FL: How The State Supports Discrimination By Charters

A Florida news station has heard from the state's department of education exactly how charter schools can discriminate against students with special needs.

Part of the charter sales pitch has always been a claim that charters offer alternatives to all students. Just look at this happy blurb from the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools:

The answer to “Can charter schools deny students?” is a beautiful-sounding “no.” Charter schools are free, public, and open to all students.

It may sound beautiful, but the reality is less lovely.

There's no surprise here. Charter schools are businesses, and no business thrives or survives without targeting certain customers for inclusion and others for exclusion. Every business has to have an answer to the question, "Which customers do we want, and which customers do we not want?" Wal-mart, McDonalds, Olive Garden, Louis Vutton-- they've all made choices and they all communicate clearly through marketing, store design, and product offerings which customers are welcome, and which are not. If you are committed to fine, upscale dining, you aren't forbidden to walk into Micky D's, but they've made it clear that they are not going to expend the money and effort involved in providing you with the kind of experience you desire.

This is normal, natural--even necessary- business behavior. And charter schools are businesses.

So charters have found ways to control their customer base. An involved application process. Just kind of ghosting applicants with special needs. Some charters just flat out deny admission  to special needs students. Texas has a loophole law saying that charters can deny any students who have had disciplinary referrals ever for anything. And in area after area, we find that charters, somehow, end up serving fewer of the high cost special needs students.

Theoretically this is mostly illegal in most states. But a law only counts if somebody enforces it, and Florida has never shown any inclination to punish charter schools for anything ever.

ActionNewsJax is a Fox and CBS affiliate in Florida (someone has to tell me how that works some time) that has been following up on the story of charters denying autistic students. They determined that A) it happens and B) the state department of education is okay with that.

It’s against the law for public schools and charter schools to turn away students because of special needs.

However, Action News Jax learned there’s a catch.

The Florida Department of Education said it’s not discriminatory for charters to suggest a different school that would better serve a student with disabilities.

And as far as that beautiful-sounding no goes, that idea that a charter must welcome any student...

FLDOE spokesperson Cheryl Etters said every school can’t serve every child and what matters is that the student thrives academically.

“Just like traditional public schools, each charter school has different resources and may not have the ability to meet the demands of a student with specific disabilities,” Etters said via email.

Just like a traditional public school? I think Ms. Etters is a bit confused, because if a public school doesn't have the resources they are required to by-God find those resources and not just wave the student away with a "You should go look for an education somewhere else."

I mean, this is not so much a loophole as an unraveling of the law. A charter operator could get rid of any student they wanted to deny simply by saying, "We would require your child to be tied up in a gunny sack all day and their special education instruction would be delivered by the school janitor once a week." This is a license to scare away anyone, permission to discriminate at will.

PA: House Speaker Mike Turzai Is Upset, Again

PA House Speaker Mike Turzai is not a huge fan of public schools, and especially not the teachers who work. He was happy to host Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos when she visited Harrisburg. It was that visit that yielded the special moment when Turzai told some protesting teachers that they were special interests who are  part of a monopoly and that they don't care about the children. Personally, I've heard the tale of elected school officials who were visiting Harrisburg and dared to ask about funding. "You people already get plenty of money," the speaker allegedly snapped. At least he didn't do it publicly-- Mike Turzai is the guy caught on video bragging that Voter ID laws would give the state to Mitt Romney.

Turzai was the author of the bill intended to double the educational tax credits (aka vouchers) in PA. His idea of bailing out Harrisburg schools is to force them to go to a voucher system.

So it's no surprise to find him in the Philadelphia Inquirer writing an op-ed arguing that choice opponents should stop talking so mean. It's a fine example of the kind of spin and obfuscation used by anti-public ed politicians.

This guy

Turzai's preferred argument is that old "we give you people too much money already" complaint, with a variety of corners cut.

"Pennsylvania spends more that $33 billion in state and local taxes on public education," he says, which is true, but the devilish detail here is that the lion's share of that comes from local taxpayers. Pennsylvania ranks 43rd in the amount of state funding for schools. That means that there is a huge spending gap in PA districts based on the local wealth. In the size of that gap between rich and poor, PA is first in the nation. We're Number One!! Yay!

PA spends $13 billion-ish on Pre-K to 12 education, which is the most we've ever spent. Turzai has some fun with that figure, calling it 38.6% of the General Fund budget rather than 20% of the total budget. And just watch this next trick--

Thanks to these record levels of spending, Pennsylvania ranks third of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in average teacher salary, average starting teacher salary, and average school spending per student when these figures are adjusted for cost of living. 

See that? All those record-breaking billions of dollars are going to give teachers big fat paychecks. Well, average teachers. Of course, there's a problem with measuring by average teachers. First of all, Pennsylvania's teacher force picture has some unique quirks. We got ahead of the teacher "shortage" at the beginning of the decade by shedding almost 20,000 jobs (so one of the reasons the teacher pipeline numbers dropped in PA is because students believed there were no teaching jobs--and for a while, they weren't wrong). Put that all together and you get a slightly older/wiser/more experienced teaching force which raises the average teaching salary.

But the other key here is that word "average." Peter Green the classic blues guitarist has been in at least two major bands (Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers). That means that, on average, musicians named Peter Green(e) have been in an average of one major band. And yet, my invitation to join the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Peter Greene, actor, has appeared in over 60 films, which means that on average, Peter Greenes who have done any acting have made thirty films.

Remember that PA has the nation's largest gulf between rich and poor districts, which makes averages particularly useless in this state. If we look, for instance, at per-pupil spending, we range from the bottom of $6,324 all the way up to the #2 district for spending at $17,409 (we'll skip #1, which is a bizarre outlier). Discussing averages in this way just becomes a bizarre excuse to keep the poorest districts poor-- because to raise them up would raise the state average.

Turzai takes a paragraph to plug the education tax credit scholarship programs that the state runs. He's still sad that Governor Wolf vetoed an attempt to expands these backdoor vouchers that let wealthy folks and corporations get out of paying state taxes by giving money to schools instead--that is, almost exclusively private and religious schools, with a program income cap so high that it supports plenty of families that are not exactly struggling. And some rich schools are benefiting, though they show no sudden influx of non-wealthy students.

Turzai then calls Pennsylvania a "gold standard with respect to funding public school districts," which is a joke. 43rd in state funding level. Biggest gap between rich and poor districts in the nation. That is not a gold standard. But what Turzai really wants to plug is choice-- vouchers, charter, private, parochial. Part ofg his argument is baloney, as when he says that charters "often" provide "innovative, cutting-edge approaches to education." Nope. We're well into the Great Charter Experiment and one thing is abundantly clear-- no charter, not even the nominally successful ones, has discovered some new, previously unknown technique for educating students. There is nothing that charter schools have to teach public schools.

But the juxtaposition of his two main points-- we spend too much money on education, and we should have more choice-- underscores a central problem with his argument. As he well knows, one of the likely causes of high education spending in the state is that we have too many school districts-- about 500 in the whole state. And that actually represents a considerable cut that occurred in the sixties when the state pushed districts across the state to combine. My own small county (approximate population- 50,000) contains four major school districts (and small pieces of a few others. That represents considerable duplication of services, particularly on the administrative level.

Point being-- you don't cut costs by adding schools. In fact, as Turzai should also know, many districts have been combining schools in order to cut costs. Nobody-- nobody-- says "Hey, the budget is tight, so I think we should open some new facilities."

So if Turzai doesn't like the cost of supporting 500 districts and roughly 3,000 schools, how does he imagine that adding more schools will help, or will represent the most efficient use of tax dollars?

Set aside for a moment the quality issues, the church-state issues, the problems of turning public schools into a private business-- I would like to hear choice fans like Mike Turzai tell the truth about school choice. "Folks," I'd like to hear him say. "I think school choice is a good thing, but to run a bunch of parallel education systems is going to cost more. So I'm going to push for choice, and I'm going to raise your taxes to pay for it properly."

Sure, you can have them all.

But no-- time after time we get School Choice Santa who will somehow magically make the current funding, which couldn't adequately support a single public system, suddenly stretch to fund the old system and the parochial system and a whole bunch of new education flavored businesses that will spring up.

School choice is the Daylight Savings Time of education, the magical belief that if we just move resources around, there will somehow be more of them. We have a king-sized bed filled with children and a twin bed blanket, and choice fans keep arguing that if we move it around, somehow it will cover everyone. It won't. Some choice advocates believe  in a magic blanket; others know full well that only some children will be covered, and they have some ideas about which children that should be, but they know better (most of the time) than to say that part out loud.

I don't know which kind Turzai is, but his argument in favor of choice is weak, which is why he ultimately resorts to the old "think of the children" argument, citing the 70,000-out-of-200,000 children in Philadelphia as if the 130,000 still in public schools don't really matter. "These schools are saving lives" is his plea, and that may be true now and then, but it's also true that in PA some of these schools are profiteering scams benefitting from lax oversight and absence of accountability, while at the same time costing the public system resources that could have been used to save a few public school lives as well.

Turzai also repeats the fiction of calling charter schools "public." They aren't. Public schools are publicly owned, publicly operated, publicly accountable, and run by publicly elected officials. Charters are none of these (and of course private and parochial schools aren't, either). But going into his finish, Turzai throws lots of exaggerated rhetoric at the issue. He talks about "the all-out attack" against charters, and I'm not sure what that is supposed to be. Wolf said some things that made charter fans sad, like calling them not-public and suggesting that they should be accountable to the public whose tax dollars they spend, but an all-out attack would be more like, say, outlawing charters and choice entirely. That's not happening. But it's time for the finish:

We can have thriving public school districts, public charter schools, and private and parochial schools available for our kids and parents. Competition raises the quality of each, ensuring that the needs of every student and family are being met.

Again, I thought the GOP was the party that understood that you can't have ten ponies just because you want them. Yes, we could have a thriving many-headed system (I can think of some reasons not to, but let's set that aside for a moment)-- but we would have to pay for it.

And the part about competition-- no. Just no. Free market competition does not foster superior quality; free market competition fosters superior marketing. But hey-- if Turzai believes this, he4 should be delighted with the governor's recent activities, which are a clear signal that charters and choice are going to face much fiercer competition, so we should be expecting new heights of greatness. I can't wait to see how this new tougher market environment raises the choicey ships.

ICYMI: It's November Already Edition (11/3)

One storm front pushes through and all of a sudden it's much less like summer and much more like winter. But when it's cold outside, that's a good time to hunker down inside and read. Remember to share, folks.

Schools and Surveillance  

Buzzfeed offers a package of pieces about some of the creepy surveillance going on out there (for our own good, of course). It's all plenty alarming.

Education Technology Running Rampant  

As always, the view form China is scary. I can tell you that the headband thing was apparently scrapped later in the week, but still... Alan Singer has some thoughts.

Bus Struck In Sinkhole  

Not remotely education related, but in western PA we love ourselves a good sinkhole story.

My Tour of Achievement First    

Senator Sam Bell took a tour of an Achievement First charter school and came away...well, not favorably impressed, that's for sure.

What's Blockchain Actually Good For?  

Wired takes a look at the promises of blockchain. It was going to fix everything. including carrying your digital credential profile. So far, it looks as if one more technowonder has seriously overpromised beyond what it can actually do.

The Haunted Third Grade Classrooms Children Fear  

Nancy Bailey with a look at the bad policy that is third grade reading retention. Spoiler alert: it still doesn't work.

The Big Lie About the Science of Reading: 2019 Edition    

Paul Thomas breaks down some of the baloney surrounding the "science" of reading, with a special look at the new NAEP scores.

Stop Devaluing the Wisdom of Teachers  

Joseph Murphy at EdWeek points out that researchers don't have a monopoly on "evidence," and maybe classroom teachers actually know a thing or two about teaching.

NOLA Book Cooking  

Mercedes Schneider (she's indispensable) has been following the story of the administrator who told teachers to fix their grades. It's not pretty.

Why Democrats Are Rethinking School Choice  

From Have You Heard comes a great interview with Jon Valant. Thoughtful, nuanced stuff about the tides affecting the charter movement.

Why Market Forces Will Not Provide Charter School Accountability

It has been a rough day at my house. The IRS is auditing me and needs me to send them money now. My computer has a virus. My Microsoft Windows is expired and will shut down soon. And if I don’t re-enter my personal information, my email, Netflix, and bank accounts will all be shut down. The only good news is that I still have a chance to buy great insurance, and I’m still waiting to hear back from that Nigerian prince. 

Why do phone and online scammers keep at it, long after the vast majority of folks have heard about the most common scams, and even your mother knows not to say “yes” to a robocaller? Why don’t these scammers think, “Time to change my business model?” Because if scammers get a return on even one hit out of 10,000, that’s more than enough to keep them in business.

Charter school advocates have long argued that one reason that charters don’t need much formal government oversight is that they are subject to a greater accountability, that they must answer to parents who can “vote with their feet.” But the feet of charter parents don’t exert very much pressure.

The vast majority of charter school operators have nothing in common with phone scammers, but the same basic market principle applies.

Take, for instance, the Success Academy chain of New York City. New York City schools have an enrollment of roughly 1.1 million students; Success Academy has roughly 18,000, plus a waiting list. Over 1 million students have already voted with their feet against Success Academy, but there are no signs that SA head Eva Moskowitz is worried about tweaking the school’s approach to entice some of those million students to “vote” differently. She doesn’t need them. Nor do I suspect she’d bat an eye if even a dozen parents came to her and said, “Change this rule or we are pulling our kids out of here.” 

A charter school doesn’t need to corner a market; it needs to attract just enough customers to keep the business going. Out of the large pool of possible students, it only needs a bucketful. It can even afford to push some potential customers away–to encourage them to vote with their feet–in order to make space for a customer who’s more to its liking. it doesn’t need to adjust its business model or shift its pitch to appeal to everyone. Yes, a charter that wanders seriously, disastrously into the weeds might manage to put itself out of business, but in some cases even flagrantly bad charters have pulled in enough loyal customers to keep going. 

And charters have another advantage–in addition to the large pool of students already available, there are fresh new customers aging into the market very year.

The notion that parents can exert some sort of accountability pressure on any but the most terribly run charters seems unlikely. It is one advantage that charters have over public schools; charter school families are easily replaced, while public school families are not. A charter school doesn’t need to serve the entire market; a public school does. Public schools are tasked with keeping everybody happy; charter schools just need to reach enough families to fill the seats they have. There are certainly many tools available for holding charters accountable, but voting feet are not among them.

Originally posted at Forbes.com

DeVos Honored By Prominent Dominionist Group

Dominionism argues that the US should be a literal Christian nation, its government run by Christians. It comes in varying degrees of severity, with varying amounts of nationalism mixed in. One of the major proponents of American (i.e. US) dominionism was D. James Kennedy, a minister and broadcaster in Florida. Sample quote: To be a true Christian citizen means to "take dominion over all things as vice-regents of God." Or there's this one:

Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors—in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.

Kennedy has done some whacky things, like teaming up with Roy Moore to turn the Ten Commandments into a cause celebre. He also created the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, located in DC and dedicated to helping the Right Kind of Believers take their place in government. They offer leadership training with three weeks of intensive training that covers both the theology and the ins-and-outs of federal government.

As God’s special revelation to humanity, the Bible is the authoritative source on how we ought to live personally and in society. In a rapidly-changing world of moral ambiguity, a worldview based on the Bible orients us to the truth and shows the way to human flourishing. Men and women trained in this approach become wise, persuasive, desirable candidates for elected office.

The distinguished faculty includes folks from Moody Bible Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Buckley School of Public Speaking, the American Center for Law and Justice, among others.

It's a view that represents what we think of as the culture wars, only on steroids. These are folks who see themselves as warriors for God, fighting to drive secularism and evil and wrong religions (like, you know, Islam) out of all aspects of US life. Or if you like a visual representation:

It should be said that plenty of folks within the Christian church are not fans of this stuff--but plenty of others are all too happy to see themselves as warriors for God, and many of those folks are in elected office right now. The Center stays in touch with many of these folks, holding Bible classes for Congress and support for those who are doing God's work of reclaiming the seven mountains. The Center also gives out an annual award-- the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award. You can see the kind of goals these folks support. Past recipients include Mike Pence, John Ashcroft, and Mike Huckabee. They just handed out the 2019 award.

The recipient was Betsy DeVos.

There's no big shock here. The DeVos family has always been, if not dominionists, certainly dominionist-adjacent. It's the kind of thinking that yields the oft-cited quote about advancing God's kingdom. I've talked to religious conservatives who talk about "taking back" schools for the church. They think DeVos is a great choice, that everyone should be pulling their chidren out of government schools.

There's nothing to learn about DeVos from her acceptance of this award from these folks, b ut it underlines what we've already seen-- DeVos does not believe in public education as created and maintained by a secular government. Schools (as with most of government) should be operated by people who Believe Correctly, using the divinely-ordained free market system that allows God's chosen to rise and the unworthy to fall. And now she has a fancy award for her mantle.

Solnit, Books, Rand, and Young Readers

If you are not a regular follower of Brain Pickings, you should be. Thoughtful and erudite and really, really human, the site has for over a decade presented Maria Popova's essays spun off the works of others. I've met many authors I was glad to know on her site.

This post focuses on author Rebecca Solnit and A Velocity of Being, a collection of 121 illustrated letters written to young readers. Periodically something wakes up my teacher brain, and like an amputees phantom limb it leaps up to say, "Ooo! You should get that for the classroom" before I remember that I know longer have a classroom into which I can out such things (I do, however, have children and grandchildren.) It's about why we read and how books transform us, and Popova quotes from Solnit's letter about how books helped through a difficult childhood.

The books of my childhood were bricks, not for throwing but for building. I piled the books around me for protection and withdrew inside their battlements, building a tower in which I escaped my unhappy circumstances. There I lived for many years, in love with books, taking refuge in books, learning from books a strange data-rich out-of-date version of what it means to be human. Books gave me refuge. Or I built refuge out of them, out of these books that were both bricks and magical spells, protective spells I spun around myself. They can be doorways and ships and fortresses for anyone who loves them.

"A strange data-rich out-of-date version of what it means to be human" might be my new favorite explanation of what literature can offer.

Coincidentally, the other thing I stumbled across the morning was an old National Review reprint of Whittaker Chambers' blistering review of Atlas Shrugged. It's a review that can be enjoyed simply as a writing exercise in excoriation. It's hard to pick from a review that opens by calling the book "remarkably silly," but let's try this:

So much radiant energy might seem to serve a eugenic purpose. For, in this story as in Mark Twain’s, “all the knights marry the princess”–though without benefit of clergy. Yet from the impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of the heroine and three of the heroes, no children–it suddenly strikes you–ever result. The possibility is never entertained. And, indeed, the strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged is scarcely a place for children. You speculate that, in life, children probably irk the author and may make her uneasy. How could it be otherwise when she admiringly names a banker character (by what seems to me a humorless master-stroke): Midas Mulligan? You may fool some adults; you can’t fool little boys and girls with such stuff–not for long. They may not know just what is out of line, but they stir uneasily.

Chambers acknowledges that Rand dislikes much of what he dislikes, yet he shows no mercy for the book. His basic criticism is that Rand populates the book with simplified, unreal flat characters, "without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly."  In short, there is little to see in Rand's work about what it means to be human.

It is easy in the ed biz to get caught up in things like the reading wars and test results and arguments about whether or not Pat can read and if not why not. And in our very utilitarian reformster-created status quo, some lapse far too quickly to the discussion of reading as a set of Very Useful Skills that will make children employable meat widgets for employers on some future day, and therefor we shall have drill and practice and exercises to build up reading muscles for that far off day.

"But let's not kill the lifelong love of reading," is a common reply, and one that I'm not entirely comfortable with. It's fuzzy and reductive. I can love peanut butter and jelly, but that doesn't really open any windows on the world; I don't love science, but understanding it at least a little has enriched my world. The act of reading is wonderful in a sense, like looking through a pane of glass in an otherwise dull and impenetrable wall. It's magical, yes-- but what's really uplifting and life-changing is what we can see on the other side.

The reading technocrats and pure phonics police are focused on the future, and even the lifelong love of reading camp is looking forward. Both run the risk of forgetting that reading is useful for children right now, this year, this minute, as a way of finding answers to fundamental questions-- how does the world work, and what does it mean to be fully human, and how can I be in the world? Reading gives children access to answers beyond their own immediate experience which is always limited and all-too-often, as in Solnit's case, severely limited by the control of adults who have trouble working out answers of their own. In the crush to provide reading instruction that will benefit children someday, we shouldn't overlook the ways in which reading will benefit them right now. Both reading science and lifelong love camps stand at the window and say some version of, "Let's look at this window. Let's examine it and study it and polish it and enter into a deeper relationship with it," while anxious children hop up and down on their toes and beg to look through it.

Solnit likes the wall metaphor. I'm fond of windows. You can pick your own favorite. I just want to argue that we not get carried away by either the desire to reduce reading instruction to hard science or fuzzy emotions, that we not forget that there's an actual reason for children to read, and that the reason exists today, right now. Don't get caught up on the trees in the larger reading forest. The children are small people, but that doesn't mean they aren't working on big questions. School should help.

DeVosian NAEP Nonsense

I wasn't going to write about NAEP for any number of reasons, but then I happened to look at Betsy DeVos's comments on this year's results and, well, this whole blood pressure thing happened. So to get my numbers back down, I'm going to talk through the nonsense she issued forth, notable for its disconnection from reality, its devotion to public education bashing, and, most of all, its bizarre display of an amnesia-fueled dismissal of responsibility for any hand in the results of the Nation's Report Card.

DeVos declares that we have a "student achievement crisis" and even if you correctly read "student achievement" as "scores on a single standardized reading and math test," getting to "crisis" is a long leap. Thousands of kids taken from their parents and stuck in cages is a crisis. California on fire is a crisis. Scores on a single standardized math and reading test not going up the way you'd hoped is not a crisis. But then we get this baloney:

For more than three decades, I—and many others—have said that America's antiquated approach to education fails too many kids.

No. For three decades you and many others have used aggressive chicken littling as leverage to remake education in your preferred image. You said, "Let us have our way and NAEP scores will shoot up like daisies in springtime." Do not even pretend to suggest that you have somehow been hammering fruitlessly on the doors of education, wailing your warnings and being ignored. The current status quo in education is yours. You built it and you own it and you don't get to pretend that's not true as a way to avoid accountability for the results.

She tosses out some anecdotes which, who knows, might even be true, illustrating the horrid state of public education and the frustrations of parents.

Blame the "experts" who assure us each year that American education is "doing OK." That our schools are "good enough."

Who are those people? Reformsters have been yammering about these mythical beasts, these Deep State educationers who have been insisting that the state of US education is awesome. I don't know who they are. The closest I can get are the people who have ben saying for decades that we are doing a pretty good job given the lack of support and the inadequacy of funding and the screwing over of schools in poor districts.

Our Nation's Report Card shows that two thirds of American students can't read at grade level. Two out of three!

Nope. The results show that two thirds are not at NAEP proficiency level, which is considerably above grade level. She is simply wrong here, a fairly stunning level of wrong for a US Secretary of Education.

DeVos tosses out some more straw people who, she says, will say the results are super-okay so that she can clap back:

In reality, scores have not improved enough. Achievement has not improved enough. And our children continue to fall further and further behind their international peers.

Let me digress for just a moment to question the notion that school test scores m,ust somehow crawl ever upward like stock prices, as if students steadily evolve and improve year after year, as if our genetic stock is somehow improved. Baloney.

But the assertion that we are falling further behind international peers has no particular support (no other nation is taking America's Report Card tests) but even so, so what? What decline in our natinal fortunes can be traced to low standardized test scores. Do we have high-priced inadequate health care because of test scores? Did we have a corporate-created recesion because of test scores? What the hell difference does it actually make?

She then rattles off a list of school districts that are having troubles, like Harrisburg and Providence, but she has the giant brass ovaries to finish with Detroit, as if Detroit is not a freakin' educational nightmare because of policies that she personally rammed through the Michigan education system. She mentions suing for the right to read which, yeah, three years ago happened and the state successfully argued that they don't have to provide adequate education-- just something called school.

She tells some more stories, including one about a father who discovered that his son was an honored high school grad who couldn't read. N one of these stories feature the kind of details that would allow for fact checking.

Now she will point fingers. Education spending has increased in this country (she knows because, I don't know, avoiding paying taxes gets harder every year). It all goes to bureaucracy and administrators  and assistant superintendents and a list that does not include failed charters or bogus voucher programs or even successful charters that pay administrators far more than public systems do. She cites with horror that taxpayers have spent over a trillion dollars trying to fix public education, which I guess is a more impressive figure than the one billion that taxpayers had wasted on failed and fraudulent charter schools.

So, she concludes, we shouldn't spend any more money on school buildings. She throws out the Einstein insanity, because she still holds to the false belief that US education has stayed in place for a hundred years. Oh, and she wants us to think of how much of this money could have been spent on teacher salaries, because that's a thing she's really keen on.

She does get one thing right:

No amount of spending can bring about good results from bad policy.

Unfortunately, she does not mean all the failed reform ideas of the past twenty-some years, because in Betsy's Bizarro worlds, those policies are the product of the same Deep State "Big ED" group of people, as if everything from NCLB to Common Core to charter baloney and voucher foolishness hasn't been strenuously fought by folks in education, as if ed reform itself hasn't been the product of meddling rich amateurs many of whom are DeVos's friends and one of whom is, in fact, Betsy DeVos. Nope. Somehow, in this new alternate history, they weren't there.

She moves on to positive examples. Mississippi's reading score went up, which could be for any number of reasons but probably just one, and she is soooooooo close to figuring it out.

The idea was simple: students who can't read, can't learn. And if a student can't read by third grade, a student won't learn. So now, all Mississippi's third graders must demonstrate that they can at least read at grade level before advancing to fourth grade.

In other words, students who will do poorly on the NAEP given in fourth grade are kept out of fourth grade.This is like keeping all the short kids hidden in a back room on measuring day and then announcing that your student average height has gone up. This may be the part where my blood pressure medication threw up its hands in defeat.

Then it's Florida.

"Students there outperform nearly every other state," she says, and no, no they don't. Florida uses the same "hide the third grader trick" and has the advantage of starting in the basement for all growth measures. The rest of their policies range from disastrous to damaging. They are well on their way to completely dismantling public education, though, so they will be oft-referenced by folks like DeVos who want to see the same thing. And Florida did not do well this time.

Next comes her pitch for privatization, currently branded as "freedom." She wants to see states flex their ESSA-endowed freedom, and she wants to see the USED go away. She is anti-bulding. She wants to see more of a whole bunch of reformster ideals that have flourished in the past decade, and yet, somehow, here we are with unimpressive NAEP scores and an ever-increasing gap between the top and the bottom and Detroit and Milwaukee, loaded with all her favorite choiciness, bringing up the NAEP rear. None of Big Reform's ideas has panned out, and yet, Betsy "Einstein" DeVos wants us to do more of the same. And here comes the big finish:

If we rediscover that Founding principle, if we embrace education freedom, American students can achieve, American students can compete, American students will lead, and America will win.

Good Lord, what the hell does that even mean? Compete with whom? Win what? And since when were school vouchers a Founding principle? And can we stop pretending that the NAE$P scores aren't related to policies that reformsters have been pushing for the last twenty years? And now I need to take another pill and lie down.