The confirmation process, led Jacques, was "grueling" with DeVos facing "ferocious and largely personal attacks on her character" as well as attacks about her support of school choice. But in keeping with the sorry-not-sorry tone of the piece, Jacques suggests that it was mean to hammer DeVos for her comments about choice, but not that any of the hammering was unfair, inaccurate or anything other than a response to what DeVos actually believes and says. And while I actually agree that some attacks were not useful (piling on over "historical" and bears seems pointless, criticizing DeVos based on her experience in education was difficult because she has none, just as she has no experience working at a job, for a boss. Or starting out with little and working hard to get ahead. Or, despite the honorary "businesswoman" label that some media awarded her, the lack of running any organization or business of any size. Maybe it feels personal to bring up DeVos's complete lack of educational experience, but her utter lack of even the thinnest qualification for the job was precisely the problem.
I am disappointed with how some people have behaved, yes. But I still remain very hopeful that if people can unite around doing what’s right for kids we can ultimately find common ground.
Well, goodness gracious. We'll all try to behave better. But I do give her credit for mastering the kind of empty rhetoric favored by USED Secretaries. If we all agreed on what was right for kids, there's be a lot less contention of course. But DeVos is already on record believing that government doesn't know what's right for anyone, and she's also been clear that some folks (lookin' at you, teacher unions) don't really care about what's right for kids anyway.
Jacques also wanted to know, given all the discussion and criticism in the media, well-- how did that make her feel?? Which-- really? Is anyone asking Jeff Sessions how he feels? Is anyone asking Bernie Sanders how he feels? Granted, President Snowflake lets us know about his feels all the time, so maybe things are changed, but I can't help thinking that nobody would be asking DeVos about her feelings if she were a man. Anyway, how does she feel? Did this all make her feel mad?
"Yes, at times it certainly did,” she says. “It was frustrating. I was really discouraged, but I was told not to engage with the media. It was so one-sided and discouraging in that regard."
And yet, somehow, we are going to get all the way through this interview without a single concrete suggestion about what her critics got wrong. There's this:
Now that it’s over, DeVos sees a big part of her mission as convincing those she’ll be working with in the education establishment that she’s not out to destroy America’s public schools, but to make them better for all children.
But later in the interview:
All the work I’ve done has been to help kids for whom the schools they’re assigned don’t work, but with the hope that the schools that they would leave actually have an opportunity to get better as well and should challenge themselves to be better.
Which is another way of saying that she's focused on getting kids out of public schools, scolding those schools on the way out. And despite her first statement, note that she's not going to make those public schools better-- she's going to hope that they get their act together themselves. Later in the interview she re-asserts her full commitment to charters and choice and "is not backing down" on those policy priorities. There's a "quiet and growing army" that wants change, and she's there for them. So "better for all children" may be a bit of an overstatement. Or misstatement, or maybe alternative statement.
Or in response to the charge that she has ethical conflicts that haven't been cleaned up--
...the allegation that I’m ethically conflicted — that I have conflicts that I’m not taking care of. That’s is very bothersome to me.
Not "I've totally taken care of those and made sure that all ethical conflicts are cleared up over and above the requirements of the law." Just that it's bothersome to be called on it.
DeVos tone polices her own hearing and admits that maybe she wasn't super, but it wasn't her fault.
“There were a few things I could have answered better or more articulately,” she says. “In my defense, the questioners had no interest in really hearing a full response, I don’t think. I did not want to be combative. I wanted to continue to be respectful and to try to reflect the kind of demeanor that I think we should have surrounding these conversations."
So, "I could have answered better but they were mean and also I was behaving properly even if certain people were not." And even though she could have done better, she still asserts that her preparation for the hearing was super-duper.
She also takes a moment to claim that Michigan charters are totally a hotbed of accountability, with so much accountability that no other state accountabilties like Michigan accountabilities. Michigan accountability is "much more stringent" than any other state which 1) is so not true that even other people in the charter industry recognize its not trueness and 2) to any extent there any accountability rules in Michigan, it's no thanks to DeVos, who has fought them hard.
Jacques makes note of DeVos's first day walking tour through USED to meet all the employees (and she did it in heels-- seriously, would any man be subjected to this baloney), and she tries to wrap this puff pastry of a profile by showing how open and ready to go DeVos is-- not like that mean Lily Eskelsen Garcia of the NEA, who said there will be no working relationship with this ed secretary. Now any union president might conclude that based on how ferociously DeVos went after the teacher unions in Michigan, but again, Jacques seems to imagine that DeVos arrives tabla rasa with no previous history worth mentioning.
Betsy, bless her heart, is "ready and willing to move on from the bitterness of the confirmation," but not by acknowledging that any one of her critics had a point worth responding to.
Seriously-- how hard would it be to craft something along the lines of "I have plenty to learn because I've never held a position like this or worked with public education, but I promise to study hard" or something like "US education is torn by a hundred different viewpoints and as the country's secretary of education it's my job to listen to all of those folks so that I can best chart a course forward."
But no-- as with her boss, DeVos seems to see the world composed of two groups-- people who support her and people who are attacking her. And she doesn't need any input, has no need to learn anything. We already know this-- the most telling question I heard her fluff at he hearing was her response to Michael Bennett, who asked her what she had learned from her experience with charters and public schools in Detroit. She had no answer.
Her priorities are already set. Here's DeVos on finding Congressional allies:
I’m very optimistic that I will be able to strike up a relationship with a number of members of the Senate who on paper are more closely aligned with giving parents more choices than much of the rhetoric we’ve heard to date.
Here's DeVos on what she hopes for a legacy
I would hope by the time I leave to have allowed students across this country, particularly those who are today struggling most, to find and go to a school where they are going to thrive in and grow and become everything they hope to be.
DeVos is hear to replace public education with a charter-choice system. She's not even here to argue for it-- not once does she mention making a case for her policy-- she's just here to do it. She's not here to listen to the varying points of view on public education. And like President Snowflake, she really doesn't want to hear mean people disagreeing with her.
In short, while this interview (like the bear joke and her "find a pencil" tweet) may have been intended to soften her image, the bottom line is that Betsy DeVos is in DC to do exactly what she's given every indication she would-- ignore critics, push public education aside with charter-choice-voucher systems, and continue to move forward resolutely disregarding anyone who is not on her team and any information that doesn't fit her ideology. It looks like what we're getting is exactly what we thought we were getting.
Last week the American Enterprise Institute hosted an afternoon of reformy navel gazing, featuring an all-start lineup and centered around the general topic of race and the specific issue of whether the Great Reform Coalition was about to fall apart because (I'm paraphrasing) there's an actively racist administration taking power in DC and some reformsters are much more comfortable with that than others. Or, to paraphrase it from another point of view, because there are some reformsters are letting concerns about race and social justice get in the way of the practical pursuit of some swell reform objectives. Or, to synoptically paraphrase, the broad reform coalition could kind of hold it together when a Democratic faux-progressive administration was providing camouflage for conservative policies to be palatable to nominal progressives.
Well, you can see the problem.
At any rate, AEI mustered up two full panels on the subject, which is in itself an interesting choice because AEI is not known in some quarters for its enlightened non-racist behavior. But hey, who knows. Anyway, these videos add up to over two hours, so I'm going to take them in two posts (the second post is here). Because I've watched these so that you don't have to.
Introduction
After an intro slide of AEI's edifice, displayed with some supermarket music playing along, Rick Hess (AEI's ed guy) does the general introduction for these extraordinary panels discussing thorny issues in a remarkable conversation. AEI does not skimp on modifiers. Also we learn that New Schools Venture Fund, a reformy financier, is a co-sponsor today. Also Education Next which is the magazine where AEI and Fordham Institute put their thoughts.
America, says Hess, has some real challenges, and an increasing polarization problem that keeps us from discussing important issues in respectful or constructive ways. Education especially, and Hess's explanation of what education is about is a good one (creating communities, future, good broad big picture stuff). Sure we will disagree, but can we disagree like grown-ups (my word). On the one hand, Hess appears to be talking about intramural fights in the reform community, not the kind of disagreements that involve people who, say, disagree with all his premises about education. On the other hand, Hess is almost always an intellectually honest non-asshatty guy.
Round One
Gerard Robinson (AEI) is the moderator. The panel includes Elisa Villanueva Beard (President of Teach for America), Howard Fuller (Been at this longer than you, probably), Robert Pondiscio (Fordham), and Nina Rees (National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools). As a bonus, we get a fun light-hearted fact about each. See? I told you this was going to be fun.
Race and social justice have been getting a lot of attention. Do you think it's getting better or worse?
Fuller: If you are a poor person, "ain't nothin' changed" except maybe to get worse. "No matter who's in the White House, the people I care about have to fight." All that has to be decided is the nature of the fight. Fuller is a pessimist (his word) who believes that racism is permanent, but if there is injustice, he still has to get up and fight because to not fight is to sign off on the injustice.
Pondiscio: Pondiscio positions himself as someone whose lens is always the classroom. Outside of all the policy discussions, he sees his role as talking about what students do in the classroom all day. And his frustration is "that sometimes these conversations take us away from that classroom." Talking about social justice and race are okay, but he wants to talk curriculum and classroom content.
Rees: Starts talking about "this movement" and she means charters, not social justice. Lots of charter boosters are "in it" for the social justice. The majority of charter students are low-income and minorities, and I'm thinking I'd love to see some hard data on that. Rees offers a lot of empty word salad, but she does amble back around to the question of "Is what we're doing enough" if there are all these issues outside of school and she says they're just coming around to this question recently, even though the rest of us have been bringing it up since the first time a charterista said, "I'll run kids through my school and cure their poverty!"
Beard: Something about how "we" haven't always defined "the problem" in terms of race and equity and that has an effect on how we do... something about approaching and solving "the problem." There's some other fog, but out of it comes the idea that you have to look at the issues of race, class and privilege when you try to work on these schools and students "that we say we care about." And then we travel via anecdote to the soft expectations.
Beard is the chatty one. Finally, teaching is transformational for students but "we still have to understand all the inequities facing our kids" and the problems and impact of poverty and food deserts and all that stuff. This all sounds nice and if I feel bitter at all, it could be because for most of the modern reform period talking like this would get a teacher accused of "making excuses" and the accusations would come from places like TFA and charter operators, and not for the first time I feel watching one of these conversations that reformers keep "discovering" new insights about education the same way that Columbus "discovered" America. Some days it seems that reformsters don't just want to re-invent the wheel-- they want to get a copyright and be praised for it as they step past the bodies of all the people they stomped on while those people were trying to explain wheels.
Robinson throws a pile of words at Pondiscio, starting with something about Hey you only graduated from college at age 39 but you're from a wealthy background and white and ending with how do perceptions influence issues around race black hispanic dynamics white and then sticks his hand in Podiscio's direction to indicate it's his turn now.
Pondiscio: He's game, God bless him. "Um...I'm going to answer the question I think you asked, or maybe the question I wished you asked." While Pondiscio entered this biz to help in the South Bronx, and so says he bright with him "a race and class lens," but at the same time, he's "not sure where this became a race-based movement." He owns his privilege ("I'm not JD Vance") and notes the political importance of issues like achievement gaps. But when did this become a race thing. When did this become about just of students? Surely there are lots of downwardly mobile poor white kids whose schools aren't very good, either. "We risk losing something as a movement if we don't focus on education writ large." All of which comes really, bravely close to "all lives matter," but Pondiscio's in a safe space, so I don't think the conversation is going to go there.
Robinson's follow-up is: You've been in a lot of parts of the movement through charters to private schools. How do you think we should be talking about this issue in 2017?
Rees hops in. The issue became about race and inner cities because politically that's where the need is greatest, where the sense of urgency is greatest, and it's quite hard to expand charter schools in rural communities. Rees suggests that there's "no political base of support for those kinds of changes" which glosses over some important insights. For instance, in a rural community like mine, it is impossible NOT to see how charters drain resources from public schools in a way that is deeply damaging. Reformsters would like to go farther and faster; nevertheless, Rees believes they've made "huge progress, especially in the charter school space."
But if the charter cause is to expand its political base, you have to bring in rural and middle class, because if you're "only going to serve the poor, there's a cap on how much money you can bring in and how much support yo can garner."
Interesting analysis of charter fail in Massachusetts from Rees: you can't go ask politicians to support charter schools when there aren't any charter schools in their districts. Implication-- spreading charter schools is necessary to build political might of reform movement. Further implication-- the charter movement is about political goals over and above any kind of educational goals.
Rees says "we have the evidence that it works" but to do it right you need funding. So much for doing more with less. Remember-- throwing money at public schools is bad, but throwing money at charter schools is awesome.
Now we're going to talk about Milwaukee as a microcosm of the reformy movement, and Robinson asks Fuller what role ideology, class and race played there?
Fuller says that when he was pushing for vouchers, he had never hear of Milton Freedman and his market ideology. "We got to vouchers" through a focus on making sure that poor black children were actually educated by Milwaukee schools. When Milwaukee super said they couldn't do it, then Fully and Wilson said, "Well, then, let us set up our district to take it on." And when that couldn't happen, they said, "Give us a way out of here." Free market ideology had nothing to do with it. District worked with community to create a choice plan (and the teacher's union sabotaged it). But the whole thing passed through a Democratic controlled legislature, would have been axed by a Democratic governor, but was signed by a GOP governor. And he's telling this story because a lot of people are running around who "don't know jack" about what actually happened. He notes that while it wasn't ideologically driven, but there were clearly ideologically-driven people who hopped in, including people who saw this as a way to kill unions. The "unholy alliance" involved a lot of people with many different perspectives. And as always, I'd rather listen to Fuller than pretty much any other charter-choice advocate out there.
So there were people in the coalition that ultimately created the voucher bill that were in it for very different reasons. And there were always people in there saying "I don't really believe that this should just be for poor people. I believe it ought to be universal but right now all we can do is get it for poor people." And I was always in there saying, "Hey man. The day that y'all try to take it from poor people-- I'll just be a lone Negro that y'all can run over--but I'm going to be standing there saying No!" Because I didn't get in this for all y'all who already got money to get more money.
Robinson is now going to swing around to the "teaching force" and he asks Beard what role TFA has played in diversifying the teaching force and in furthering the discussion about race and social justice. I predict that this answer will be heavy on the baloney.
Beard recaps the mismatch between student and teacher populations, and recaps the importance that kids can see themselves in a classroom. She particular hits the fact that 2% of teachers are black men and that's a problem. And TFA works mostly in low income communities of color and they believe that a meaningful number of their TFAers should be people who faced similar issues of inequity and justice and maybe she's about to announce that TFA has stopped doing most of its recruiting at highly-privileged ivy league-ish schools or at least acknowledge that what she just said is a significant shift from TFA's original concept, which was that the children of privilege would be great at helping underprivileged students. Or maybe she'll talk about how the big problem with black men in teaching is not recruitment, but retention, and how TFA is poorly positioned to address that issue since the TFA mission has never been to recruit career teachers, but to get people a couple of classroom years to flavor their resume before they head off to their real career. Maybe she'll talk about some of that.
Nope. She tosses out that 50% of TFAers are now of color and that TFA really believes in a broad American coalition with a shared set of values. She wants every dinner table in America to be talking about this, so I guess one of the shared American values is how families should eat dinner. Also something something sustained transformational change of communities.
Robinson: When did social justice become a progressive thing, and is there a role for conservatives in the social justice conversation?
Pondiscio gets this one, and he starts with "Yes."
"As some of you may know, I wrote a piece about this..." and somewhere in the crowd there are some laughs at this, probably because his piece sparked a whole lot of robust, spirited discussion. He recaps that piece (Conservatives find themselves increasingly uncomfortable/unwelcome in ed reform movement) and couples that with his observation that the ed reform movement loses its curiosity at the classroom door. Then, the realpolitik, which is that given a bunch of red states, leading with a social justice argument doesn't make sense for pushing charters. Implication and sideways answer to the question: conservatives are not interested in social justice.
Beard hems and haws as she tries to gauge how hard to push back, but she does. It's disingenuous to pretend that a focus on transformational in-the-classroom stuff has nothing to do with and is not affected various social justice issues. IOW, saying "I don't want to talk about the poverty and hunger in this kid's background; I just want to teach her to read" is not valid. It's so complex.
It's a good point, but the Beard ruins the moment by saying she doesn't see politics, which is kind of hilarious from the head of TFA, and organization that owes its growth, existence, money and clout to its ability to work political connections. So I stop listening to her as she talks about how nobly TFA is just doing what they can For The Children. Then she sweeps back around to the need to be honest about what it's really going to take to "move the needle" and our original question, which was an interesting one, is lost in the dust.
Pondiscio says that honesty means noticing that NAEP hasn't budged in years. I'd rather say that honesty means noticing that in all these years we haven't come up with a way of measuring achievement that actually measures achievement and so we keep talking about NAEP and other tests as if they mean Something Important. But nobody invites me to these things, so I just type.
Now an actual conversation breaks out. Beard invokes kid who shows up hungry every day, and Pondiscio replies "At what point does this become the next version of Fix Poverty First?" And Beard says noone is suggesting that.
Nina wants to say that it depends on the community you're in because the charter world is extremely diverse, decentralized, not all that united.
Moving on, and leaving a really useful question untouched. What are your thoughts about on-line public schooling?
Robinson notes that Virginia voted cybers down because it would lead to more segregation, less interaction, exacerbation of social justice problems. Does tech help or hurt with social justice issues.
Fuller says it can do both. Depends on what it is. He has no position on online learning, but he does have a problem with people profiting off kids and the kids aren't learning anything. There's no reason to be against learning on line, but there's plenty of reason to be against an online system that is ripping people off, though Fuller notes that plenty of ripping off can occur in the traditional system, too. Fuller reiterates that its pointless to talk about public versus private entities as a broad principle because both types have shown the ability to behave very badly. Fuller wants to talk about specifics, as in what is this particular system doing, exactly.
Fuller than hangs a whole argument on responding to people who say that poor black kids only need one option, a thing that I have never heard anybody say, so the argument against saying it aren't very interesting to me. However, valid point that history shows us that black folks should be mighty suspicious when anyone tells you "This is the way it has to be done." You can't support anything without coming back to the question of what impact is this having on kids.
Whatever it is I'm for, how does that empower a people who have no power?
Fuller also wants to distinguish between public education and delivery systems for education and financial systems for paying for them. And "since these were not created by God," we could change them, come up with more dynamic delivery systems. Fuller feels pretty strongly about this.
Beard says that the system was not created to educate every kid, and I'd like to hear her backing for that, and she adds that what an education means has also changed [insert my usual complaint that reformsters often presume that schools have not changed since they got their diplomas].
Audience question time now.
A woman asks what happened to integration which, back in 70s and 80s seemed to be shrinking the achievement gap and doing other good stuff, too.
Fuller answers. "White people moved." People who supported integration moved to the suburbs so they could pontificate about integration without having to experience it. That gets applause.
Next. Should we shift our focus from integration and diversity to just improving schools?
Nobody really wants that one. Robinson passes it to Rees, who starts with "going back to the previous question." There are people trying to start diverse charter schools. Also, I am trying to grow new hair on my head. She talks about policy a bit, then finally comes down on "You have to put achievement first," which is also not really an answer, because "Let's raise test scores" is not the same as "Let's improve schools." Beard says we don't have to choose.
Next: asking Fuller to expand on distinctions between education and systems of delivery.
He clarifies that opposition to the delivery system doesn't mean he opposes the idea of a public education. Make your commitment to purpose, not the institutional arrangement to get to that purpose.
Next: how do these conversations in the charter world reflect what's going on in the outside world? Beard says basically that you have to reflect reality in your school, which is not a particularly radical notion, and yet here she is, having to say that out loud to a room full of people.
Next: A woman who wants to explain to Howard Fuller what Brown v. Board was about. Yikes. Then eventually lands on a sort of question about state involvement.
Beard sort of answers by saying that TFAers learn about The System. Fuller responds to the business about Brown. Then, yes, we have to fight in the states. ESSA is concerning because States' Rights has never worked out real well for black people. The fight for resources has always been on the state level. Pondiscio pulls in the idea of civics education.
Robinson asks to clear with a hopeful note. What keeps you hopeful?
Rees: Charter school increases in market share and then some unsubstantiated PR smoke about how charter students are doing the best in the universe. Also, more money should be invested in "replicating these models." And, audaciously, "turning a blind eye" to charter success is "real injustice." So, wow. Poverty and systemic racism and all the rest-- social injustice inflicted on non-white non-wealthy students may seem like a real problem, but the real injustice is how charter operators aren't allowed to further expand their businesses.
Time is short now
Pondiscio: Hopeful about how this room is filled with people.
Fuller: If our kids are given the tools that they deserve, they can do great things.
Beard: We have learned a lot in twenty-six years.
And that ends the first of two panels, which managed to raise some interesting issues without addressing all of them. Can we go back to the question about where conservatives fit in the conversation about social justice? Because I have a feeling that's going to be increasingly important over the next four years.
So now Betsy DeVos has her very first big girl job, and we live in a Trump-DeVos education era. Time to take an inventory of what education issues to watch for. Here's my set of best semi-educated guesses.
Common Core
Pshaw. Common Core continues to be a zombie policy, existing in various mangled forms both under its old name and its new one. This administration will claim to have gotten rid of it while having not done much of anything. It's like building the Wall; people keep saying Trump can't do it, but they forget his most potent policy tool-- lying.
So we will claim that CCSS is dead and gone and applaud states for adopting strong college and career ready standards, which will continue to be the Core oinking through one more layer of lipstick. None of it will be the source of much fuss.
Charters and Choice
Technically, Secretary DeVos can't really do anything much to get states to go all in on charters, vouchers, and choice. But then, technically Secretary Duncan couldn't do anything much to get states to adopt the Common Core.
The tools available to USED just happen to be tools that DeVos is familiar with-- bribes and extortion. Jump through this hoop and get a big fat check! Displease me and I will cut off your Title I funding.
Expect to see every possible tool used to throw money at charters and push for some version of vouchers. Watch for skirmishes between former allies, as charter-loving accountability hawks face off against a USED that doesn't want to restrict "innovation" or hurt "flexibility" by making charter schools follow actual rules. Cyber-school operators can now breathe a sigh of relief; for a while it looked like someone might actually hold them accountable for their crappy results, but that ship has, well, not so much sailed as been blown up in the harbor.
Watch for the references to parental choice, the idea that parents are more important or better than the government at choosing for the child. This is the foundation for a voucher system-- it's also the foundation for disenfranchising every taxpayer who is not a parent. And (see below) it's a rationale for abandoning those children whose parents are not good stewards of their children's interests.
And be prepared to fight on the state level to keep pubic schools from being sucked dry in order to fund choicey stuff. Remember-- throwing money at public schools is a huge pointless waste, but throwing money at charters is super-awesome.
The Most Vulnerable Students
What I guess we can now call old school reformsters liked to keep poor students, disadvantaged students, students with special needs center stage as part of their argument that we were doing all of this For The Children. Mind you, much of that rhetoric was baloney, but at least it kept vulnerable students in the conversation.
As hinted by the DeVosian ignorance of IDEA, we're probably done with all that. Oh, we'll talk about students in need from time to time, but students who are costly and not very profitable are going to treated like a hot potato. The feds will insist that taking care of Those Students is a state responsibility and the states will protest that they are meeting the letter of federal law and the emboldened charter-choice industry will declare that those students are totally free to choose any school that wants to invest the time and money to serve them if any such noon-public schools can be found.
And civil rights? Civil rights are for corporations. Non-wealthy black and brown folks, on the other hand, should smear some powdered grit on their hands so that they can get a better grip on their bootstraps.
This will be a cause for vigilance, because my guess is that in many cases these students aren't so much going to fall through the cracks as they are going to be stuffed through them.
College Finances
It has been clear all along that DeVos has neither knowledge of nor interest in the federal role in managing college loans and grants. I expect some statement along the lines of
I don't really know what's going on, exactly, but there's a whole lot of money involved which means some corporation should be making profit off of handling this stuff, so let's find a company to run the college loan/grant biz, hand them the money, and wash our federal hands of the whole business (though I think maybe I have some investments in a company of two that might be good for this). You ask me if we will check to make sure that the whole college finance thing is going well, and we absolutely will, though by "going well" we mean "making a good profit for the company running it."
Attacks on Unions
Already under way. Look for a big push for a Right To Work nation. And don't look for DeVos to schedule a meeting with Lily Eskelsen Garcia or Randi Weingarten any time soon. Do look for explanations of how teachers unions have ruined education in this country, and how the teachers unions are robbing teachers of the freedom to work for low wages with no job security.
Attacks on the Teaching Profession
Ditto. Teachers are supposed to be the fry cooks of the school industry, and all these regulations that require them to have training just interfere withe the flexibility of school operators, which is ridiculous because, after all, any mook can teach. Prepare to be nostalgic for the days when Arne Duncan would blow all that smoke up our skirts. And watch for an explosion of "alternative" approaches to licensure, so that anybody can jump over a broom and holler "teacher teacher teacher" and that will be good enough. Because making sure people are qualified is just reducing flexibility and taking away everybody's freedom to be a teacher.
Local Control
We've seen in the past years that the GOP has abandoned its ideas about small government and interfering with local control. Like many on the left, the right now believes that the purpose of government is to force people to behave they way you think they should. We will see how long the DeVos USED can holds onto a prime directive for non-interference. We'll also see if the GOP can really work up the nerve to kill the department entirely.
In the meantime, watch your state, where legislatures are feeling free to do whatever-the-hell-they-want to the education system. Many of the most important policy debates will be on the local level, right up until the moment the feds decide that certain state decisions are not okay. So, just like the old days.
Big Data (and small)
I'm honestly curious to see which way this wind blows. The ability to run a cradle-to-career stuffed with every piece of data on students (including what kind of character and personality they have) is not an obvious area of interest for DeVos, and conservatives have been known to get kind of testy when the feds get all Big Brothery. On the other hand, there's a ton of money to be made here, and what the free market wants, the free market ought to get. My bet is that money will win and the push to digitize all human life forms will continue.
At the same time, DeVos is an ideologue. If data conflicts with her view of How The World Works, then it's bad data and can be dismissed. Data and facts are, in this administration, malleable things, not based in reality and only useful for scoring points in the larger argument. This will change the nature of the debate. I imagine that we will see versions of this conversation:
Resistance: Look at these pictures. Look at this data. Can't you see the damage your poicy is doing?
DeVos: It doesn't matter. My policy is Right.
DeVos may be, as some have claimed, pragmatic. But she is still a perfect appointee for a post-fact administration. And it's okay to lie to the rabble.
Personalized Competency Based Computer Learning Micr0-Credential Education Stuff
This will not be going away, and if you haven't been paying a lot of attention, it's time to start.
For one thing, the personalized/competency based education stuff lends itself easily to fitting choice on crack-laced steroids. Give every kid a education debit card, and let them take whatever course they want from whatever vendor is on the market. The deserving rich kids can get all the education they want, and the undeserving poor (which is the only kind of poor there are because if you deserved to be not-poor, you wouldn't be poor) can make do with the bare minimum that noblesse oblige throws their way.
For another thing, the best market/audience for this type of education has always been people who don't know anything about education. Which is what we have in charge now. Vendors are going to have a field day pitching this shit.
This will be the new growth industry. It will be the hot new investment. It is going to be huge. Hyuuuugge!
The New Priorities
It's important to remember that Betsy DeVos didn't have to come to this office ignorant of public education. With her giant stacks of money, her political clout, her bulldog-playing-hockey charm, she could have spent the last twenty years becoming a first-hand expert on public schools. She didn't, because she didn't want to, because the issues of public school are not important because public schools are not important beyond the fact that they're an obstacle to how things should be.
Students, the worthy ones from the right homes, should be in Jesus schools, learning to understand how God made the free market as a way to sort out His beloved chosen few from the rabble. The rabble should also be in Jesus schools, learning how to follow rules and behave themselves and fit comfortably and happily in their proper places.
Everything else is a waste of time and money, and we're only having to bother with it because too many of the Godless rabble have been allowed to run loose in our country, and if we can't put them back in their place overnight, well, we can at least start to undo some of the damage they've done and blunt some of the systems they've put in place to do more damage and start bringing children up properly.
And the best way to manage all of this complex operation is as a business. Wherever something can be taken over by a business, that is in and of itself a Good Thing. Business is always better-- that's part of the ideology in play here, a foundational value of the new regime. Put another way-- if nobody is making a buck off it, it's probably no good.
If we don't understand the new set of priorities, we're going to find ourselves trapped in looped versions of the same conversation
Resistance: If you pursue this policy, you will do irreparable damage to X!
DeVos: And your point is....?
Don't Bet the Farm
This is my early read on what the threat levels are for these various issues. I could turn out to be wrong on any or all of them. Bottom line-- we are all going to have to pay close attention ajnd remain vigilant, because the new normal is not going to be all that normal at all.
Honestly, my expectations are always so low that it's hard to really disappoint me, and this day was no exception. Defeating DeVos depended on finding a GOP senator who was willing to separate himself from his senate pack and also piss off a President known for his unreasoning grudgeholding rage in the first days of a new administration whose main goal seems to be sorting the people of the world into "kindling" and "marshamallows." A 24-hour parade of speechifying Democrats wasn't going to shake that imaginary GOPster loose; today went down pretty much as I expected.
Still, many of my colleagues are pretty bummed. "This just seems so bad. So just really so bad. What do we hold onto." So I'm going to try to rein in my usual bloviation and just give you a list. This. This is why you don't have to totally despair.
* We have company. A whole lot of company. When we go off on our next rant about the assault on public education, a whole lot of people will no longer look at us like we're nuts. We have company, and that means we have help.
* The Trump-DeVos administration means that our national unions no longer need to play nice in hopes that they'll get a seat at the table. No more of this, "Shhh. Try to be polite" shit that we had when Arne Duncan was in office. These guys aren't Democrats, and the union doesn't have to pretend to get along.
* The reformy coalition is all splintery. Pretend reform Democrats can no longer pretend that their preferred policies are not conservative orthodoxy. The in fighting may or may not help, but it will at least be entertaining.
* Despite the depictions of her as clueless, DeVos is better known as a hard-nosed political street fighter. Between her ignorance and her bare-knuckles gracelessness, we will not have to try to read the nuances to divine her goals and intent.
* We already know the territory. Five, six, ten years ago, when things started to unfold, lots of folks spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was really going on, if they saw what they thought they saw, if people in power really were saying crazy shit and trying to do crazy things. Some of us napped through a lot of that, eventually startled and surprised to see that a bunch of people really did want toi gut public education like a prize trout. Now, the element of surprise is gone. We know the face of the other army, and we have folks watching every single road into the territory. No surprises. We're ready.
* The resistance has flexed its muscle. Granted, I'm far from the heart of the action, but my sense is not of widespread helplessness ("My God. We gave it our all and we lost. It's no use") Instead, what I'm hearing is a feisty energy (Damn! We're a lot stronger than I thought!")
* The real action, the meaningful action, the action that counts is right where it has always been-- in our classrooms, with our students. Folks can throw shade all day, but we work in the heart of the sun.
* Love really does beat the rest of that crap. You can already see, just ten days in, the Trump administration splintering and churning up so much bile in its own barrel that it keeps spitting it up. It's ugly and awful and gut-wrenching and not a good look on anyone-- but it is also a sign that this administration is literally sick, sick with an illness that makes it violent and dangerous, but also weak and doomed sooner or later to fall. Love, friends, and don't get any of that shit on you. The space in your head belongs to the people you love; don't throw them out just to make room for unworthy tenants.
Finally, from my own personal vantage point-- just because you can't clearly see the way forward doesn't mean it's not there. You listen, you wait, you watch, and you move forward with as much clarity and purpose as you can, and you find the way. Look, I never in a gazillion years would have predicted where I would be today, yet here I am. Sometimes the struggle just finds you, comes to you and you rise up to meet it.
This is a marathon, not a sprint. Take a breath. Get some rest. We can do this.
Wisconsin's teacher loss is not unusual-- neighboring Michigan and Illinois have comparable or greater teacher problems, and may well be effectively headhunting in cheeseland. We've seen a national problem with the teacher pool, which might just have something to do with the continued assault on teachers, the profession, and schools. Or maybe it has to do with a reform movement that has tried to reduce teaching to script-reading and clerical work. Some argue, no, that's not it. It's not that we've devalued teaching right out of existence-- it's just the end of the Great Recession has made it possible for people to choose anything other than teaching as a career. Which doesn't really seem to contradict the previous argument.
I don't say this often, but God bless the Daily Beast for this
On top of all that, Wisconsin is the land of Scott Walker's Act 10, the act that effectively ended collectively bargaining for all public unions (it also put a cap on wage increases for teachers, ended their ability to auto-deduct dues, messed with health care, and just generally stuck it to working class folks in Wisconsin. Do you suppose that might have anything to do with the issue?
Lots of folks are pretty sure it does. The wage set-up in Wisconsin is fairly competitive for about five years-- and then any teacher wanting to support a family needs to get out of the state (hence the descriptive career plan, "five and flee.") The website Teaching In Wisconsin ("Act 10 Made Wisconsin the Worst Place To Teach in America") shows, for instance, how a Minnesota teacher would make double the lifetime earnings of a Wisconsin teacher.But five and flee is only problematic if you wanted to keep teachers around, and if you keep them around you might have to pay them more or even provide a pension. It can't be surprising that many Wisconsin teachers got out after Act 10 passed, because the clear message of Act 10 to professional career teachers was, "Get out!"
Some observers say, "No, it's just a random fluctuation and the massive drop-off in Wisconsin teachers that came right after Act 10 was passed? Gee, there's just no way to know if those two things are related."
Folks like Will Flanders, education research director for Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), suggest that we could solve the shortage easily because "We have a lot of folks out there with college degrees."
Which brings us back to the Leadership Group on School Staffing Challenges, and the report they just issued. Here are some of their cool ideas: * Consolidate certification levels. Everyone will be certified either PK-9 or PK-12, because if you've trained to teach pre-school, you can totally handle 8th grade math, and if you can teach senior AP English, you should be able to handle first graders. Imagine the kind of exciting suspense each year as teachers wait to see what their new assignment might be, because it could be pretty much anything. * Consolidate certification subjects. Let's crank out teachers certified in math-social studies-music-ELA. Teachers could still specialize, but would be "allowed to teach" in any area of the broadfield license. Again, remember that "allowed to teach" equals "district is allowed to transfer you to." Also, make it easy for someone who has a teaching certificate to "take on new challenges" by just adding more subjects to it. * Simplify and consolidate multiple pathways to licensure. Get 'em in there any way you can. Create a "clearinghouse" for all the many creative ways we can rush someone into a classroom. * More interns. Let districts hire pre-teachers as interns, so you can be in the classroom before you have actually gotten your license.
* Reciprocate with anybody who's using edTPA to certify teachers, because that way we'll know the teachers involved have already resigned themselves to helplessness in the face of stupid bureaucracy and pointless hoop-jumping. * Let pro-teacher students "demonstrate competency" by having a high GPA or by passing a content test. In other words, any college honors student can have a teaching certificate.
So basically, the group charged with finding ways "to ensure the long-term recruitment, retention, and development of Wisconsin's education workforce" has focused on how to get more people into the classroom. So that's recruitment. But retention and development? While some folks might have been inclined to address those issues by providing decent pay, professional respect, some self-determination and power over their own work, Evers and his buddies have got.... nothing. Anybody can be any kind of teacher, because a teacher is a teacher is a teacher and what schools really need are interchangeable widgets so that if you're running a little short on third grade teachers, you can just move your middle school math-science-music-art teacher into the spot.
This is a recommendation that screams, "Anybody can be any kind of teacher" and you don't get much more professionally disrespectful or destructive to the profession than that.
CIR is the same right-wing group that brought us the Friedrich's lawsuit, and this is basically the same suit with a new teacher used as a prop. They cut their teeth doing anti-affirmative action work, but have more recently joined in the effort to bust the unions, or at least render unions less effective in opposing GOP candidates. The one-percenters love them. While their original founders have moved on, they are currently led by Terry Pell who, ironically, used to work in the US DEpartmet of Education as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights.
Our Very Special Plaintiffs this time? Bruce Aster, George Meilahn, Darren Miller, Allen Osborn, Michelle Raley, Robert Vehrs, Stacy Vehrs, Ryan Yoh. Yohn, the suit's namesake, is an eighth-grade American history teacher at Stacey Middle School in the Westminster School District.
Friedrichs stalled and died because, well, Justice Scalia also died. But now that Trump has his conservative-approved justice picked out, CIR is ready to try again with an attempt to get all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has recognized the grave First Amendment problems that
arise when a state coerces political speech. In 2014, Justice Alito
observed in Harris v. Quinn,
that, “Agency-fee provisions unquestionably impose a heavy burden on
the First Amendment interests of objecting employees.” As he explained,
it is a “bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of
circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize
speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”
Cool! May I please have a refund on all the taxes I paid to support pointless wars and the actions of various government agencies with which I disagree?
The goal here is simple-- give the union less money. It's a popular idea-- in fact, some legislators are trying to legislate the same thing in PA right now.
The goal here is to establish a whole class of free riders-- teachers who don't support their local union, but still benefit from the collective bargaining process (where it still exists) as well as the representation that the union is legally required to provide these folks should they ever get in trouble. It's like having the government require you to drive your neighbor to work every day, but forbidding you to ever ask him to chip in for gas--oh, and if he needs to be taken way out of the way for an appointment, you have to drive him there, too. Oh-- and all the way there, you have to listen to how you're oppressing him by giving him a ride.
Plaintiff Yohn contends that he doesn't need the union to negotiate for him because he can totally do better on his own. He is 38 years old, far too old to believe in fairy tales, but personally, I would be happy to let him try. And then I would like to sell him a bridge.
CIR expects to work their way up to the Supremes by the summer of 2018. So dig out your old files-- we're going to literally re-litigate Friedrichs all over again, and that light at the end of the tunnel is probably the headlight of an oncoming train.
The Betsy DeVos nomination, in its sturm and drang and distress and noise, is quite different from any nomination we've ever seen. And yet, Betsy DeVos is not that much different from what we've seen before.
As a political operative seeking to remake public education in her own preferred image, DeVos is a bush-league Bill Gates. "I'm rich. I've got a tn of money. Why shouldn't I rewrite the education rules to better suit my own preferences?" Granted, Bill Gates actually did something to earn his money beyond simply being conceived. So that's a difference. And Gates wants to remake education to suit technocrats, while DeVos seems more interested in creating a system that fits her personal version of Jesus. So that's a difference, too.
As an education expert, DeVos is someone who holds tight to her set of beliefs about how education should be run despite pushback from people who actually work in the field and despite the lack of any credible evidence for her preferences, which she actively rejects. In this respect, she is not really very different from Arne Duncan or John King or Rod Paige.
As a policy leader, DeVos values deference to moneyed interests.I think it's a mistake to think that DeVos is motivated by greed; like many of the folks playing this game, she uses money to keep score. It's not that it's important to grasp and grab at money-- it's just that wealth is a sign of God's favor, proof that you are a Better Person who has been justly rewarded for your Betterness. In this respect she is no different from many folks who work in government like, for instance, all the folks who let Bill Gates and Eli Broad and a dozen other well-heeled reformsters have a seat at the policy table because, hey, these guys are rich, so clearly they must be worth listening to. They must Know Something. They must be the Right Kind of People.
As I type this, the Democrats are continuing their long-form theater piece in which they take turns railing against some of the issues of privatization, the chopping of public education into parts and the selling of those parts to various corporate interests, and on one level I'm glad that the Democrats are actually saying something, but on the other hand, much of what they've been railing against has already been going on for well over a decade with nary a peep from any of them.
And while I would love to think they are now suddenly awake and aware that public education is being systematically attacked, I suspect that in the DeVos nomination, they have simply identified a hammer with which they can whack at Trump. When some reformsters worry about the splintering of the reform coalition, they're just recognizing that while it used to be politically expedient for some folks to back reform, right now it is politically expedient to oppose it. I'm never all that encouraged when people take my side for reasons that have nothing to do with matters of principle.
The good news though, is that while politicians swing back and forth in whatever stiff wind blows, there are plenty of regular citizens who have been startled awake by what the DeVos nomination has revealed. What!? There are people advocating education policies who don't know what they're talking about, who don't have any expertise in the field, whose main allegiance is to corporate moneyed interests, and who would rather destroy public education than strengthen it??!! Do tell. I'm shocked. Next you'll try to tell me that there are people involved in the US government who are racist and classist?!
Yes, some folks are going to want to berate these late-waking citizens for not catching on sooner, for just now awaking to concerns that others have been hollering about for years. That berating is wrong, a mistake, a bit of self-indulgence that we don't need. Teachers already know this truth-- people come to understanding in their own way and in their own time, and you cannot treat somebody like a unloved poor cousin because they got to the party later than you did.
DeVos has accomplished what nobody else could. Jeb Bush banked on education being a major topic of the Presidential campaign. He was wrong. Campbell Brown thought she could set herself up as a political force by positioning herself as an arbiter on education, betting that education would be a top concern of the election. Lots of folks thought that 2016 would be education's turn on the main stage. It never happened.
But now, somehow, in a field crowded with a plethora of terrible selections, education has emerged as the most contested, the most controversial, the most hotly debated cabinet appointment of them all. Education is actually having a major moment on the national stage.
Folks can say that the debate, the phone calls, the 24-hour Demo-harangue-- these are all a waste of time because the Senate will no more reject Betsy DeVos than a football team could blow a 17-point lead in the last minutes of a game.
But they are not a waste of time. DeVos, Trump, and their allies have been forced to use political capital-- hell, they've dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars of real capital to bolster her-- and hwne you can't prevent someone's victory, the least you can do is make them pay for it.
More than that, the commotion has awoken citizens. People who have never paid the slightest bit of attention can now tell you who the nominee for the Secretary of Education is, and why she's a bad choice. Thanks to DeVos and Al Franken, people who two weeks ago didn't even know there was more than one way to look at standardized test scores now have some inkling of the difference between growth and proficiency and why anyone cares.
Twenty-four hours from now, we'll probably have a terrible new Secretary of Education, and a huge portion of the electorate will already know to keep an eye on her from the very first day. And if they keep watching her, and keep growing in understanding of just what she's been up to, they will also start to notice that she's got plenty of company, and maybe folks will finally start to become alert to the ways in which our education system is being gutted and stripped.
DeVos is awful. She'll be awful every step of the way. She'll be the most awful occupant of the office in a long line of awful occupants. The only upside of that is that people, understanding her level of awful, may actually wake up and pay attention. It's not a full return for the shellacking public education is about to take, but it's not nothing, either. It's going to have to do for the moment. Let's just hope that after Tuesday everyone doesn't just roll over and go back to sleep.
