Spotting Fakes and the Death of Reading

I've looked once before at the Stanford study which found that students-- middle school, high school and college-- can't tell the difference between real news and advertisements, fake news, or just general detritus on line. The researchers themselves called the results shocking; that may be only because they haven't previously spent enough time around middle school, high school and college students. But "alarming" would be a perfectly good word to use. And I would argue that these results point the finger directly at over a decades' worth of bad standards-loving, test-driven, reading and writing educational malpractice.

Now at last we can read the overview of their study here, but be warned: Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone Of Civic Online Reasoning is not going to make you feel better about Our Nation's Youth or any of the education reforms of the modern reformster era.

What They Did

The study aimed five tasks at each of the three groups, and the paper I've linked to gives a detailed explanation of one task out of each group of five.

Middle schoolers were asked to evaluate trustworthiness on twitter, consider the reliability of s sponsored post, distinguish between a news article and an opinion column, and determine whether or not letters from a comments section would be good to use in a research paper. They were also shown a Slate home page and asked to find the ads.

Most could find the traditional banner ads, but most did NOT count the "sponsored content" item that appears on the home page, reasoning that it didn't say "for sale." Students also identified some actual articles as ads. So, not so good.

High schoolers were asked to identify the merits of arguments presented in a Facebook argument, as well as spotting the little blue checkmark. I'll allow some slack here, because my students inform me that Facebook is for grandmothers, so they might not be familiar. But they were also given a task with a photo sharing site. They were shown a close up photo of some flowers shared by a user with the authoritative handle "pleasegoogleShakerAamerpleasegoogleDavidKelly" that claimed to be a picture of flowers mutated by nuclear radiation exposure.

While some students did question the legitness off the source, even some who questioned it showed a bit of a reasoning gap-- my favorite dissenter is the student who ruled out the photo, not because there was no evidence that it came from where it claimed to come from, but because it could have been photoshopped. SMH! And many other high school students were fully convinced that they were seeing sad signs of nuclear poisoning.

College students were asked to rate website reliability in several tasks, including one in which they were asked to compare the websites of the a completely legit group and a completely fringe one (check my previous post for that sad story-- spoiler alert: they failed). They were also asked to evaluate a tweeted link to poll results, and got twisted up over the difference between the tweeter's identity and the actual source being linked to. Many of the students simply dismissed the results based on who was tweeting it without actually checking to see if the linked material looked legit.

These results led the researchers to use descriptors like "dismaying," "bleak" and "[a] threat to democracy."

Why none of this is a surprise 

Okay, we can attribute some of this to the test subjects themselves. We're talking about 10-21 year olds, a group that has never at any point in history been famous for their level-headed critical-thinking-based powers of judgment. This is why middle school teachers spend 10% of their day putting out fires about who supposedly said which mean thing about whom.

But that's not the only reason to be not-surprised by what is essentially a yawning gap in reading skills-- for well over a decade we have explicitly been told not to teach students to read or write well. Check out this excerpt:

American president Franklin Delenor Roosevelt advocated for civil unity despite the communist threat of success by quoting, "the only thing we need to fear is itself," which disdained competition as an alternative to cooperation for success.

That's from an essay cobbled together under the direction of Les Perelman, former director of the MIT Writing Across the Curriculum program, and an outspoken critic of computer-scored student writing. The above highlight is an excerpt from an essay that scored a 5. I've written a great deal about the abomination that is computer-scoring of essays, but the bottom line is that computers don't understand what they're reading-- they can only break down the parts and mechanics of the writing. And even when computers aren't used, we've trained test-scorers to assess writing just the same way.

This Common Core writing is the flip side of Common Core reading, which deliberately ignores content and context and pretends that reading is simply an act of decoding symbols, separate from any actual meaning. David Coleman has demonstrated at great length how much he doesn't understand the act of reading, and that lack of understanding permeates the Core and the Big Standardized Tests that come from it.

The kinds of questions needed to read critically, particularly as a consumer of internet news-- who wrote this, when, what are their connections, what's the background of this topic, what are the sides involved and how does this writer connect to them, where are the vested interests, what motives can we deduce before even reading-- these sorts of questions are expressly forbidden in the Common Core world of "pay attention only to what's within the four corners of the text." We often teach (and always test) with small excerpts of larger works, with no context or explanation and with the assumption that content is unimportant.

In the Age of Common Core, our ideal reader is one who can decode whatever we put in front of her, but who doesn't actually know a damn thing.

In practice that is both impossible and undesirable, but it's the north star by which reading instruction has been steered for over a decade, and Common Core ELA has gotten us too damn close to that ideal for comfort. Coleman and his acolytes have done their best to kill reading as a meaningful relationship between  readers and material, steeped in, informed by and building on knowledge of content and context. Their ideal is best captured by a small child taking that dame DIBELS test, trying to decode meaningless collections of sounds because that, boy, that is really reading in their world.

Spotting Fakery

If we never venture beyond the four corners of the page, we have no means of judging true from fake. On paper, to a DIBELized reader who brings no knowledge of history to the task, Adolf Hitler and Martin Luther King, Jr., both look legit on the page. Because the very best frauds strive for perfect consistency and fluency within the four corners of their fakery, Common Core trained readers are absolutely not ready to spot them.

To spot a fake, you have to know the real thing, to understand it and grasp what makes it the real thing. Then you have to compare the two, understanding the context and content and separating the meaningful from the bogus fakery. This, like every other aspect of critical thinking, is not covered on the Big Standardized Test and never will be. Yes, CCSS and BS Tests ask students to compare aspects of two non-fiction sources, but until the task on one of these comparisons involves outside research and the answer turns out to be "Selection A is a bunch of bullshit," students will not be prepared for fraud patrol.

I'm not saying that Common Core is responsible all by itself for the Stanford results. I am saying those results are a predictable consequence of our content and context-free reading mis-instruction over the past too-many-years. Unless you are a Nigerian prince trying to unload millions of dollars, that is bad news for us all.

Opposing DeVos

The edubloggochatosphere have pretty much blown itself up over the designation of Betsy DeVos to the position of Secretary of Education. Oppositions runs across the spectrum, from progressives who are upset by a super-privatizer taking over responsibility for public education to conservatives who thought they were promised an outsidey, drained-swamp, Common Core smasher and instead are looking at an old-swamp, Bush-buddy, Common Core apologist (for what it's worth, I don't see DeVos making any real attempt to defend the Core).

So, how do you like me now?

So what can you do?

First, you can remember that this appointment is not a done deal and is, in fact, subject to the approval of Congress, that other branch of government that is not run by the President.

Second, you can take some easy options. For instance, here's a link to the Network for Public Education, which has once again provided a simple and handy form for contacting your Congressional representative and saying, "Please don't!" The form will provide you with a perfectly swell text, but if you want to add complaints of your own, consider any of the following:

* DeVos is the very model of an establishment big-money Republican-- exactly the sort of people that Trump claimed would NOT be running this administration.

* DeVos has spent her entire adult life tearing down public education. Putting her in charge of public education makes no more sense than putting a draft dodger in charge of the Department of Defense.

* DeVos's ideas about education have been tried, extensively, in Michigan, particularly in Detroit, and they have been disastrous, helping to create one of the worst education messes in the nation with failing and churning charters and grossly undersupported public schools.

* DeVos favors little or not oversight of charter schools, providing the taxpayers with no accountability for how their tax dollars are spent.

* DeVos has no experience working in education or in government. She has literally nothing in her background that would suggest that she could succeed in this job.

If you're a teacher, you can throw in this one

* I know that this administration is unlikely to choose a secretary that I will whole-heartedly approve, but DeVos is beyond the pale. Her history makes her likely to not just mismanage public education, but to burn it down.

Third, if you'd like to work a little harder at this-- call. There are several resources that will help you find your Congressmen, including this one and this one and this one. (Just to be clear, it's your Senator that will decide the appointment, but it's fair game to let your Representative know so that he can tell your Senator about all the fuss he's hearing). A phone call to the office (short, sweet, to the point, and not ranting like a crazy person) will make more of an impression than an email.

Make no mistake-- Donald Trump is not going to nominate someone for the office that we will all (or even mostly) find a great choice. Face it-- nobody has made a good choice for the office in pretty much ever, and Trump is clearly not the man to break that streak. But there is misguidedly ineffective, and there is aggressively destructive. You will have to make your own call on this-- for me, Betsy DeVos is a far-worse-than-average choice for the office, and I am willing to kick a little to let my elected representatives know it. I have no reason to think we can win on this, but I know two things-- you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, and the loser in the argument always wins the right to say "I told you so" later when they turn out to have been correct all along.

Trump: The Ultimate Privatization

People are still trying to unpack what kind of Presidency we have coming up. It suddenly seems so obvious to me that I can't believe I didn't get it before.

I've already made my case that Trump is a kind of naked neo-liberal, as witness by his preference for privatization.

Let's get Betsy DeVos in the Ed Department because her whole adult life has been about turning public education into a private business. Let's propose a public works program, only it will really be a privatizing public works program, in which private corporations can make a bundle by taking over infrastructure like highways. Let's propose health and pension programs that are really about letting private investment companies play with the money that people depend on for their lives. Let's go ahead and privatize everything. Once you see the wind blowing that way, it suddenly becomes obvious what Trump is up to with the office.

Trump is privatizing the Presidency.

I mean, why not? We have gotten used to the idea that previously public services like infrastructure and water and education and the food supply and health care and fire and police departments-- we're totally used to seeing those things handled by private contractors or businesses, primarily for the benefit of those business operators on terms that those private operators negotiate.

So why not the Presidency?

He doesn't want to live in the White House. He doesn't want to take the salary that taxpayers offer for the office. What do those say other than, "I'm a private contractor, a businessman with my own interests. I don't actually work for you guys." [Update: As alert readers pointed out, Trump will actually make money by leasing floors of Trump Tower to the federal security force, in effect privatizing the Presidential residence.]

He will continue to look after his own business interests and profiting in his private enterprises  as a benefit of filling in as a contractor to handle this "President," and he will occasionally do some things that the contracting agency (US Government) would prefer to have done.

But just as charters step in and operate schools, just as equity managers step in and operate retirement programs, just as contractors will step in and operate infrastructure projects, just as for-profit corporations step in and operate prisons, just as all these private operators step in and run these public enterprises while still staying separate and above them (the operators don't own them, because that would involve all sorts of liabilities and responsibilities), so will Trump step in and operate the office of the President while staying separate from it.

This is why so many people remain unexcited by Trump's various behaviors-- we're getting totally used to the idea that there is no such thing as public interests. Just private interests who take on the contract to profit from providing some version of what the public used to expect.

Some people have referred to the election as a hostile takeover, but that's not it at all. We are not going to be living in Trumplandia, but in the United States of America, currently being managed by Trump, Inc.

   

FL: Another Charter Fiasco

Folks will be looking at Michigan (particularly Detroit) for the immediate future, as it's the state where Education Secretary-in-Waiting Betsy DeVos has purchased the power to implement many of her beloved education reforms, in particular, the unfettered proliferation of charter schools accompanied by little or no oversight. But it's not the only place where DeVos has helped spread the charter love-- as a friend of Jeb Bush and his Foundation for Excellence in Education, she also had a hand in turning Florida into the mighty education trash fire that it is today.

Let's look at just one example of what you get when you let any shmoe open a charter school and nobody ever tells him, "Hey, you can't do that!"

Let's travel to the Eagle Arts Academy in sunny Palm Beach.

Male model Gregory James Blount

To talk about Eagle Arts Academy, we have to talk about Gregory James Blount, because Eagle Arts Academy is his show, top to bottom. Greg (that is apparently what he goes by-- I may have corresponded with some folks on the scene) became an Eagle Scout in 1987, which is apparently the source of the charter school's name. Blount graduated from the University of South Carolina-Columbia in 1991 with a Bachelor of Applied Media Science, Film Production / Fashion Photography.

He then moved to New York City to begin a modeling career, signed to the "then-famous" (actually, it looks like they were the ten-years-earlier-famous) agency ZOLI. After a few years of that he went to work for the Peter Glenn Publishing company, and then bought company. He later branched out into becoming an independent producer and a motivational speaker-- that was right after he declared personal bankruptcy in 2010.

Clearly the next move was to open a charter school.

Though his LinkedIN account lists his founder/executive director credit for Eagle Arts as starting in April of 2011 (the same month he launched his motivational speaker career), the school didn't open until the fall of 2014. And Blount immediately ran into all sorts of trouble.

Andrew Marra of the Palm Beach Post has been covering this story like a boss, and the story is loaded with special Only In Florida flavor. Blount had managed to pull off two of the more common methods of using a charter school to line your own pockets. First, set up an organization to "support" the school and milk that for money (in this case, EMPPAC, which claims, as one of its success stories, Joel Osteen's niece). Second, if you're a multi-preneur, let all of your various business accounts marinate in the same big bowl. 

Charter school whiz Greg Blount

Blount hired his own company to produce an arts curriculum, even though Blount had no educational experience or training. He also required students to buy uniforms from his company, which charged  far more than the going price (the Eagle Arts Academy parent page still has a conversation about ordering difficulties from this summer). And he hired a third of his own companies for other consulting work.

And as Jim Pegg, county charter schools monitor for the Palm Beach County School District, told Marra, "Do we like it? No. Is it legal? Yes."

But wait-- there's more. To get the school and curriculum up and running, Blount brought on Liz Knowles, an actual education professional and former administrator of the private Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale. Knowles was to do the grunt work, but a recurring theme in stories about Blount is that he's not really a team player. Knowles told Marra that the last straw was discovering that Blount had set up a company named after the curriculum they were developing (Artademics). Artademics was paid, but the curriculum didn't appear for months (and there's reason to doubt that it was any good when it appeared).

It also turned out that Blount was repaid by the school for a loan that he never gave them -- maybe twice. 

Blount's side firm also provided tutoring before and after school for a price-- though faculty were expected to work the extra hours for free. That went into Blount's big Bowl O' Money as well. Blount's defense when talking to Marra was that sure, he made some mistakes, but he also worked super-hard and he should get something out of all that.

And all of these shenanigans are accompanied by a regular dance in which Blount comes on and off the school's board so that he's always on the right side of the law. Blount would resign from the board, take a payment from the board, and then be reappointed to the board after the payment had been made so that technically he was never a board member profiting from the school.

This fall Blount finally repaid that mystery loan-- not, mind you, because he had done anything wrong, but so the school could get its focus back on doing its work.

That has proven to be difficult. Eagle Arts Academy has now burned through three principals in as many months. Last year's principal resigned during the first weeks of the year over a reported conflict with Blount. An assistant principal was the promoted, and Blount fired that one within two months. A third principal was hired who actually inspired some faith in the staff, but as he promised to look into some "issues," he was suddenly "out sick" for a week. At the end of that week he was gone as well (back to his first love-- I am not making this up-- being a funeral home director). Greg named himself interim principal.

And that's just the top job. Assistant Principals come and go as well (including a field promotion for a third grade teacher with no administrative experience). Reportedly no gifted teacher, and a new special ed teacher brought in to single-handedly teach all special ed in a school of over-600 students. A phys ed teacher fired in front of the students, one of a reported eight teachers who have either been fired or who have walked away so far this year. Classrooms with no supplies or materials. Subs who get hired full time reportedly keep getting sub pay until they raise a stink, and the pay scale in general appears to be "whatever Greg feels like paying you." And through all of this, hiring and firing and dictating pedagogical techniques (yes, this former model allegedly does that, too) and covering for missing staff and letting everyone know just how hard he was working and sacrificing, is Blount.

Eagle Arts is supposed to be a performing arts school. Blount proudly notes that his is the only school with a license to use Walt Disney's likeness, which they do repeatedly. And perhaps that is a hint at another part of the school's sales pitch. Here is a parent review from Great Schools:

OMG was I fooled. The first year, no rating, which was expected and acceptable. Their second year, a D SCHOOL!!! Not one third grader scored a 5 on the math FSA - not one. This is unacceptable. I didn't put my kids there with the hopes of them becoming Disney stars (which obviously a lot of parents believe will happen to their kids). I put them there for the arts, and there are no "arts". No ballet. No music classes. Every year, they say that 300 new students have signed up and will be attending - I say horse sh**. If you're willing to devote 20 mandatory hours of volunteer time for each child you have there, and you're willing to spend $25 a piece for the required school uniform shirt and you believe your kid will be discovered by some Disney wannabe, go for it. My kids are OUT!!! ACADEMICS MATTER AND THIS SCHOOL HAS FAILED MISERABLY.

And then there's this:

Terrible school never fulfill their promises, it's going through financial hardship, it's being audit by the IG, they have two lawsuits against them for over $500, 000, teachers did not have the support, the founder's only interest is money, not the children. Administration was terrible no communication with the parents this year they were rated D

The Eagle Academy facebook page now carries a Thanksgiving greeting from Blount, in which he thanks "the children who come here each day and see their beautiful faces." I think something got lost in delivery there. He notes that "over the next few weeks we'll be adding additional support to our team" which will include a curriculum specialist and an ESE coordinator. In other news, gradelink, the parent portal system, is "nearly operational."

This is all more than just the story of one more disastrous Florida charter operation. Because one has to ask-- how does the free market tolerate such baloney? Why would anyone send their children to Greg Blount, and double why would anyone go work for him? The answer is that Florida has discovered the secret of building market demand for charter schools-- just keep making your public schools worse and worse. One Eagle Arts teacher finds the charter intolerable, but initially took a job there to get out of what they called the worst elementary school in the country. Low pay, lack of support, crazy rules, no resources, bad management-- if you starve and cripple public schools, guys like Greg Blount start to look like saviors and not narcissistic scam artists without even the rudimentary skills or knowledge needed to operate a school.

This is why Jeb Bush and Betsy DeVos are so simpatico-- they embrace the same model of crippling public education and then allowing anyone with a pulse to open a charter, free to rake in the money without fear of law or regulation that will slow them down. This is how you break public education so that you can get all the money to fall out.

Thanksgiving: Playing for Change

Happy Thanksgiving!

I said a lot of what I have to say about the holiday last year. Short version: as a national holiday, it is problematic, but as a day to take stock and pause to be personally thankful, it's essential. I am one fortunate son of a bitch, and what I have been given (especially because I don't really deserve any of it) means I have an obligation to give and to share.

This year, we could all use a little pick me up, so here's Playing for Change.

You probably remember that one video you saw at some point, but you may not realize that Playing for Change, an initiative to create beautiful and uplifting music with musicians that literally span the globe, has kept right on chugging along to over 100 videos. I'm going to share some of my own favorites with you, but I recommend browsing the entire library.

In a world where such beautiful and joyful moments of art can be created, I have to believe that hope can stay alive. And yes-- if you dig, you'll find that the foundation behind this has accepted Walton money and has provided support for school music programs, both public and charter, in many countries. Enjoy the music anyway.

DeVos, the Acton Institute. and Child Labor

Now that Betsy DeVos is set to be our next Secretary of Education, we have a few weeks to unpack some of her intriguing associations.

We already know the basics-- DeVos is a rich patron of the GOP establishment, DeVos wants vouchers very badly, and DeVos wants tax dollars to flow freely to white Christian schools. If you want to now what DeVos policies look like in practice, simply look at Detroit, where she has largely gotten her way.


DeVos money is used to support many organizations, some of which are already well-known, but some of which, like the Acton Institute, are not so familiar. But a look at the Acton Institute gives us a good look inside the DeVos mindset.

The Acton Institute was founded in 1990 in Grand Rapis by Fr. Robert A. Sirico and Kris Alan Mauren and was named after Lord Acton (the "absolute power corrupts absolutely"). Their website says their mission is "to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles."

Acton is a member of the State Policy Network, the Heritage Foundation's loose collection of right-wing and libertarian thinky tanks,  but unlike some of their strictly political brethren, Acton is all about the religious aspects. While they don't quite rise to the level of "greed is good," they do rise to the level of "capitalism is God's most blessed way of sorting out the world." (My words, not theirs) The Institute puts out several print publications, including Religion & Liberty and the Journal of Markets & Morality.

They also run a blog, and that provides a variety of astonishing pieces. Here are just a few recent titles: "Give Thanks for the Miracle of the Marketplace," "Does Acts 2-5 Teach Socialism" (answer: absolutely not), and "Defending Capitalism Is Like Recycling." They also like links to the Foundation for Economic Education like "Thanksgiving Was a Triumph of Capitalism over Collectivism."

It's a spin-off of a FEE article that gave Acton this next winner: "Bring back Child Labor: Work Is a Gift Our Kids Can Handle." It's spun from an article by Jeffrey Tucker, who is an associate of the Acton Institute, Director of Digital development at FEE, and an adjunct at the Makinac Center for Public Policy, another DeVos-backed group that has been instrumental in pushing DeVos policies in Michigan.

 Acton writer Joseph Sunde is sad that modern life, with all its "abundant prosperity" has removed work from the lives of children. Noting the recent Washington Post publication of photos from America's rougher, more child labory past:

The photos surely point to times of extreme lack, of stress and pain. But as Jeffrey Tucker rightly detects, they also represent the faces of those who are actively building enterprises and cities, using their gifts to serve their communities, and setting the foundation of a flourishing nation, in turn.

He then goes on to quote Tucker:

They are working in the adult world, surrounded by cool bustling things and new technology. They are on the streets, in the factories, in the mines, with adults and with peers, learning and doing. They are being valued for what they do, which is to say being valued as people. They are earning money.

Whatever else you want to say about this, it’s an exciting life. You can talk about the dangers of coal mining or selling newspapers on the street. But let’s not pretend that danger is something that every young teen wants to avoid. If you doubt it, head over the stadium for the middle school football game in your local community, or have a look at the wrestling or gymnastic team’s antics at the gym.

Yes, coal mining and middle school football-- pretty much the same thing, especially if your program involves playing games that last ten hours a day, seven days a week. Yes, Carnegie, Rockefeller and other Giants of Industry used to stand in front of their workers and declare, "I really value you as people," and then finish with "So why would you want me to pay you more money?" Yes, we all remember those stories where Rockefeller and Trump and DeVos sent their children off at a young age to work in the mines because they wanted their children to be ennobled.

This is, simply speaking, nuts. This is one step short of saying, "Slaves were actually quite happy in their lives, with a noble purpose to fulfill."

Sunde goes on to say that in modern times, the ennobling world of unskilled labor doesn't require twelve hour workdays and unsafe conditions. And Tucker fills in the rest:

If kids were allowed to work and compulsory school attendance was abolished, the jobs of choice would be at Chick-Fil-A and WalMart. And they would be fantastic jobs too, instilling in young people a work ethic, which is the inner drive to succeed, and an awareness of attitudes that make enterprise work for all. 

Right. Rich folks are making their kids work for minimum at WalMart all the time, so they'll be better people with strong work ethics.

Look, I am a big fan of work. My dream world is not one where everyone sits around on their ass and the money just rolls in by magic. I will even confess to a bias, a tendency to think less of people like Trump or DeVos who have never actually done any real work, but have gotten rich by playing games with other people's money and the fruits of other people's labor.

But this is some Grade A Bettercrat bullshit. The line of reasoning for DeVos and her friends is simple-- some people in this world really are better than others, and those people should be in charge, should be making decisions without being hemmed in by government and certainly not by uppity Lessers who form unions and otherwise thwart the proper order of things. Capitalism is God's way of showing us who the Betters are (they're the ones with the money) and so any government mandates that force us to spend our money on Those People-- well, that's not just bad politics or bad economics, but it's immoral. The state has no business thwarting God's will. Not that the Betters will turn their backs on the Lessers-- not at all. It is a Better's job to help Lessers find their rightful place, so that they can be happy in the work that God has made them for, which is to serve the interests and needs of their Betters. Our modern society is contentious and unhappy because government, often in the hands of evil bolsheviks and their ilk, has upended God's natural order of things, making everyone unhappy. If we could just get the Lesser children back in the mines and their parents working quietly for whatever their Betters think they should get, everything would be okay again. (That's why we call it Right To Work-- we are re-establishing Lessers' right to work the way nature intended them to.) And if we can't get them back in the mines as children, at least we can put them in schools where they learn hard work and discipline and compliance and, God help them, grit, because that's what the children of Those People will need (and who knows-- every once in a while, we may find one who is made of Better Stuff and deserves to be elevated by Betters' largesse). The only Civil Right people need is the right to happily know their proper place. America would once again be great.

This is what we have headed for DC. Lord knows, it's not a brand new philosophy, and it has been informing plenty of ed reform up till now. But now it's likely to become a steamroller that pushes aside well-meaning reformsters (yes, I think there are such things) and crushes the notion of a one-tiered education serving all American students-- as if they were not divided into Betters and Lessers.

Betsy DeVos-- Secretary of Education

According to the Washington Post, according to an associate of DeVos, Betsy DeVos will be Victor Von Trump's choice as Secretary of Education.

It's important to remember that we've known we were never going to get a half-decent Secretary of Education, and that it was always only a question of what form the shafting of American public education would take.

I'm going to hold your hand right over there so it doesn't try any grabbing

So what do we know about DeVos?

* She is an absolutely conventional choice. Once again, if Trump supporters thought that he was going to tap someone outside the box to really shake up the establishment, they will be disappointed. DeVos has long been a supporter of Jeb Bush and his work and is a solid insider among the deep-money GOP crowd. She's a member of the board of Jeb's Foundation for Educational Excellence. She would, in fact, have had a good shot at the position if Jeb! had been elected (Jeb just called her an "outstanding pick" on facebook.)

* She is a big believer in Betterocracy, the form of government in which the people who are just better than everyone else take charge. You can usually spot your betters because they have more money than you do.

* She is a leader of the American Federation for Children, a dark money group that works school privatization. AFC is also a trustee-level member of ALEC, which means when you see ALEC pushing privatization, you will find the DeVos fingerprints on their work.

* The DeVos family tree includes, as you will read countless times, Betsy's father-in-law who made a mint from direct-marketing giant Amway, and brother Eric Prince, who was behind the infamous private security company Blackwater. The DeVos family is a Koch-level supporter of conservative advocacy groups and thinky tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, Focus on the Family, FreedomWorks Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation.

* DeVos was a big backer of Scott Walker, helping to finance his recall fight.

* DeVos has been disastrously powerful in Michigan, where their money helped push the emergency manager law that has allowed the state to suspend democracy for select cities and schools. She helped created the Great Lakes Education Project, which has fought hard for charters and against unions (and most recently suggested that Detroit schools just be shut down). The DeVos disdain for unions (it is so unseemly when the help get uppity) put them in the successful fight to make Michigan a right-to-work (for whatever we tell you to work for) state. The DeVos money is spread liberally throughout the Michigan legislature.

* While it may seem that DeVos is a charterization fan, what she would really like is vouchers, with the prospect of shuffling public tax dollars to private religious schools, new for-profit charters, and pretty much anything except public schools.

* While some choice charter fans call for a robust marketplace balanced with careful oversight to stomp on bad actors, DeVos prefers to let the wisdom of the markets rule and for little or no state or federal oversight be the rule. This has interesting implications for ESSA; the new law includes calls for federal oversight, but if the fed's attitude is, "Yeah, whatever, do what you want," the options available to states will become really large and, in some cases, really scary.

* In keeping with her Station in Life, DeVos has never held down an actual job. She graduated around 1980 with a business and poli sci degree, and a little less than a decade later she and her husband set up an investment management group for her to run. In the meantime, she became active as a political operative and party leader in Michigan.

* It will be no surprise that DeVos has never worked in education, and her children never attended (as near as I can discover) public school. 

* If you can stomach it, here is Dick DeVos explaining how public education can be starved, broken, and replaced with a money-making business.

DeVos's feelings about Common Core are not clear, really. She's a friend of Jeb, but she also runs with the hard right "kill it with" fire Common Core haters. No question that more stories will come tumbling out-- as they do, pay attention to folks in Michigan who have been getting beaten up by this family for decades.

But she would rather privatize public education than help it, she would like to make teachers unions a thing of the past, and she has a deep sense of her own rightness. Chalkbeat also offers the observation that DeVos is used to buying her way into policy victories, and as Secretary she wouldn't be able to just write a check to get everyone to do her will. Or maybe she could. We don't really know if that's not okay in Trumplandia or not.

Well, we knew it wouldn't be pretty. Now we can start to get a sense of just what kind of ugly it's going to be.