years, it was a system that actually worked. I'm even getting relatively close to the end of paying everything off, thinking every single time I make a payment "How the hell do struggling millennials have a hope of dealing with this kind of debt." But I'm almost there, and now they're going to screw with me again.

Supposedly, the feds will assign me a new servicer, at least for the Great Lakes loans; AES isn't mentioned in anything I've read which I presume to mean that it is really some other company with a mask on. I'll get some new friends to take my money and I'm sure that the whole switchover will go off without a hitch, especially since it's supposed to happen as the year turns over, but I'm sure that if we have a whole new administration that won't affect this at all (don't worry--that's not enough reason for me to vote for Trump).

But for the love of a good blueberry donut, you don't screw around with systems that are actually working. Well, not unless you are up to something. I don't know what DeVos is up to, but somehow in my heart I don't think it's really about insuring I have world class customer service, because world class customer service wouldn't refuse to honor the rules about loan forgiveness. The press release talks about things like measurable metrics, so we'll now deal with people who are focused on making their numbers. Cool. That never ends badly. Yeah, somebody is going to get serviced here. Don't get  me wrong--letting my children start out debt-free as adults is one of my prouder parenting achievements, but why does it have to be such a slog, and on what planet can we expect 18-year-olds to navigate it?  Why do I have the feeling that Betsy DeVos didn't just make things better.