Sunday, January 29, 2017

OR: Protecting the Tests

Oregon has a law-- House Bill 2713-- that directs their Secretary of State to conduct an audit of "use of statewide summative assessment in public schools in this state." It's an audacious, wacky move-- don't just implement the Big Standardized Test, but actually check back and do some studies to see if it's a big waste of money or not.


The audit was actually released back in September of 2016, to what appears to be not very much fanfare or attention. I ran across it only because of an op-ed published earlier this week.So this is definitely Not Breaking News. But I'm always intrigued when  a state actually bothers to see if their reformy measures are doing any good or not, and Oregon has just started out with the Smarter Balanced Assessment folks, so I've decided to take a look at the report.

Here are some of the findings:

The new tests are more expensive. In 2013-2104, Oregon shelled out $5.2 million to run the statewide Big Standardized Test. In 2014-2015, that leapt up to $10.2 million.$8.2 million was for the test and the scoring thereof. $1.8 was for "membership fees." Who knew that belonging to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium was like belonging to a really fancy country club? Also, the assertion is out there that this is a lowball-- it does not account for the inhouse costs for Department of Ed supervision and administration of the test.

The audit declares that "statewide results are a measure of school performance" They say that "organizations" that use test results to "facilitate learning and improvement" can "deliver better outcomes." This is all part of using "measurement information" as part of a "broader performance management framework," and a lot of other baloney that come straight from corporate management consultant boilerplate.

But the audit noted that some people have concerns about the testing, like " how certain student populations experience the test." Or all the time lost to testing. Many of the folks surveyed had some thoughts about how to improve the whole business.Yeah, I'll bet they did.

Having said that, the audit goes on to say that "the test benefits and purposes are not always clear." People who thought they knew what the test is for gave conflicting answers. Parents want to know what the test is for. Teachers want to know why they're mandated to give a test that has no use for the classroom.

Can you guess what the audit's response to that widespread understanding that the BS Test is a purposeless waste? Of course you can-- "The department could clarify its message about the purpose of the test and take a more active communications role." We saw the same thing back when Common Core was still fighting for its zombie half-life. When your product is a dud and everyone is telling you it's a dud and it's proving it's a dud by failing to do any of the things you said it was going to do, why, then you have a PR problem, and you just need to sell your dud of a product harder.

Oh, and then there's this finding:

Smarter Balanced results are not consistently used in ways that provide clear benefits to everyone. 

Yes, we remember this from Common Core as well-- the product is great but you're implementing it all wrong.

Survey respondents identified current and potential limitations to using data, such as untimely results, uncertainty about how to use results, different skill levels in interpreting data, and a lack of complimentary resources. 

The committee forgot to include "the data does not actually represent any useful insights into student knowledge or instruction."

The report slips in one suggestion-- perhaps we need more assessment. "Comprehensive assessment systems" would provide more data, and therefor be more wonderful. We could throw in common state-level formative and interim assessments on top of the summative ones, and just standardized test the little buggers all the time. In fact, the SBA folks offer just such a larger testing package, just in case you're worried they're not getting enough Oregon tax dollars yet.

The audit also notes that a lot of folks think the test receives "too much emphasis." That may be because some folks feel there "are not clear benefits to the students and educators most affected by the test..."

Our next subheading signals that the audit committee will now drive directly toward the weeds.

The test demands more time and depth of knowledge

And once we've set our weedward course, the audit can start saying foolish things like "Because it assesses critical thinking and problem‐solving skills required by the Common Core State Standards..." which a clause without a single True Thing in it. The test does not assess critical thinking and problem-solving skills and neither does any other standardized test out there. That's okay, because the Common Core does not require any of those higher order thinky skills, anyway.

The test does require a bunch of time, though. For ELA testing, most grades require more than three hours, while the math test takes up five or six. Would we make it longer?

Understandably, with so much time invested in the test, many are interested in receiving individual students’ results. In order to offer those results in detail, the test must ask more questions of each student, making it longer. A shorter test, focused solely on the health of the system, would provide less precise individual results.

Got that. The SBA test cannot tell you anything valuable about your individual student, meaning that all the bunk about using the test to determine whether your child is on track for college, or teachers using it as a diagnostic test to see what Chris needs to be taught-- that was all, in fact, bunk. The test we've got actually focuses "on the health of the system" which means God knows what.

Anyway, parents stop asking for meaningful results for your specific kid. It's not going to happen. Quick-- somebody get a PR guy in here.

There were plenty of challenges with test administration. Turns out that when every student has to take the BS Test on a computer but you only have so many computers in the building that work it all turns into a huge mess that even better PR wouldn't solve. One quoted administrator noted that the school computer lab was tied up with testing from March through June. Notes the audit wryly, "We heard that having at least one computer for every student can be helpful."

Also test preparation and administration may have reduced available instruction time. May have. Or instructional time may have been reduced by localized time dilation fields. Or test preparation and administration actually increased instruction time by unleashing the power of black holes. Or maybe SBA tests come with a free time turner. May have??

Hi there! I'm your new testing administrator.


Schools do not always understand test administration guidance or have access to information about best practices.

Well, actually, as I read through the explanation of this section, it doesn't seem like an "understanding" problem so much as a "thinking some of these directives are stupid" problem. Nobody may enter a testing room. Teacher interaction with children testing is limited to "do your best."

Also, the audit has forgotten what it said a page or two back, because this:

The department sets requirements for secure and valid testing to ensure that each student has a fair opportunity to demonstrate his or her abilities... 

We established earlier that these tests will not measure individual student ability. The second half of the sentence reminds us that the school will be judged (and rated and punished) based on these results, and the state wants to be sure they catch all the schools that need to be punished. So let those kids suffer.

The audit also notes that some districts are better prepared than others to take the test. But wait-- isn't the test supposed to measure the school's educational achievement? Why should "prepared for the test" even be a factor-- shouldn't the mere fact of being well-educated be enough to prepare students for a well-designed test?

The audit gives a whole big subheading to Some student populations may experience more negative impacts than others.

For instance, Title I schools (aka poor schools) report they lose a lot of instruction time while trying to do test prep. Also, in high schools, students have the option of doing portfolios to meet Oregon's Essential Skills requirement, which means those students need to take the BS Test like a fish needs a high-powered Harley-Davison.

The audit acknowledges that some students will not be accurately measured by the test, including English Language Learners and students with special needs. You can sit a blind student down at a computer with no modifications to click on answers she can't see, or you can force a student who barely speaks English to take a test in English, but if you think their results tell you anything real, you're delusional. This applies to the student who is functioning below grade level but who must be tested at grade level. This also goes for all the students who are disinclined to bother to try at all on the BS Test.

In other words, a lot of your test result data is junk.

The audit nods to the idea that BS Tests can't fulfill their beloved PR talking point purpose of identifying underserved schools and communities if the data doesn't actually mean anything.

The report comes with a page of recommendations at the end. There are twelve.

1) More PR
2) Check which PR is working and do more of that.
3) Also, more PR directed at parents
4) More guidance for schools on how to use the damn things and PR to make them happier
5) Badger company to get results back faster
6) Look for other data to combine test data with
7) Add more standardized tests more often
8) Badger company to fix all the technical issues
9) Give better advice from state, because that will totally help with scheduling and facilities
10) Actually put in place feedback system so people can let us know about problems
11) Share happy stories about any place this stuff is actually doing some good (aka more PR)
12) Look for "opportunities to reduce individual impacts," or something.

Finally they get to methodology. Many reports like to do this, which is a pain if you're not experienced in this kind of fluffernuttery because you read through forty pages only to discover at the end that the "report" was generated by a chimpanzee using a Ouija board.

This report is a little bit better than the chimp method. Mostly they surveyed people. They surveyed lots of groups, including groups connected to ethnic groups (e.g. Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon), issue-specific groups (e.g. Disability Rights Oregon), the Oregon Education Association, some parent groups, and some reformster outfits that there's no good reason to include (e.g. Stand for Children). Mostly, they involved groups who do not have a track record of really challenging the test, or who are not normally players in the education biz. They interviewed people at the Oregon Department of Education, a department committed to the testing program, so I'm sure they were all about an objective look. They talked to the bosses at Smarter Balanced. They visited six whole public schools. Six! Way to get out there and see how things look on the ground, folks.

The survey was distributed to regular teachers and parents through a government mailing list, the Oregon PTA newsletter and facebook page. Which means that non-parental taxpayers were completely skipped here. 799 parents, a few hundred administrators, and some teachers responded, and the audit concedes there's a response bias built in.

But mostly the report seems to have been built to rearrange a few deck chairs without ever questioning the course of the SS Standardized Test. It's one more example of how to "examine" the testing program and conclude that everything is actually just fine, no large changes needed, maybe increase the PR budget, and do even more testing. The audit does mention that Oregon parents have the choice to opt out of the test; they might want to remember that in a few months.






ICYMI: Has it only been a week edition (1/29)

It is really hard to keep a focus strictly on education these days, and yet tomorrow morning, those of us who teach will be headed back into our classrooms whether the world is burning or not.

Media Consensus on Failing Schools Paved Way for DeVos

Making the case that years of repeating that "everybody knows" how badly schools are failing set us all up for someone like Betsy DeVos.

Channeling My Rage

Mary Holden on finding a way to turn frustration and anger into positive action.

What Taxpayers Should Know About the Public Cost of School Choice

Valerie Strauss and Carol Burris take a look at what school choice really does to public schools.

Can the President Handle the Truth

Yet another excellent response to that ignorant "flush with cash" line

Chris Christie Bashes Teachers, But Now Noone Cares

Jersey Jazzman notes that Christie has returned to his standard fallback in troubled times-- those damned teachers. But this time it's not enough to save his butt.

FaxZero

As our congresspersons make themselves harder and harder to contact (well, harder if you don't have a bunch of money to flash), it's necessary to get more creative. This website will let you send a free fax to your senator without even registering or setting up an account.


Saturday, January 28, 2017

Don't Read Me Today

Seriously. I'm not blogging today. I'm throwing all those words into tweeting, emailing and Facebook messaging my Senators and Representatives and telling them that so much of what's happening this week is not okay (I would be phoning them, but nobody's answering the phones and all the voicemails are full). Not the refusal to oppose Betsy DeVos. Not the muslim ban, exerted against legal residents of the US but not against countries with whom Trump does business. Not that stupid wall. Tomorrow I'll get back to it, but today, I'm contacting my representative.

You do the same. Seriously-- you're already on the internet-- spend the five minutes you were going to use to check me out and go bother your elected representative.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Friend$ of DeVos

If you follow the many pieces about Presumptive Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, you will notice that there are folks who stand up for her as a super-duper prospect for Secretary of Education.

For instance, Grand Rapids Public Schools Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal spoke up for her hometown girl Betsy, and was, according to released emails, prepared to accept an all-expenses-paid trip to DC to give a public school stamp of approval to the private charter school face of Betsy DeVos. The DeVos organization American Federation for Children was all set to foot the bill-- and at no extra charge, they were throwing in some dandy talking points that Neal could use while in DC. All heart, those AFC folks.


In fact, the talking points were so thorough that if Neal was questioned by reporters about how a public school superintendent from Michigan just happened to be sitting behind DeVos providing helpful optics, she needn't worry about how to respond to that-- just say

I’m proud and honored to be a guest of Secretary of Education-designate DeVos and confident she’ll be an effective, compassionate and innovative Secretary of Education.

The rescheduling of the hearing threw off the travel plans, which included a steak dinner and a night at the Marriot, costs for which fall roughly into the "loose money we dig out of the sofa cushions" category for the DeVos clan.

DeVos friendships often are tied up in money; witness the Senate Democrat's inquiry into the several school business operators who have sent dark money floating her way. Nothing nefarious there-- just being friendly with a woman who may soon decide the fate of education entrepreneurs.

But nobody is a better friend of Betsy DeVos than the organization Friends of Betsy DeVos. Here they are defending her a few days ago in the Washington Post, where they speak out against returning to "pre-Watergate" ethics standards where partisanship determines who gets chased.

Well, actually, Ed Patru spokesman for Friends of Betsy DeVos said it.

Patru is a busy friend, and yet, it seems that he is perhaps the only friend. I've looked for the organization on line and cannot find hide nor hair of it. Mercedes Schneider, who has an advanced degree in Look-It-Up-And-Hunt-It-Down-Ology, can't find anything, either. Just a string of articles with Patru leaping to DeVos's defense.

The most likely explanation is that Patru is paid to be Betsy's friend, and that he is a group all by himself.

Patru is currently a vice-president at DCI, a PR firm whose self-description is "an independent public affairs consulting firm that specializes in public relations, crisis management, grassroots engagement, and digital advocacy." A Michigan native, Patru has logged a lot of time with GOP contests, serving at one point with the House Republican Committee. Back in 2008 the Daily KOS was wondering if he was the new Karl Rove. Patru mentions that he worked on John McCain's 2000 Presidential campaign as Michigan media specialist; he also helmed the Senate campaign of Linda McMahon (wife of wrestling mogul Vince McMahon).

He's had some cute spats with other operatives like Jen Crider as part of his time with Freedom's Watch, the attempt to launch a conservative MoveOn that ultimately failed due, reportedly, to lots of infighting. After FW folded, Patru launched his own firm Amplifico which was supposed to provide "corporations and business coalitions with a fully staffed presidential-campaign-style war room on a contractual basis." Patru said that 

Amplifico is prepared to participate in today's high speed news cycle, providing campaigns with "a turn-key, fully functional 24-hour war room [paired] with aggressive online or offline public relations."

Which seems kind of like what he's doing for DeVos right now.

Annnd once upon a time he was the spokesman of the American Automobile Dealers Association.

Friends of Betsy DeVos doesn't have a twitter account, but Ed Patru does, and I've asked him to let me know who else is in the club with him. I'll let you know if he replies.

In the meantime, Betsy DeVos displays another characteristic common to many reformsters-- most of her "friends" are people to whom she has some sort of financial ties. They pay her, she pays them, everyone pays each other. It remains to be seen just how much she intends to turn USED into a pay-to-play business, but at least as long as the department and its secretary have a bunch of money, they will never run out of friends.

More Discouraging USED Appointments

The Trump Department of Education continues to shape up as a place that is, perhaps, more about patronage than education.

Today we have word from the Huffington Post that a memo from Jason Botel (another supremely reformy appointment as Senior White House Adviser for Education) that the following folks have been brought into the department:

Derrick Bolen
Debbie Cox-Roush
Kevin Eck
Holly Ham
Ron Holden
Amy Jones
Andrew Kossack
Cody J. Reynolds
Patrick Shaheen
Teresa UnRue
Josh Venable
Eric Ventimiglia
Beatriz Ramos
Jerry Ward
Patrick Young


The name that has attracted the most attention is Teresa UnRue, a 2010 grad of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh whose background is graphic design and printing and who served as an advance organizer for the Trump campaign in South Carolina. She's also apparently given to plenty of racist tweeting. She's passed along hi-larious Mexican jokes and a knee-slapping joke about how blacks should stop whining because they aren't slaves any more. Ladies and gentlemen, your new Department of Education.

[Update: Politico reports that UnRue's name has disappeared from the list of new hires. Whatever she was going to do for USED, apparently someone else is taking on that work.]

What about the rest of the list? Well, Dr. Google's work must always be taken with a grain of salt, but here's what I can find this morning.

There's a Derrick Bolen who is a regional field director for the Republican National Committee who graduated from Liberty University in 2016 with a BS in Political Science and Government.

 Debbie Cox Roush has already updated her LinkedIN account to show her as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the US Department of Education. Her previous experience is running DCR Creative Solutions of Florida, "an advocacy consulting and events Management Company." She was the Florida State Grassroots Director for the Trump campaign (she previously worked for Rubio). She's been politically active, has not always played well with fellow GOPs, but has little education background at all (Georgetown College, BA in History/Education, 1976).


There's a Kevin Eck who is a professional wrestler who says that Donald Trump is not fit to be in the WWE Hall of Fame. I'm guessing that's not our guy. There are a lot of Kevin Ecks out there.

Holly Ham has also updated her LinkedIn profile. The former Hewlett Packard sales exec and management consultant was a program adviser for the Trump campaign's data operations. Education background? Not so much.

Ron Holden is probably not the Seattle-based R&B singer, but you should totally check him out. 

Amy Jones? Another name that's hard to filter down.

 Andrew Kossack is straight from the Richard Fairbanks Foundation in Indiana, a money-shuttling service for Indianapolis grant-seekers. Before that, Indiana Department of Revenue commissioner and chief of staff, before that a Deputy Policy Director for the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and before that on the staff of Governor Mike Pence. He did spend about seventeen months in positions with "education" in the title. But his political and reformy connections are clearly strong.

Cody Reynolds. Not sure.

Patrick Shaheen has a Trump-loving twitter account and appears to have ties to New Hampshire, which makes me think he's this guy-- a field director for both the NH Republican State Committee and the Americans for Prosperity. Shaheen has attended many schools on his path toward lawyering, but none have intersected with education.

Josh Venable  helped prepare Betsy DeVos for her hearing after previously trying to help Jeb Bush get elected. He's also a former board member of FEE.

Eric Ventimiglia worked as a legislative aid and constituents relations manager for the Michigan House of Representatives. He graduated from Oakland University with a BA in Poli Sci in 2007.

Beatriz Ramos-- well, there was a travel aide for the Lt. Governor of Florida by that name involved in a briefly salacious scandal. Jerry Ward has a notably common name. Ditto Patrick Young.

I should note that none of the names I couldn't narrow down included people who were noted or accomplished educators.

Mostly what we have here are political operatives being rewarded. Apparently that's the USED mission-- reward folks for their assistance to political leaders.Let's hope that eventually one or two people who actually know about public education sneak in there somewhere.


 

Thursday, January 26, 2017

IN: Teacher Sit-in For DeVos Senator

Todd Young was born in 1972 in Lancaster, PA. Today (Thursday) he's an Indiana senator with an office full of grumpy teachers.

Young's family moved him to Indiana, where he graduated from public high school and then went straight into the Navy, from there to the Naval Academy, graduated Cum Laude, got a commission in the Marines. Soccer star, intelligence officer, head recruiter in Chicago/Indiana area. Honorably discharged in 2000. Studied in London. Earned a law degree.

In the meantime, he also worked for the Heritage Foundation, worked for Senator Richard Lugar, and volunteered for Mitch Daniels gubernatorial campaign. He got the bug.

In 2010 he ran as a Republican for Indiana's 9th District with endorsements from luminaries all the way up to Dan Quayle. He defeated an incumbent. He had what was called a mixed record. In 2016, he decided to step up to a Senate seat. He won the GOP primary and trounced Evan Bayh in the general election to take Quayle's former seat (he's also married to Quayle's niece).

This "Marine unafraid to stand for conservative principles" had some help getting elected. The fight with Bayh drew a grand total of $38 million total in "outside money", with $24.3 million of that going to Young.

Young now sits on the Senate HELP committee, the one deciding the fate of Education Secretary-in-waiting Betsy DeVos. Want to guess who helped swell the Young coffers just last year?

Which brings us to today. Teachers have noticed that DeVos gave at least $48,000 to Young last year. Granted, that was a small drop in a $24 million bucket. Of course, it's also a year's salary for lots of teachers. Those teachers have demanded that Young recuse himself, and today they were driving the point home by staging a sit-in in his office.

Young's staff has pointed out that this sort of greasy-palmed cross-pollination of political backer and cabinet hopeful has occurred before, citing Senator Joe Donnelly's receipt of a contribution from Commerce Secretary hopeful Penny Pritzer. On the other hand, Pritzer's contribution was $5,000 in 2013 dollars, and she was a relatively non-controversial candidate who was approved 97-1.

Young's not going to recuse himself, and he's not going to vote against DeVos, either. But the sit-in today is a reminder to Indiana and the nation about how business is conducted these days. My hat is off to those Indiana teachers who made the gesture to help bring attention to just how this process is working.

Edushyster In DeVosland

Jennifer Berkshire often takes the unusual blogging step of doing actual journalism, like the kind where you call people and go places and actually talk to the carbon-based life forms who are involved in What's Going On. That's just part of what makes Edushyster required reading for anybody in the ed debates.

She recently traveled to DeVosland, the Michigan home base and spawning ground for Betsy DeVos, presumptive Secretary of Education, and her clan. Nine days, forty-some interviews, and a couple of exceptional posts were the product, but I wanted to hear more (and to add my vote for her to write a full-on book), so I took a page from her book and talked to her via phone. There are so many more stories to tell.
Berkshire has a keen sense of a particularly worded phrase, and she was struck by Jeb Bush's pledge pledge that DeVos would be a "champion of parents, not institutions" which strikes her a reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher's "There is no such thing as society." What Thatcher meant was that there are only individuals, families and other groups of humans, but larger social structures aren't real-- particularly the ones that are charged with providing support and service for society's members. When DeVos says that she doesn't stand with institutions, that includes institutions that look out for vulnerable citizens who may not have the power to look out for themselves. You know. Like schools.

Traveling to Michigan is really a must when studying DeVos, because within the state, they've never been particularly sneaky or subtle about what they want; it's almost as if it never occurred to them that someday Betsy might need to talk about civil rights with a straight face. Berkshire says, "For example, the family paw prints are all over various legislative maneuvers intended to disenfranchise African Americans, the beefed up emergency manager law that created the Flint water disaster being just one of these." Berkshire says that several (off-the-record) legislators said that Betsy herself helped push through a measure to end straight ticket voting at election time in order to discourage black voters in Flint and Detroit by making lines longer and slower. A judge struck it down for that very reason.

Berkshire also notes that Michigan is essentially a one-party state. The DeVos clan doesn't really deal with Democrats at all, but focuses a lot of attention on keeping their own party in line. There's a long list of people who "have been taken to the woodshed," and the clan often brings a great deal of firepower to even small betrayals (which suggests one reason that DeVos might be a good fit for a Trump administration). DeVos demands that legislators show more loyalty to the family than to the voters.

Some folks in Michigan say that DeVos can be flexible when it suits her. Race to the Top was initially viewed with suspicion until, some claim, Betsy figured out that it could be used to break Detroit City Schools. While the knock on DeVos is that she is anti-accountability, some Michigan folks say she can embrace accountability quite well when it lets her blow shit up.

Consider specifically the story of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA), a fun Michigan version of the state takeover district dodge. Berkshire tells the tale:

The EAA was initially created in an effort to win Race to the Top money, and DeVos and her allies were meh about it because it was really a Broad thing. But within three months, they’re pushing hard to expand the EAA statewide, even though there wasn’t yet any data. If you go back and look at the debate over expanding the EAA, you can almost feel the DeVos’ realization that they’ve been handed a gift with this thing that will enable them to go after their favorite targets--teachers unions, school boards, public school buildings. And by 2014, even when it was a measurable, disastrous failure, they were threatening to primary anyone who voted against expanding the EAA.

There are other side stories in the Mitten State. There's the story of how Detroit was on its way to being a portfolio district, with a whole alphabet soup of reformy groups carving up the spoils before Betsy blew the whole thing up and sent many reformy groups packing. There's a good reason that "progressive" reformsters are not lining up to back her.

Scan the Mitten state landscape and you’ll notice something interesting: there are virtually no #edreform groups. Where are they all? Michigan DFER is dead. Excellent Schools Detroit has withered away. Even Ed Trust, one of the last group’s standing, has come out against DeVos. In my interview with Gary Naeyaert, Betsy’s right-hand man at GLEP, he even accused the Waltons of “cutting and running”!

There's also the fascinating story of how the clan busted the union, but other groups have risen up to become equally annoying. Surprisingly, many Charter Management Organizations, which have historically depending on TFA as their classroom fillers no longer want to work with Teach for America because TFAers have gotten themselves a reputation for being troublemakers (aka keep trying to start unions, the little ingrates).

There's the infamous University of Michigan study of charter success in Michigan that is now three years overdue. Instead, the DeVos charter crowd keeps plugging the same old CREDO study. Where are the newer numbers? Nobody seems to know-- it's almost as if someone doesn't want that information to get out.

Berkshire also has some good stories about charter pluggers in Michigan, who have to go through some real contortions because Michigan is such a charter disaster. There is the story (recounted in her blog here) of the charter fans who, when asked to name a shining star, a prime example of great Michigan charters in action, actually named the charter run by an optometrist who was sent to jail for running his fraudulent charter school. That's their shining star.

If DeVos is confirmed (and while I will keep calling, and you should too, a confirmation is hugely likely), there will be some small upsides. Berkshire notes that defenders of public ed will no longer have to struggle to show the connection between charters, choice, and the privatization of pieces of a dismantled public ed system. Kind of like all those House episodes where he deliberately makes the disease worse so that it's easier to see and diagnose. Sending DeVos to DC may also earn Michigan a breather.

And if DeVos is confirmed, all of Berkshire's material will become hugely relevant and she can write the full account of DeVos's Michigan.