How Privatization Works (Part 2,351,142)

Here's a recent story from the DC area Fox affiliate that shows how things play out when you privatize a public service.

In this case, the service is roads. And this picture tells you what you need to know.

That's right-- $30 to use the express lane.

Express lanes are managed by Transurban, an Australian company that manages, develops, and owns urban toll roads. There's a whole website just for the express lanes of Transurban's piece of the giant paved hellhole that is DC roadways, and it offered an explanation of why they were suddenly gouging commuters on this particular evening:

Tolls for the Express Lanes are dynamic, meaning they change periodically based on real-time traffic conditions to keep the Lanes free-flowing. Because toll prices are based on demand, it is difficult to predict exactly what the tolls will be at any given time.

Tolls can range from as low as $0.20 per mile during less busy times, and up to approximately $1.00 per mile in some sections during rush hour. However, rates may rise significantly above the typical range for periods of time in the event of unusually heavy congestion or a specific event like a traffic accident or lane(s) closure.

Dynamic pricing means that tolls on the Express Lanes change periodically to keep the Lanes free-flowing. Sensors alongside the road monitor traffic levels and speed, and toll prices adjust to maintain free-flowing conditions in the Lanes – even during peak times – to provide value to customers. A network of electronic signs displays the latest toll prices.

Those of you who aren't east coasters may note that tolls for the express lanes are EZPass, a nifty system by which you put a sensor in your car and just breeze through toll booths and pay your toll electronically. So if you are plenty wealthy, or driving a company car, a toll like this doesn't affect your travels other than by keeping the riff-raff off the road so that you can still enjoy a speedy express lane trip. Perhaps that's what we mean by "provide value to customers." Of course, providing value to one customer means discouraging or blocking other customers from using the service at all. And suddenly-- voila!-- you can end up paying taxes to create a public service that you can't afford to use yourself.

All of this makes perfect business sense, right down to using high prices to manage demand for a service that is momentarily "scarce." Sure, it means that you have to forget the whole purpose of the operation in the first place-- in this case, providing roadways that serve all drivers in the DC area and keep the community as a whole functioning well. Now, instead of a single efficient(-ish) public roadway system, you get a two-tiered system, with better services for those who can afford them, and a guaranteed profit for private interests. Does this all seem vaguely familiar?

This will sound familiar, too. The argument for privatizing key roadways is that the state doesn't have enough money to do a really good job, and by bringing in private corporations, the service can get a great new infusion of cash and support-- an odd argument, since no corporation will fail to get every cent of their cash back, and then some, and the public will have lost any say over this. DC customers who find the price of the express lane obnoxious are free to call a "customer service" number at the company and register their distress with an answering machine. Good luck with that.

This is how charterized roads work-- service for some people, big costs for all people, and a voice for no people.This is what privatizing a public service looks like. (This is also, incidentally, what Herr Trump's proposed umpty-zillion-dollar infrastructure plan look like-- use a pile of money to get companies like Transurban to buy and run a bunch of US infrastructure.) (It is also a good analogy for the whole argument about net neutrality.)

Private enterprise and the free market do not-- can not-- value all customers equally. Some customers are "worth" extra attention and service, and some customers (poor customers, customers who can't pay to make themselves worth the company's while) are "worth" little or no service at all.

If we intend to hold onto the value that there are some services that ALL Americans deserve, we cannot privatize those very services. If we want to say that America is a country where we declare that some people just don't deserve anything-- well, then, we need to have some hard conversations about what that means to our national and personal character.

The DeVos in the Details

The United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (yes, HELP has apparently taken a position on the Oxford comma) has a basic form that executive branch nominees have to fill out. The nice folks at Politico are hosting an on-line copy of the 23-page public portion of that paperwork as filled out by USED Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos (thanks, Jennifer Berkshire). So even though we've all been digging after DeVos and examining the leaves in her high-priced tea, this is an opportunity that cannot be passed up. What does her job application for the post of Secretary of Education tell us?

DeVos and I would have been in the same classes in high school if I had gone to an exclusive private Christian school (for exclusive private Christians). She attended Calvin College (a private Christian liberal arts college in Grand Rapids) from the fall of 1975 until graduation in 1979.

Employment

I've accused DeVos of never working a day in her life. Turns out I'm a little bit wrong on that count. DeVos held down two jobs in college. First (January '76) came a job at Gantos, a Grand Rapids retailer specializing in "private label and name brand apparel." Then in May of '76, she added a third shift at the visor factory operated by Prince Corporation, the auto parts company founded by her father, Edgar Prince. She kept both till February of her senior year.

After that, she worked for Amway as a marketing analyst until November of '82, also spending most of '82 as an Amway Independent Business Owner and a Color One Consultant. She stayed with Color One until January of '84, which was the same year that Richard DeVos was promoted to Amway vice-president.

Lining any of this up against any personal milestones turns out to be a challenge-- I cannot find any statement about the DeVos-Prince wedding more specific that "in the early 80s." Nor is it clear when, exactly, the four children were born. Youngest Ryan appears to have graduated from college in 2013. Oldest son Rick was a self-described "visionary" at the age of twenty-one in 2003. [Update: According to the NYT, they married in 1979, so, right after she graduated from college.]

At any rate, Betsy was out of the workforce until 1989, when she helped launch the Windquest Group. From there on, her career is a list of directorships of various corporate money-managing and investment entities. She also has held honorary/advisory positions with the Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs, The Kennedy Center, and the Library of Congress Trust Fund.

Awards and Memberships

DeVos has been handed oodles of awards, starting with a Travis City Chamber of Commerce Athena Award (a business excellence award for the ladies), some more chamber and business awards, some historical preservation awards, and then, more recently, some awards like the 2014 William F. Buckley Jr. Prize for Leadership in Supporting Liberty and Leadership in Political Thought and a whopping four awards in 2016, including the Michigan Information Research Service Political Figure of the Year.

Memberships

DeVos has belonged to a wide variety of groups. Three yacht clubs and three country clubs. The Windsor Club ("the premier private business and social Club in Windsor and Essex County," where you can "dine in elegance" and "impress everyone"). The Detroit Athletic Club ("Before the era of country clubs and long before the Civil Right's Revolution opened opportunities for women, there were exclusive clubs in most cities where powerful men met to discussion deals, finances and politics"). Some business groups. She's a long-time member of the advisory council for the Potters House School, the institution she cites for sparking her edu-reformster fervor. And, oh, that fervor.

DeVos's edu-poli-reformster groups include: the Education Freedom Fund, GLEP Education Fund, Great Lakes Education Foundation, Kids Hope USA, Advocates for School Choice, All Children Matter Inc., Alliance for School Choice, American Federation for Children, Foundation for Excellence in Education (the Jeb Bush group), Excellence in Education in Action, The Philanthropy Roundtable, the American Enterprise Institute, Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, and American Opportunity Alliance.

It's an impressive list, a sign of just how invested in reformsterism DeVos is. It's one more reminder just how little investment she has in the public school system she's about to take responsibility for.

Political Activity

DeVos was sent to her first Michigan GOP convention in 1980, when she was just a twenty-two year old heiress. She scored her first national GOP convention gig as an alternate in 1984. She has never not been involved in the GOP's business, including two state chairperson gigs-- and those are elected. The GOP in Michigan likes her just fine, and she has been active in the party her whole adult life.

Political Contibutions

Holy shniekies. Nine and a half pages, at about 47 items per page. So around 450. Did I mention that this list is for the last five years only?

DeVos has spread her money far and wide. Let me just hit some alphabetical highlights so you can see just how far:

AFC Action Fund for Pennsylvania-- $15,000 (2014)
Alabama Federation for Children-- total of $150,000 (2014, 2016)
Allen West for Congress-- $1,000 (2012)
Altipac (the PAC arm of Amway's parent company)-- $15,000 (2014-2016)
American Federation for Children-- grand total of $1,070,000 (2012, 2014-2016)
Arkansas Federation for Children Action Fund-- $25,000 (2016)
Bennet for Indiana-- $5,000 (2012)
Bryan Holloway for NC House-- $750 (2012)
Carly for President-- $2,700 (2015)
Citizens for Rauner, Inc-- $1,000 (2014)
Conservative Solutions-- $100,000 (2016)
Deal for Governor, Inc-- $1,000 (2014)
Eric Holcombe for Governor of Indiana-- $10,000 (2016)
Friends of Scott Walker-- $10,000 (2013)
GLEP-- $235,000 (2012, 2013)
Great Lakes Education Project-- $100,000 (2015,2016)
House Republican Campaign Committee-- $320,000 (2012-2016)
Jeb 2016-- $2,700 (2015)
Jindal for President-- $2,700 (2015)
John McCain for Senate-- $1,000 (2016)
Joni for Iowa-- $2,600 (2014)
Julie Killian for NY State Senate-- $500 (2016)
Kasich for America-- $2,700 (2015)
Liz Cheney for Congress-- $1,350 (2016)
Louisiana Federation for Children-- $100,000 (2015)
Marco Rubio for President-- $2,700 (2015)
Marco Rubio for Senate-- $5,400 (2016)
McCrory for Governor-- $4,000 (2012)
Michigan Chamber PAC-- $30,000 (2012-2016)
Michigan Republican Party-- $652,000 (2012-2016)
Missouri Republican Party-- $10,000 (2016)
Nevada Federation for Children PAC-- $55,000 (2016)
New Hampshire for Scott Brown-- $5,200 (2014)
New Mexico Republican Party-- $5,000 (2016)
Pam Bondi (yes, that one) for Attorney General-- $500 (2013)
Republican Governor's Association-- $125,000 (2012-2016)
Republican Party of Florida-- $10,000 (2016)
Romney for President-- $5,000 (2012)
Sean Bradley for Denver City Council-- $500 (2015)
Senate Leadership Fund-- $300,000 (2016)
Steve Daines for Montana-- $5,200 (2014)
Tennessee Federation for Children PAC-- $115,000 (2014)
Weiser for U of M Regent-- $10,200 (2014, 2016)
Wisconsin Federation for Children-- $45,000 (2014,2016)
Young Guns for Congress-- $227 (2012)

This is just the tip of the iceberg-- particularly because this is only her personal giving, and not an account of family giving, or a track of all the DeVos-backed groups that function as arms of the family's political empire. With a few free days, you could track every name on the large list showing DeVos supporting everything from all the GOP Presidential contenders EXCEPT her new BFFs and patrons, Pence and Herr Trump, down to a guy running for county sheriff. Betsy's money is very, very busy.

Publications

A whole lot of letters to the editor and opinion columns, as well as one press release. That's it. You may have imagined that a Secretary of Education might have some even-slightly-scholarly publications or articles or plain old white papers, but no. Letters to the editor will cover it, thanks.

Conflicts of Interest

The 'supplemental" portion of the questionnaire includes some open-ended questions, like asking the applicant to list any business dealings or investments or other stuff that might cause a conflict ofm interest, and if so, what do you plan to do about it?

DeVos replies that she will check with the ethics office and file a Form 278 to see if there are any such conflicts. We will reportedly have to wait to see whether Trump's cabinet picks declare these conflicts before or after they are confirmed. You know-- whatever's convenient for them.

The next question asks, "How will you resolve any such conflicts of interest." DeVos, like a good student who has been trained on how to answer these sorts of questions by recycling the prompt, replies "I will resolve any potential conflicts of interest that arise during the course of my service..." and the sentence rambles on a bit, but never arrives at the how. DeVos will resolve her conflicts by resolving her conflicts. Are we clear on that?

Then we get to the "you have to be an idiot to answer these wrong" section, where she is asked such stumpers as "Will you show up to be grilled by the Senate?" and she says yes, which I suppose, given the current future state of the Executive branch, is not a given, no matter how obvious it may seem.

Also, she indicates that yes, she will stop being employed by the family business, and yes, she does intend to return to the family business when she's done in DC but, no, nobody at the family business has "promised" her a job when she gets back, which I suppose is strictly true-- her husband may very well say in four (please, God) years, "Sorry, honey, but I decided to hire another person to serve as my life and business partner." So this line of questions is a little silly. But we can get sillier.

Lobbying

DeVos also swears that she has "never been registered as a state or federal lobbyist" and I suppose that is technically true, as you don't need to be a registered lobbyist when it's your own money you're throwing around with the expectation of changing how the government works. DeVos has done nothing her whole adult life except be a lobbyist, but she still falls outside the specific definition and so we can continue with the same sort of unvarnished swamp-steeped baloney that Trump lied about getting rid of.

There's more to dig through, particularly in the long list of contributees. There are no surprises here, but we do get one more piece of the DeVos picture, a few more details, a few more reasons that she would make a lousy Secretary of Education.

PA: The Property Tax Problem

AP's Marc Levy reports this week that Pennsylvania's legislature (one of the largest and most expensive ones in the country) is expected this year to once again tackle one of the great third rails of Pennsylvania politics-- property taxes.

This system is part of the mechanism that gives Pennsylvania one of the country's largest funding gaps between rich and poor districts. The state provides around 36.1% of public school funding, putting it around 45th in the nation. That means that local districts depend heavily upon local funding, and that's where the huge inequality slinks in. On the bottom end of the scale we find districts collecting $3,100 in local property tax dollars per student, while on the top end, the figure is around $13,000. Attempts were made in 2016 to fix things, a bit, but Democratic Governor Tom Wolf and the hugely GOP legislature have, well, some issues to sort out.

Levy writes that sponsors are expected to once again introduce House and Senate Bills 76, a bill that died a narrow death in the State Senate back in 2015 (a not-along-party-lines tie was broken by Democratic Lt. Governor Mike Stack), but the GOP thinks the math has changed and this year will be different (that's just the Senate, though-- this could all still tank in the House).

The goal, as usual, is to get rid of property taxes entirely. In this case, the plan is to replace them with increased sales tax and income tax revenue. Income tax would climb from 3.07% up to 4.95 %, while sales tax would jump from the already-hefty 6% to 7%-- and extended to more types of items and services that are not currently taxed at all.

The Property Tax Independence Act has plenty of fans and detractors, because it creates a whole new batch of winners and losers. If the act is going to be revenue neutral (more about this in a second), and property owners are going to pay less, then somebody has to pay more.

Renters, for instance, lose immediately, because their income and sales tax expenses go up immediately. Yes, theoretically, the landlord could reduce the rent costs by subtracting the amount that previously went to pay property taxes, but nothing says he has to.

The proverbial Little Old Lady On a Fixed Income, a person who is invoked with great dismay and concern every time any school district wants to raise taxes, would be a winner. She's retired and has no real taxable income, so the income tax hike means nothing to her. She'll just pay a little bit more at the store.

Rich folks with expensive homes win big. The pro-bill forces actually make this part of their pitch; in their example, a person who used to pay $3,500 a year in property taxes would need "to spend $50,000 annually on newly-taxed products and services" to end up spending that same $3,500, but it's better/worse than that because many of the products and services they buy would be previously-taxed, so cost only increase by 1%. In other words, the bigger and fancier your retirement home, the more unlikely it is that you will ever pay the same amount of tax under the new system.

The act shifts the tax burden for financing schools, shifts it from people who own things to people who work for a living, from the rich to the poor, from the old to the young, from homeowners to everyone else, from corporate property owners to private citizens.

Does it at least improve funding equity in Pennsylvania? Wellll.........

Remember when I said it was supposed to be revenue neutral? If that's the case, then we have a problem. Because the only way the state can distribute the exact same pot of money that was previously collected by the state and local property taxes (about $5.8 billion state dollars plus about $13.7 billion local property tax dollars) is to either

* keep funding for each district exactly as before, split up the $20 billion exactly as we would have, leaving the rich districts rich and the poor districts poor or

* giving more money to the poor districts by reducing the funding to rich districts.

Neither solution is much of a solution. We could get greater equity between districts by NOT being revenue neutral, but gathering a ton more money (estimates run in the billions of dollars)  needed to bring all districts up to the funding level of the best-funded districts, but that would require taxing enough to raise those additional billions of dollars.

Do any of these sound like they'll be terribly popular? They're a hit with some people in some districts, which is why the bill repeatedly draws both bi-partisan support and bi-partisan opposition. Oh, well-- if my local district doesn't like the funding sent out by the state can't they just make up the difference somehow, like raising property-- oh, yeah. The local school board will lose all control over its incoming revenue stream.

That's because all school money would now flow from Harrisburg, which means the distribution of funds will become hugely political, and it will be critical for districts to have Good Friends in the Capital.

Meanwhile, the sales pitch continues to focus on how everybody will pay less, or at least so little more that they'll never know the difference. Which is a pretty thought, but even in post-fact America, you can't have everyone pay less and still end up with the same sized pile of money as before.

As is often the case these days, the problem is real. But the solution will be hard, which means we'll spend a lot of hot air and hard times in Harrisburg before we get anywhere at all. Stay tuned.

A Lesson from China

We're witnessing another lesson in how free market forces work, and how business interests often run contrary to the public interest. And the lesson is coming from China, of all places.

This is a lesson that started with Google, way back in 2006. That was the year that Google set aside the motto "don't be evil" for the more pragmatic "don't be shut out of the enormous Chinese market," and willingly provided the Chinese with a censored version of Google. The official rationale was something along the lines of "they're censoring us anyway," but it seemed more likely that the rationale was "do you have any idea how much money there is to be made, because, damn, it's a lot."

Google pulled out in 2010, over a Chinese attempt to hack gmail and other pieces of Google. That response (Google actually called it "retaliation") was remarkable, and it didn't last. Google is set to re-enter the Chinese market.

Businesses looking to operate in countries with repressive, censorship-prone laws face a question-- do they change their basic mission to follow the repressive local laws, or do they pass up the giant piles of money as a matter of principle?

Google, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the tech giants are dealing with that question and while they consider the moral and ethical considerations of modifying their basic mission so-- look, do you have any idea of how much money there is to be made??

The modifications and concessions come in bits and pieces. What attracted my attention today was Apple's decision to remove the New York Times app from the Chinese Apple store. Because the Chinese don't like the NYT, believe it's violating some local law, and Apple wants to stay in China. So the principle of transparency or free speech or access to the press or just the supposedly bedrock internet principle that information should be spread far and wide-- all of that can go out the window if the corporate access to the highly lucrative Chinese market is threatened.

I have said it repeatedly: the business mindset, the profit motive-- these are not inherently evil things. But the business approach has priorities that are not always in tune with larger social principles. And if a business entity is run by people with no scruples or ethical standards of their own, the problem is even worse.

Businesses will put business first, even ahead of supposedly bedrock social and moral principles. That does not make them evil, but it makes them very bad stewards of the public interest. If we turn schools into businesses, business interests will come ahead of student interests, parent interests, and community interests.

And if you imagine that a business approach somehow frees folks from government control-- well, look back at China. There is no such thing as a free market; all markets operate under whatever rules the government sets for them.

If you believe that allowing a bunch of business-run charter schools to open up and compete will somehow give students a more excellent education, you are kidding yourself (and, perhaps, others). The education-flavored businesses will compete to make money under whatever rules the government subjects them to, and actually educating students will be far, far down on their list of priorities.

Supremes May Decide How Much Education Is Enough

The case of Endrew F. vs. Douglas County School District has finally wended its way to the Supreme Court, and it could have some serious implications for school districts across the country.

Endrew F. is a studentwith autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). With the help of an IEP, he attended pre-K through 4th grade in Douglas County Schools out in Colorado (if that sounds familiar, it's because they have been ground zero for some reformy shenanigans, as chronicled in the film Education, Inc.-- but that's unrelated to our story today other than it takes a real bunch of stubborn leaders to get a school district dragged into the highest court in the land like this). Going into fifth grade, Endrew's parents deemed his IEP Not Good Enough, and they placed him in a private school.

Now, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA-- no, I've never known where the damn E comes from--Correction-- it stands for Education, a word often dropped from some namings, which I should have known) says that if a district can't handle the education of a student with special needs, they have to foot the bill to send the student to some school that can deal. The child has to receive a "free appropriate public education."

The F's, however, apparently chose a Lexus for the child when the district only wanted to pay for a Kia, or maybe a Chevy Cruze. And it is over that business of exactly who is going to pay how much of which bill for Endrew's education that puts the matter in court.

This has, as you might imagine, come up before, and various lower courts have applied a some standards that are both inconsistent and vague. For instance, a couple of years ago, courts in Michigan declared that the state didn't have to get students an education-- just spend money on something called education, whether it worked or not. Here Joseph R. Smith explains the central issue of Endrew in a Denver Post op-ed:

The lower federal courts basically agree that the test should turn on how much the student benefits.  But the agreement ends there. Some federal courts, including those in Colorado, hold that any benefit whatsoever — anything “more than de minimis” — is enough to make an education appropriate.  Other federal courts hold that an education must be “meaningful” in order to be appropriate.

Endrew's private school reportedly helped him across the board with learning both how to do math and how to manage himself for better socialization. Douglas County Schools said, "That was all luxury gravy. He was getting de minimis here, so no extra help was necessary." "De minimis" is of course Latin for "the least we can get away with" (e.g. my students would like to know de minimis number of pages required for their paper). As long as Endrew was making any gains at all, no matter how unspeakably tiny, Douglas argues they were meeting their obligation under the law and any additional gains that Endrew or his parents aspired to are a luxury for which the taxpayers of Douglass should not have to foot the bill.

So now we have a court case that will decide what "the least we can get away with" means for schools charged with providing education for students with special needs. And the Supremes are going to hear it.

The case has attracted some attention. Check out the list of "amici curiae" briefs (Latin for "I think this case might end up affecting me or my clients, so I'd like the chance to shoot off my mouth too, just in case the court decides to make its decision based on a semi-public vote") and you can see how many folks are concerned. The National Association of State Directors of Special Education. Former USED Officials. Advocates for Children of New York. Coalition of Texans with Disabilities. Delaware. The NEA. National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools. Many, many people have opinions about this case.

The case made its way to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the court found that Douglas County's idea of the bare minimum was appropriate. (You can find a more thorough and legally run-down here.) The F's swung for the fences and appealed to the Supremes in December of 2015 (I don't know who the F's are, but they clearly have some rich and/or connected friends). After a few delays, it looks like the court might hear arguments on January 11, 2017 (presumably before Herr Trump can install Brittney Spears or David Duke as the ninth justice).

It will be interesting to see how this lands. On the one hand, school districts don't want to have to shell out boatloads of money for fancy frills for students with special needs. On the other hand, when school districts are defining "actual education" as fancy frills, we have a problem. As Smith notes, this is a case that can unite leftie and righties behind the same outcome even if for different reasons-- lefties want to see the education rights of the most vulnerable students protected, and righties want to see parental options protected.

Arguably any decision will let a whole lot of school districts know what, exactly, the law expects of them (at least until our Blessed Leaders decide to "improve" it. Remember that our outgoing administration believed that de minimus was basically to take students with special needs and just, you know, expect real hard.

No matter what side you're on, we're looking at the prospect of the Supreme Court, such as it is at the moment, making a decision about just how much education students with special needs are entitled to-- and from there, it's just a short hop to ruling how much education any student is entitled to. And that is a prospect about which I am exceedingly unexcited, though I suppose, since the Executive and Legislative branches have both tried to micro-manage US education-- why shouldn't the Judicial branch take a shot at it. It's de minimis they can do.

Six Reasons To Oppose Betsy DeVos

Senate hearings on Herr Trump's cabinet picks are coming up soon, and you should be calling your Senator. There are many good reasons for opposing Betsy DeVos as a Secretary of Education.

1) No experience with public education.

This is not like appointing someone to the post of Attorney General who is not a lawyer-- this is like appointing someone Attorney General who has never been to court. DeVos grew up in private school, sent her kids to private school, and has spent her adult life advocating for private schools. She has literally no first hand knowledge of how the public education system works, for better or worse.


2) No organizational experience.

DeVos's experience is strictly in philanthropic advocacy, a sort of checkbook lobbying that has never required her to work with people with whom she disagrees. As Secretary of Education, she will need to work with governors, congresspersons, and the sprawling USED staff, many of whom are going to disagree with her in matters of policy and philosophy. As a philanthropic advocate, she has been able to surround herself with people who are like-minded and/or beholden to her. That would not be her situation as Secretary; she would have to build coalitions, reach compromise, earne trust and cooperation, and all without the use of her checkbook. One of the great criticisms of Arne Duncan was that he could not play well with Congress, instead insisting on dictating as if he were The Boss. Everything in DeVos's background, including her dismissal of both political parties as failures, suggests that she would be even worse.

3) No administrative experience.

DeVos has never run an organization or corporation close to the size of the Department of Education. The department has 5,000 employees and oversees a budget of around $73 billion. Windquest, the energy investment she runs with her husband, has ten employees with revenue around $15 million.Her husband helped fund the 2012 Broadway production Scandalous: The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson, which closed after twenty-nine days. She was chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party for four years, and she has been a successful fund-raiser for many GOP candidates, as witnessed by her group American Federation for Children, a group that exists primarily as a funnel for dark money.  But she has never run a company and never managed a business. Given her belief that "government sucks," it seems unlikely that she will be a quick study in how to manage a sprawling government department-- particularly if she has manage some combination of holdovers from previous administrations and newbies just learning the ropes.

4) Vouchers are bad news for everybody.

Whether we are talking about the traditional school vouchers that DeVos has long advocated for, or newer Education Savings Accounts, there is much for both the left and the right to fear. For the left, vouchers represent a financial attack on public schools. The first moment vouchers go into effect, before a single child leaves a public school, millions of tax dollars will go out of the public system and into private schools. For the right, vouchers are a trojan horse. Where government money goes, government regulations follow. Maybe not today-- but some day, inevitably, every school that accepts federal education money will feel the hand of federal regulation.

5) Nobody voted for Jeb Bush or the Common Core

DeVos is a long-time supporter of Jeb Bush and a partner in his Foundation for Excellence in Education, one of the leading think tanks for Common Core promotion. Nobody was fooled when Candidate Jeb tried to disown the Core, and nobody on either the left or the right should be fooled when DeVos does the same. She would have made a great Bush USED pick, but as you may recall, Jeb Bush didn't win much of anything or anyone in his sad Presidential campaign. We didn't elect Bush or his failed education policies-- why should we get a cabinet pick that is just what he would have wanted?

6) Her track record is terrible.

DeVos has used her family's financial muscle to push Detroit schools to try most of her favorite, favored reform ideas, and the result has been a disaster. The big-money reformers have abandoned it, and Doug Harris, who has done extensive research in New Orleans (the other haven for educational disaster capitalism)  where he finds the results of a total charter conversion "impressive"-- that Doug Harris declares DeVosified Detroit an educational disaster area.  DeVos's educational ideas have been field-tested, and they have failed.

Contact your Senator-- by email, letter, or (best of all) phone. Make sure they understand that this is a mistake.

Yes, a candidate who had positives in place of DeVos's negatives could still be a terrible Secretary of Education. There is no guarantee that another candidate with better qualifications would not be terrible; however, someone whose qualification deficit is this large certainly will be terrible.

It is hard to imagine a worse choice than Betsy DeVos. Make sure your Senator hears that, many times.

Test Prep Abroad

Because I search for a wide assortment of education-related stuff on line, the cookie-bot dance often brings me strange, new advertisements. Like a link to Scoregetter.com, an test prep outfit in Nungambakka, Chennai, which is on the southwest side of India. Just up the street from Pizza Hut.

Right there in the world.

Just up the street from Pizza Hut

I wish I had saved their ad, but some copy from their website gives you a taste of Scoregetter's almost-but-not-quite-there appeal:

A student, for us, is not a client, but a chance to showcase our proven ability all over again. We have, over the years, understood what it takes for students to achieve a good score.

Scoregetters will help you prep for any of the major standardized tests in Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, and the USA. Germany's appeal is "zero tuition fees" while New Zealand "has a global recognition as a contributor of excellent education. It has a progressive education system with many state of the art conveniences." So there's that. The USA is, of course, the "dream destination for higher studies."

And if that sounds appealing, you can see about opening a ScoreGetter franchise of your own.

Of course, there are many folks working the same industry. In fact, Chennai also hosts the unfortunately named CrackSAT. There is no indication on their website, where, exactly, the crack is involved, not even on their FAQ page where we learn that the SAT "is a test that has to be taken for admission into any undergraduate degree Program in America. SAT is an aptitude test administered by The College Board in order to have a standardized format that measures the skill sets required for entering a college."

Also, if you're wondering about taking the ACT, CrackSAT says "The basic premise on which the test must be chosen is the requirement of the college that the student plans to apply to."

None of this is "All your base are belong to us," and my point here is not to pick on non-native English speakers. It's just one more kind of sad face of the test prep industry.

That industry goes back away, with Stanley Kaplan founding his test tutoring company in 1938 (in his parents' basement in Brooklyn), when he was nineteen years old. Kaplan was rejected by medical schools because he was Jewish; he never forgot. Kaplan was an outsider beating on the SAT door for decades until the 1980s when the Federal Trade Commission itself established that Kaplan really could raise scores; soon after, the SAT folks invited him to come speak. Why the change of heart? Perhaps they realized that SAT test prep was hope, and the more people had hope, the more people would take the test. Fun fact: Kaplan was more recently been bought by Washington Post, Inc, for whom they were a huge money maker.

Reuters has covered at considerable length how China's massive test prep industry has pushed the SAT folks hard with security assaults. New Orient is just one of the huge companies making a bundle by cracking the SAT code and leaking test materials and just generally committing fraud.

None of this should be a surprise. When you reduce the process of determining whether or not someone has a future as a college student and has the potential to grow and develop in an environment of higher learning while maturing as both a person and a scholar-- when you reduce all that to a single score churned out by a mass-produced test, it seems inevitable that people will crop up who are more focused on gaming that single score. No test prep-- domestic or foreign-- offers to make okay students into better students, to make them wiser, smarter, or more packed with potential. They all just promise to get a better score. It's just a little more obvious when the company can't come up with the smooth native-English polish and spin of American marketing.

That is changing. One of the big dogs (if not the biggest) in international US test prep is Veritas Prep, a company founded in 2002 by two Yale grads who hatched the plan in their enterpreneurial planning class. Veritas is now in twenty-two countries, prepping for every under grad and grad school test an aspiring US-bound student could need to pass. Their SAT prep is aimed at students who want to be in the top 10%, and their selling point is a raft of tutors who are almost all members of the SAT perfect score club. For just $5,400, you can have 36 hours of their time and attention.

You may be reading this and thinking, "Yeah. So?" And I get that-- we have become so fully adjusted to the notion that a single standardized test should somehow be the arbiter of a student's future worth, to the point that we have made the SAT one of the gatekeepers to entering this country. How did we become so resolutely focused on the wrong thing that we have managed to export our twisted vision across the globe, like bad, mass-produced pizza.