Would you rather have Obama's policies continue to let threats to schools and communities slip through the cracks so they can murder people?
3
Has Michelle ever attended a school where the teachers were afraid of being assaulted by some of the students? I bet she hasn’t. If she had maybe she’d understand why Obama’s anti “prison pipeline” policies have made teaching in some schools more dangerous than ever before. Under BO’s policies violent students who attack teachers are no longer automatically expelled as they have been in the past. This has lowered standards to accommodate the worst students. A terrible idea.
What would Goldberg expect to happen to someone who attacked her at work? I don’t think she’d be happy to see the person in the building a few days later as if nothing had happened.
6
Democrats are the ones who created the school-to-prison pipeline. They run most school boards, which are rampant with corruption while barely teaching kids anything of value. Parkland is a perfect example where Democrats running the school board refused to allow students to be disciplined so they could get $54 million in federal grants by pretending they have a "safe" school. If the Democrats at Parkland had done their jobs instead of being corrupt, Cruz would never have been able to buy a gun. Blood is on their hands.
2
The only way this ideas can be stopped is to keep the public informed and focus. The shooting was caused because of a lack of follow up from the pertinent authorities and lack gun regulations. The Dear colleague policy was created to stop bigotry and unbalanced punishments to kids of color. Two completely different issues but that are muddling the waters from right activists that want to distract from the real conversation the Parkland highschoolers brought to our attention: guns and policing. There is no other guilt person than mr. Cruz on the shooting, but on the circumstances that created the tragedy all legislative and policing authorities were involved.
8
Betsey De Vos is another clueless rich person who cares not at all for public education. The fact that she was unfamiliar with several basic educational concepts and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act should have disqualified her immediately. That it didn't speaks to the ignorance of our politicians when it comes to education as well as the American attitude towards education in general.
De Vos is every bit as unqualified for her position in the Trump administration as Ben Carson is. Neither one understands how their department works. And neither one cares. If you want to see the continuation of the failing Trump presidency watch De Vos, Carson and the rest as they continue to break the country and try to pretend that they are fixing it.
Trump, in his suggestion to arm teachers is contributing to the feeling of schools being prisons. There's a reason teachers should not have guns on their person or near them when they are in the classroom. They are educators, not prison guards, not sharp shooters, and they shouldn't be asked to risk their lives and their careers or their students lives by carrying guns. There's no proof that gun toting teachers will be able to stop a school shooting. But the odds are pretty good that a student might get his/her hands on the gun, there will be a miss and a student will be injured/killed rather than the gunman, or worse.
10
Stahl smiles, all the while making her subjects appear to be baboons. She's really good at what she does.
5
DeVos is complaining about a editing hatchet job. She is surprised by this? Anyone familiar with 60 Minutes' history knew such a biased story was coming.
3
Embarrassing? Certainly. Amazing that folks still support this White House.
Critical? Of course. Ms. Devos is inept, ignorant, oblivious and unfit.
Biased? I don't believe so. Can you provide any evidence at all?
Dave wrote:
"DeVos is complaining about a editing hatchet job. She is surprised by this? Anyone familiar with 60 Minutes' history knew such a biased story was coming."
4
Among our great national scandals, of which there are many, are the cabinet members: DeVos, Pruitt, Mnuchin, Carson, Chao, Carson, Zinke---all only part of the line-up in this inept and ethically corrupt team.
8
"DeVos said, 'I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming.'”
Wha . . .? Is she saying she might have done so by accident?
4
Since the great majority of public schools are underperforming, it is likely that she has.
2
If it will help private schools, Sec. DeVos would gladly send all public students to jail.
5
I'm sure what Betsy Devos said was not "intentional". She "intentionally" did not visit "those" failing schools for the same reason she wouldn't dream of traveling to the other side of the tracks to see how the common people live. It's beneath her station.
It's that grating smile of her that's a giveaway. It's her tell. It comes just before her response to a question which irks her so. Get ready for it, the lie, told with nary a care in the world.
When you work for Trump, what really is truth? Just another annoying interference with your propensity to incessantly lie.
DD
Manhattan
5
Republican plutocrats have one paramount goal: Destroy American democracy by any means necessary.
DeVos's role in this treason is to continue dismantling public schools and thereby produce a low-skiled, cheap labor force together with an ignorant, disengaged and obedient citizenry.
Never has America been in greater danger.
5
What the right wing don't seem to understand that education is a long term cost savings.
Better to get people educated and working and paying taxes than paying for welfare and prison and Medicaid.
Republican voters don't seem to understand this either. They don't realize the small tax reduction they get results in increased prison costs.
It is one of the reasons state university tuition costs have been going up.
I wish a psychologist would explain this mentality and how to change it.
The Republican voters are really helping the rich get richer at the expense of themselves without knowing it.
5
Do you think we lack for education spending? "In the mid 1980s education spending began to increase again. It flatlined at about 5.3 percent of GDP in the 1990s, but resumed its growth in the 2000s, reaching 6.1 percent in 2010 before declining to 5.5 percent GDP in 2014 and perhaps lower by 2020." https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spendin
1
My wife teaches school and the administration seems too afraid to ever punish black kids, even those severely disruptive or violent. She's had enough and will no longer teach at under performing inner city schools.
12
What a nasty article. This is how the Left loses - always presuming the worst, always condemning its opponents as being immoral, stupid, or both.
This is how Trump got elected. Wake up and drop the nasty snark.
9
If the goal is the enslavement of once was the middle class. She is doing a great job...
2
Yes, the De Vos Stepford Wife style smiling. She's a wolf in Leave It To Beaver clothing.
Lawyers, doctors, drivers, musicians, technicians, mechanics, plumbers, etc must be licensed, tested, trained, or at the very least, know how to do their jobs. Yet, political office can be gained by any ignorant, incompetent, unqualified, no experience, dishonest creep. "Elites", what a joke this current crop of "leaders" is. Devin Nunes should be expelled and forbidden to ever hold political jobs, his corruption is cosmic.
Why has no one mentioned this--- Gun massacres occur at concerts, bars, post offices, movie theaters, rooftop snipers, car snipers, churches, and yes, schools. Are we going to arm all bartenders, churchgoers, postal workers, film ushers, popcorn sellers, bouncers? There were armed cops and security guards in Las Vegas, 58 killed anyway, many wounded. I was robbed at gunpoint 3x in Baltimore while I had a handgun permit and a revolver in a shoulder holster under my sportcoat, they always came from behind me.
Only if you see the threat before the slaughter begins would being armed be able to stop the initial killing. Maybe some would be saved. But arming all citizens would lead to more shootings.
Trump boasted he would hire the best. Let's face it, after almost 14 months of him as president, any supporter is either as ignorant as a doorknob or corrupt to the bone. Our ugly Americans are visible to the whole world. Rotten to the core, the US of Trump.
4
"...but there’s evidence that students of color are punished differently from white students for the same infractions."
That may be true, but Ms. Goldberg sites only one example - comparing two separate students, different infractions and circumstances...and no back story (including a history of previous infractions by either student).
6
Really? How many examples should she use? Should she have written a book instead of an opinion as an op-ed columnist?
3
Evangelicals wanted Betsy DeVos - were thrilled that Pence broke the tie to put her in office. But why? They were so happy that DeVos gave, by her own admission, $200,000,000 to Republicans and Trump. They are thrilled that she is gutting the Public School System - yet she nor anyone in her family ever attended Public School. So why are Evangelicals so happy? Because Stormy Daniels has set the example for their daughters and Trump has set the example for their sons. Who needs education when Evangelicals' daughter can grow up and earn six-figure incomes for services to married men? They are rejoicing the destruction of the public schools where so many common people send their children.
2
Betsy DeVos is just another of 45's not just unqualified, but totally inappropriate appointments to his cabinet.
Between DeVos, Pruitt and Zinke, great damage is being done to the country. Time for some changes, as soon as possible.
4
If you don’t trust the schools, their administrators and teachers, to do right by their students, then whom do you trust? What do you suggest parents do?
2
Watch for a wave of retirements from experienced teachers who will not work in schools where teachers are armed. Arming teachers is antithetical to everything school is about. How long until a teacher brandishes a gun in an attempt to restore order in the classroom? How long until "that kid" grabs the gun away? Or the brandishing teacher fires accidentally? No guns in schools!
5
Nonesense.
My district has armed staff for 3 years. No one has resigned because of it.snd the community supports it.
4
I found her comment about schools being made up of individual students to be truly illuminating. Obviously, she had done her homework. A more incompetent syncophant one can hardly imagine. A train wreck in an administration full of them.
3
We're living in a society where violence is the norm, and fear of non-white folks too common. The simplest but obviously not the easiest way to keep the former down is to cut down the number of weapons, that would mean guns. Perhaps along with a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage there should be a gun in every family.
We do not need a private armory in every home or (to bring the matter back to schools) armed teachers. The reason not to arm teachers is a simple one, or two. Firstly, that makes the teacher fair game, and makes students getting their mitts on the "qualified teacher's" weapon a quest.
Additionally, it adds another layer to the school to prison problem.
We are living in wild times that haven't been seen here since the days of the far flung and wild west. Who would have thought a few decades ago the average American would be dealing with opioid addiction, legal marijuana, people going postal at work, school, church, and play, and a federal government no one can begin to comprehend?
2
I am sorry, but the Parkland school system and the Broward police failed badly in the Cruz case. Both failed to record the severity of Cruz's behaviour (threatening family members with a gun!!) which would have led to him being noticed by the system.
Dozens of police calls failed to get Cruz into the background check system.
Warnings to the FBI (two separate specific warnings) failed as well.
Nikolas Cruz is a poster child of how badly our "feel good" system has failed.
8
People self select the “prison pipeline” by their own behavior. For the good of all we should expedite that choice once they make it. We should also allow people to exit the education machine for the vegetable picking pipeline, the pulpwood hauling pipeline, and the dishwashing pipeline.
At the root of most problems with our education system are the twin notions that people are entitled to one and that everyone can benefit from one.
1
As a Michigander, I have witnessed the destruction that virtually unregulated charters, virtual academies and the like have wrought on public education here. Ms. DeVos's complete lack of education credentials alone made her a horrible choice for her position. In Michigan, Ms. DeVos and her family have made it clear that they see schools as profit margins and that tax cuts for the wealthy disguised as vouchers are their real goals.
At the same time, as a school district leader, the phrase "school to prison pipeline," is deeply offensive. Professional educators care deeply for their students and labor hard daily, in often under-financed and over-regulated systems, to help as many children improve as possible. Neither I, nor any administrator, has a red phone linked to a prison on their desks as this offensive label implies. Knee-jerk, blanket generalizations such as this "pipeline" do nothing to address the complexities that are involved in student discipline.
Ms. DeVos, sadly, does not know that some of the correct responses to Ms. Stahl's hypothetical questions would include, "Does one of the students you mention have special education status?" "Has the state you are imagining written any zero tolerance laws or other laws that would impact this decision?" "Is the behavior a manifestation of a student's designation?" "Has the student been disciplined for this before?"
My beloved NYTimes would do well to ask real educators about student discipline before simply piling on.
3
Parkland adopted the DOE approach of increasing the severity of infraction required to trigger a police record. As a result arrests, etc., declined drastically. But the number of infractions did not decrease. And then came disaster. We certainly need a better way to handle serious student misbehavior. That wasn't it.
4
To ignore the evidence that the "dear colleague "letter was a contributing factor in the Parkland shootings sets a new example for ostriches. It may have seemed a good idea at the time, but "juking the stats" rarely brings positive results.
9
Aside from failing to cite any 'evidence' Mr Israel seems to have missed the
point. Mr Cruz (Parkland shooter) is white, was previously expelled from school and therefore would in no way have been affected by the Dear Colleague guidance relating to suggested lesser penalties for minority students.
3
Whether Cruz was seen as White or Hispanic, the change in approach meant that any student demonstrating felonious behavior would not be referred to police would be applied to all students.
Devos is a wealthy donor with ideologically shaped views on a multitude of subjects but without any expertise or experience in any of them..She has no business being Secretary of Education.Having said that, the stats presented in support of racial bias in attitudes to misbehavior in school is deeply flawed since it relies on overall numbers and does not correct for variables such as the number or seriousness of infarctions, recidivism following previous infarctions and other concomitant related issues in each instance.So Rubio writes a letter making unsupported assumptions but racial bias leading to the school to prison issue is similarly is based on assumptions rather than hard data where confounding variables have been identified and corrected for.
4
It has been suggested that Trump's behavior reveals an unspoken fear of black males. That such fear exists among many white folks should not come as "Breaking News." Our history, our literature and our films pretty well document this phenomenon, and white school workers, teachers, administrators are not exempt from such fears and their accompanying biases. As we have seen and heard, the rise of Trump has brought to Washington and to our communities the dark side of American human nature.
And we are all the very much less for that.
10
And you want to pretend there is no realistic basis for such a fear? If one group commits a much greater number of homicides despite being a smaller percentage of the population, it seems logical that they might be regarded with trepidation. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-homicide-in-ame...
3
"It has been suggested that Trump's behavior reveals an unspoken fear of black males."
Suggested by whom?
4
A school to prison pipeline? I'm not sure about that, but I strongly suspect there is a tax dollar to private school pipeline in DeVos's plans for education.
9
Nikolas Cruz was able to easily acquire a semi-automatic because he lacked a criminal record. Had there not been a concerted effort to shield criminal students from developing criminal records, he would not have passed a background check.
So, will DeVos expand the School-to-Prison pipeline? We can only hope.
7
What gets me is we’re supposed to have zero tolerance policies towards violence, bullying, and the like in schools. But everything I see convinces me schools were far more zero tolerance in my day- 60s/early 70s.
5
We used to have the greatest public schools in the world. As we fulfilled our manifest destiny and spread from sea to shining sea the one constant that tied our country together was our education system. When k-8 was no longer enough we added highschool and later public college. Brown versus the board of education changed everything. White people didn't want their kids going to school with black kids and suddenly public schools stopped being something to invest in. Those who could turned to private schools while the rest of us have watched our public schools get worse and worse.
We get the system that we deserve. Until we reject racism once and for all and set strong national standards nothing will change. Our teachers should be well educated and highly paid. We should invest in headstart nationwide. Schools in poor districts need more support not lost funding. America eventually does the right thing after exhausting all other options. Are we there yet with our education system.
7
Betsy DeVos epitomizes government of the rich, for the rich. She is uniquely unqualified to be Sec. of Education. She has attended only "Christian" schools, has no more than a B.A. to her name, and has neither taught in or run a school.
Despite her B.A. in Business Economics, she was involved in only one company; she and her husband were investors in and board members of Neurocore, a company whose purported therapeutic treatments for various brain and behavior disorders remain questionable and unproven.
DeVos was chosen for her wealth (which came by marriage, not by work), her Republican fundraising activity, and her conservative beliefs. Per her Wikipedia entry, over decades, she and her husband have contributed millions to conservative and Republican causes and candidates. She has been actively involved in Michigan Republican politics and has sat on the boards of organizations conservative education agendas, especially school choice through privatization and public money vouchers.
She clearly stated her beliefs about money and politics in a 1997 op-ed in The Atlantic: "My family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party. I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right."
The Senate's 51-50 vote to confirm her, with VP Mike Pence breaking the tie, has been her biggest success in buying influence. It shows how Trump values ideology over competence.
8
Poll after poll shows that the less educated are the people who support Trump. It is no wonder that this administration is diminishing education on all levels from grade school to college. A poorly educated populace is a strategy for election victory.
9
DeVos can't even speak her own language. She is reported as saying "I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming." This means that she has visited such school accidentally or unintentionally. What she meant to say--or so I presume--was, "I have intentionally not visited schools that are underperforming." So discouraging that a person who has not even mastered her own language is put in charge of educating Ametrica.
8
John, John, John
"A gentleman never insults another person unintentionally."
(Apologies to O.W._
2
Well, if we're going to parse her grammar, I think she actually meant something like, "I haven't made a point of visiting schools that are underperforming," that is, she hasn't made a special effort or taken any special interest in underperforming schools. She's a despicable person and plainly incompetent at her job, but I don't think we have to hold it against her that when she speaks off the cuff, she isn't always perfectly grammatical. Lots of people don't speak perfectly grammatically in interviews.
1
What Goldberg calls "misbehavior" includes assaulting teachers, sexual assault of classmates, bringing weapons into the school, and robbery. Not quite the same as setting an alarm clock in the school library.
9
Goldberg likes most of the Times columnists leave facts out so they can influence their readers with false narratives.
4
Goldberg is conflating two different issues here:
1. Racial Difference in Discipline - "Black public school students are suspended at 3.8 times the rate of white students. That discrepancy alone doesn’t necessarily demonstrate discrimination, but there’s evidence that students of color are punished differently from white students for the same infractions." While we certainly should address any bias in disciplinary measures, the suspension difference may simply be a function of a difference in committing infractions. Do we really want a teacher to act like an umpire keeping a pitch count, seeing a black student hurt someone or otherwise break school rules, but then decide they shouldn't punish the student because they've already exceeded their allotment for punishing black students that day ?
2. Who provides discipline ? - " The Dear Colleague Letter said school personnel must “understand that they, rather than school resource officers and other security or law enforcement personnel, are responsible for administering routine student discipline.” This is eerily similar to the other Dear Colleague letter directed at colleges saying that they (rather than the police) should adjudicate claims of rape. Liberals scoff at the idea of teachers wielding guns. But since when are teachers trained to investigate and adjudicate crimes ? This is more a liberal revulsion to people trained in law enforcement to handle crimes. Let the police do their jobs.
16
CSPANN aired a DOE meeting with DeVos and representatives from private schools both for profit and non profit, charter schools and home schooling advocates. Missing from the meeting represenataives from public education. She worked with Jeb Bush to privatize and profitize public schools in Florida. In both Florida and Michigan there has been no investments in assessing the efficacy of these programs so of course she would not know about performance. She operates on the Peter Pan model if you believe it is good then it just is. Of course we won't mention how the for profit school industry flows money to her and republicans.
The entire goal is to kill public education. That is universal free public education. She is evil and just another trump official who does not believe in public good. The only good makes money and prays at the alter of the prosperity gospel. She should be the next trumpie to go but it won't happen since she and pence are thick as thieves. And they are theeves stealing children's futures.
3
I agree with Michelle Goldberg — on "Sixty Minutes", Betsy DeVos came across as shockingly uninformed, and not up to being Secretary of Education.
However, Ms. Goldberg lost me when she said, "Combine this tacit license to discriminate [in meting out discipline to students] with the Trump administration plan to encourage the arming of teachers, and you have a recipe for something combustible."
Just how does this follow, Ms. Goldberg? Are you suggesting that (presumably white) teachers will gun down minority children? Really?
3
While I may be wrong I don't think the purpose of arming Teachers is to gun down students. I can only pray given your comment that you don't have a gun.
1
Given that it is an established reality that minority children are punished disproportionately, it seems a reasonable extrapolation.
2
Anything, anything, anything, but questioning why it was so easy for Cruz to get a gun, a semi-automatic weapon so scary that the police stayed outside waiting for SWAT (they know the sound of the weapon, that is my theory) while the kids were assassinated inside--anything but questioning why it was so easy for him to get this weapon in the first place.
4
If he had been arrested for the several felonies he committed in school he wouldn't have been able to.
2
Dear Commenters, when you are addressing Trump's cabinet, use qualified sparsely, Otherwise, I am getting confused.
Other than a couple person, rest is unqualified for even riding the bus.
2
It would be interesting to see the Times do a story on any members of the Trump administration who happen to be competent. There must be at least a couple, somewhere, who have experience and expertise for the job they're doing, and who are NOT being investigated for anything felonious, or waiting for a "delayed" security clearance. Or maybe I'm dreaming.
If anyone thinks that Ms DeVos is the reason why our schools are not up to World Class standards ought to take a hard look at parenting and the products the schools are being presented with by our society. Ms. Goldberg presents her side of the Devos's side of the solution and neither represent the core problem to failing schools. Kids in other, more successful countries are embedded with a moral structure and a clear picture of what school and education represents to the 1. Family 2. Society 3. The future success of the student. Schools would then get a workable product in a high percentage of attending students. From that point on failing schools, teachers and administrators are easy to spot and remediate. Parenting is the core problem.
Lesley Stahl's questions and DeVos's answers were an embarrassment to us all. No relevance to anything and how is it 60 Minutes singled out black schools and students, does anybody believe this is the representation of all schools? Or better yet: 60 minutes using blacks to sensationalize the story, tell us that isn't in a racist comment and an embarrassment to the black community
I saw an interview with Syrian students going to a bombed out building and the maturity and desire to learn was incredible. Imagine what they could do with the opportunity given almost all of our students.
4
Michigan public schools got worse with DeVos help.
Watch the interview.
Do an Internet search.
2
Rather doubt there were any Hispanic's or African-American students at Holland Christian HS while Betsy was there tho there may have been a very few at Calvin College. Her sheltered life has formed her opinions void of the necessity of acquiring actual facts. Actual facts would require a little work to discover. Don't think she's up to the effort.
5
Amazing at how the author misses the causes and locations of the "institutional racism". The major cities in America are all run by Democrats and most Conservatives choose not to live there. Yet, it is in this cities where young minorities are gunned down by other minorities. It is in these cities where Democrat's ideas are advanced and implemented. Conservative America and America for the vast majority of our history had no issues with gun violence, religion, marriage etc. The left told America that accept their radical ideas which rejected our proud history and character of individualism for the it takes a village to raise a child nonsense. The left's ideas on divorce, marriage, child-rearing etc. have all made America worse. Wake up and return to our proud and proven history of Judeo Christian values.
By the way, don't fool yourself (Democrats/Progressives) if Secretary Devos had intentionally went to an inner-city school that was poorly performing she would have been accused or perpetuating racial sterotypes and being a racist. As an attorney, I fully understand you can always find something to complain. The MSM relentless invocation of criticism of anything and everything done by anyone on the right is why the MSM has so little credibility in the vast majority of states (look up how few Hillary won out of 50 states).
6
I was a substitute teacher in a variety of schools in NYC. It was obvious to me that what was considered mischievous behavior in white students was considered criminal in Black students.
3
Trump will be brought down by the collective weight of his unqualified appointees.
In the pre-election debates I recall thinking that he didn’t know topics and didn’t care that he didn’t care.
DeVos may be a fine person for all I know but she is in way over her head
2
The department of education should have one job: freeing the school systems across the nation from the tyranny of the National Education Association. DeVos appears to be just getting started.
3
Really? Why should the DoE do that?
Astrid Forsgren
spent more than 30 years teaching 5th grade in a public school
1
Yes, blacks are disproportionately recipients of the harsher penalties. I would also like to suggest that boys receive the same biased treatment relative to girls.
5
If it means one less school shooting as recently happened in Florida, let's hope so.
1
Best people?? As Joe Biden might say, what a bunch of malarkey! DeVos is yet another appalling example of the wildly unqualified cabinet secretaries the dumpster fire prez has chosen, and worse, approved by the spineless Senate.
2
Mike Pompeo graduated 1st in his class at West Point and has a law degree from Harvard. I wonder how many NYT columnists or commenters here can match that?
4
African Americans make up the fastest-growing homeschooling demographic. Many black parents have already committed to removing their children from schools if teachers are allowed to be armed.
Here are some resources: http://www.nbhe.net/ (National Black Home Educators)
https://www.liberatedmindsexpo.com/ (The Black Home School Expo is in July this year)
https://www.facebook.com/africanamericanhomeschoolnetwork/
http://blackhomeschoolmom.com/
And after that, register to vote and run for office. America is a hostile place for people of color.
2
America is much, much, much more hostile to seniors than it is to people of color, but seniors don't use that as an excuse to commit crimes.
2
In reading her bio it appears that DeVos never attended public school at any level. Ever.
She has some catching up to do.
2
Anyone remember Cathy Black? She was the chancellor for a minute in NYC. She was sacked after a tone deaf answer aboit abortion that hinted at. racism. Then she got indignant when she got fired and said she didnt want the job anyway. Compare that to DeVos who said it was a waste of time she spent with Stahl being interviewed. Dilettantes don't like being questioned
2
Why is DeVos still employed? She is ridiculous.
2
I very much enjoy reading Michelle Goldberg's work for the New York Times.
But I was very disturbed by her use of and the editor's allowance of the printing of the name of the person accused of killing 17 people in the Parkland, Florida school shooting.
What possible relevance was there to the use of the name of this accused killer in an article about the incompetence of Betsy DeVos?
I sincerely hope Ms. Goldberg and her editors read this comment and are moved to remove from the online version of the article the name of someone so venal and disturbed. Sadly, nothing can be done to revise the printed version.
Someone who brutally murders 17 lovely people deserves zero publicity.
He should be known simply as “the accused killer”.
2
Regardless of overall trends in school discipline, Sen. Rubio may be correct that the Obama-era policy may have contributed to the Parkland shooting. School officials should not hesitate to call the police when it is needed. The collective safety of the students, along with maintaining a positive environment for learning, far outweigh any concerns that an individual student who is a disciplinary problem may end up in the so-called school to prison pipeline.
4
Law enforcement was notified multiple times of his behavior.
2
DeVoss is a billionaire right-wing ideologue who, like all right-wing ideologues, is an enemy of the democratic redistributive governmental system which supports the social welfare state. She couldn't provide appropriate answers to the reporter's questions because that would be out of character with her class identity, and with her goal of undermining the public school system, which she conceals by means of dissembling. Trump appointed her as education secretary because she's an avowed advocate for charter schools and is one of his richest political supporters.
15
Right. Because they are doing so well now.
1
Separate Betsy DeVos from her money. Does she get anywhere near a Cabinet post?
Of course not - however in the Trump Klown Kar she gets a prominent seat, even if wildly unqualified. Education? Who cares about that?
10
The quibbles in this op-ed beg (beg meaning assume the premise of) the question whether there should be a Department of Education in the first place. We should abolish it. Canada has no Ministry of Education and its students do fine under provincial and local school administrations. If we abolished our education department, few would notice. Can anyone advance a counterargument?
https://www.cicic.ca/1301/ministries-departments-responsible-for-educati...
4
This comment is remarkably ignorant. It is largely irrelevant whether or not Canada has a Department of Education. Education in Canada has national standards, a national curriculum and national testing. Every child studies the same things in the same classes. Canadian universities know exactly what all of their applicants have studied.
Cyclist wrote:
"The quibbles in this op-ed beg (beg meaning assume the premise of) the question whether there should be a Department of Education in the first place. We should abolish it. Canada has no Ministry of Education and its students do fine under provincial and local school administrations. If we abolished our education department, few would notice. Can anyone advance a counterargument?"
2
The failure of federal role in education is not just the Trump administration—it is the Republican Party.
Let’s take a look at what Trump has advanced and supported. Championing private schools—Republican argument. Withdrawal from global warming accords—Republican argument. Denial of human cause of global warming—Republican argument. Failure to effectively control guns—Republican argument. Tax benefits for the very rich—Republican argument. Build the wall and penalize immigrants (DACA)—Republican argument. Lack of care and concern for those on welfare—Republican argument. Opening up federal lands for mining—Republican argument. Retreat on protecting workers—Republican argument.
DeVos or Zinke or Carson or Perry, Trump’s positions are not aberrant. These are standard Republican views that are being implemented.
Failing a significant political change, the worse is yet to come.
9
It's no wonder the Republican party keeps winning over voters on the back of "Government is too big/too evil/should stay out of our lives" mantra's, when every time they get elected, they do everything in their power to absolutely ensure, Government institutions are stripped down to the point of ruin.
Practice what you preach I guess?
2
Betsy DeVos, like everyone in the Trump Administration, simply doesn't care.
Their motto is, no one deserves anything they can't pay for themselves.
Can't afford a private school? Too bad. The world needs ditch diggers, too.
We have to remember that our country now has a president whose mental and emotional growth ended in high school.
But he still has toadies and sycophants who hang around seeing what they can get from him. Like Betsy DeVos.
3
One thing Leslie tried to point out and get answered is that there SHOULDN'T be a choice between a poor & a good school AND what happens to that poor school as fewer and fewer people "choose" it??
3
I hope all readers, whatever their political persuasions, will consider the following:
1. Education is a challenging process in the best of circumstances, and the education process cannot succeed if it is disrupted by students who are unable or unwilling to behave in a civil manner.
2. Any and all students who are disruptive need to be removed from their classrooms temporarily or permanently so the other students can continue their education undistracted, unhindered and unthreatened.
3. Disruption is not limited to a single race or ethnic group or religious group.
4. No student who threatens or attacks or harms a teacher or school staff member should be allowed to remain in school.
5. No student who threatens or attacks or harms or another student should be allowed to remain in school.
6. Families bear much--not all--of the responsibility for the behavior of their children. Efforts must be made to establish what schools, and society in general, can do a) to provide a safe educational experience for the vast majority of students and at the same time b) to help students whose actions demonstrate that they are unable or unwilling to benefit from a traditional school setting. Only in extreme cases--and these are not infrequent--should law enforcement be involved; and, yes, sometimes prison is the ultimate solution after all other efforts to reform bad student behavior have failed. Of course families need to be involved, too.
10
You're making a straw man argument. No one is advocating for violent students to not be removed and properly disciplined.
2
@Max: Are you sure about that?
1
She is perfect for this group. A billionaire's daughter and a billionaire's daughter in law. No experience, no intelligence, no curiosity. What could go wrong?
5
I saw this entire interview, and found myself screaming at the television. This woman does not appear to be a nutcase, but if you listen to her words, and even the style in which she responds, she is clearly a bad choice for any government position. This opinion piece nailed it.
9
The black girl/white girl crime/punishment scenario in the penultimate paragraph literally made my jaw drop like its hinge had just disintegrated. My mind is filled with the buzzing of bees as I attempt to comprehend this. She THREW A ROCK at the teacher and wasn't IMMEDIATELY suspended? GAH! My brain just broke...
4
If they had just shown the Stormy Daniels piece most of us would never have seen the DeVos interview. Ah, karma.
2
DeVos makes good sense if you understand the economic potential of our prison-industrial complex with enormous profits waiting for the Prince family and other similarly unprincipled people. DeVos and her Prince siblings are cut from the same shoddy cloth as Trump.
5
In the state of Michigan where they reside, the billionaire DeVos family donates large amount of money to the Republican Party. As a result that party controls all three branches of government. Districts are gerrymandered so that Republicans win in districts where there were more Democrats voting. DeVos has a particular focus on destroying schools in largely African American cities like Detroit. She wants to funnel them into a system of for profit charter schools which her family will own. They will vary in quality and poor, indigent African American may not succeed and drop out or be expelled. If they turn to crime they will go to prison. At the heart of the DeVos family, is an ugly racism. Betsy DeVos should have nothing to do with school policy particularly as it concerns African American citizens.
9
I think Black children are disciplined far more harshly for the same infractions as other students because they usually question and resist authority and do not accept punishment or correction passively. Authority figures in turn expect them to resist whether they do or not and punish them accordingly. The reason they resist is obvious, because they expect to be treated differently. It's a chicken or egg phenomenon. The Obama administration thought that if teachers and administrators could detach and not get as emotionally invested in disciplinary events it would help. On the other hand, it takes a special human being vested with authority to act with detachment. Trump, and apparently DeVos, don't believe in detachment. They believe in "bad" Black kids. For me, this is one more reason to vote them out of office.
2
The underlying unspoken reality is that kids are more prone to act up in school when they don't buy into what the school is selling. Therefore, it's no surprise that minority kids act up more than white kids. The explanation is rooted more in economic class and culture than in race. It may appear to make sense that (mainly white) educators are prone to punish black students more severely (as cops more readily shoot at black suspects), but with 34 years of experience in public school classrooms my overwhelming impression is that teachers just want to teach and are equally exasperated at whoever disrupts their class. It may be impolitic to say so, but a joke that has gained much currency is that when students with one black and one white parent do well on standardized tests, that student is black, and when he gets into trouble, he is white. So there is a backbending sensitiviy to the discipline issue. I wish Michelle Goldberg would write a piece on how big, bureaucratic school systems are not carving out realistic paths to success for too many of our young people. This is the reason we have more discipline problems in schools today.
2
De Vos and her well heeled private entities will make big bucks if they can destroy the public school system. It has been the GOP plan for a long time because it caters to the "elites" at the expense of the poor,minorities and let the taxpayer take the bill.There is no conclusive research that school choice (charters,home schools,religious,private,etc) has fared better,if the truth be known.It is hidden in all of these situations.
Public schools are the last chance we have to slow the inequities in this country so it looks like the conspiracy is working.
3
Betsy DeVos's family has made a lot of money privatizing services formerly performed by various public entities. Private prisons, private schools, and even privatized military operations represent billions in public funds that can be shifted to for-profit corporations.
Take public schools. Doing well in some cases, poorly in others. Usually the poor-performing schools are a product of their environment: poor students trying to cope with unstable family situations, crime, drugs, depression, and despair, result in poor academic performance and discipline issues. But if you can take the property taxes collected for schools, and use vouchers and charters to funnel the money to private interests, somebody gets rich! Sure, the students are in worse shape, but you can route them to for-profit prisons, where they potentially become contributors to your bottom line for life!
4
There is no "school to prison pipeline. there IS a poverty to prison pipeline. Schools are the only thing that stand between impoverished children and prison.
4
Actually, though it may seem counter intuitive to some here, somebody like DeVos is actually more apt to WEAKEN the horrible school-to-prison pipeline. Democrats still instinctively defend public schools like it's still the eighties and they are fending off attacks from Bill Bennet, Lynn Cheney, William F. Buckley, etc. But actually, they have mostly abandoned public schools. An elite private school education is now very much part of their criteria for leadership in the Democratic Party. Since they have mostly abandoned public schools, public schools are now worse than ever. By hurting public schools, DeVos will weaken all the horrible things public schools do to kids, including the school-to-prison pipeline. It's pretty amazing to see anybody associated with The NEw York Times defend public schools in any way, or attack DeVos for not seeming supportive enough of public schools. What do they think this is? The eighties? Even more than Republicans, the Democrats are the party of private schools.
3
So because elite politicians send kids to private schools that means Democrats have abandoned public schools? They make up such a small percentage of the population that your argument is, well, I can't type what it is and have any hope that my comment will be published. I wonder if you know how terrible your argument is?
1
that's EXACTLY what it means. ANY Democrat who defends public schools is a total hypocrite. If Pat Robertson's wife had an abortion he wouldn't be more of a hypocrite than Democrats attacking DeVos for her 'attacks' on public schools.
3
Yes. Yes, she will expand the school to prison pipeline for African American students. And it's ironic that the trigger for this is the need for increased school security because of white male spree shooters. It's a perfect storm: defund public schools, trumpet uniform tests and discipline as the balm for this lack of funding, while simultaneously arming every single American with at least one weapon and voila! Public schools are prisons.
Hopefully schools to prison will see De Vos locked up.
3
"Don’t let the clownishness distract you from the bigotry."
Exactly. Those who support Trump are either bigots themselves, or they don't mind that he is. What's the difference?
1
Ms. Goldberg--missing from your article is one of the main pillars of the imprisonment of dark-skinned people: the war on drug users.
Have you written on this?
Thanks.
Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't a disruptive Donald Trump sent off to Military School
Ms. DeVos's only qualification seems to be a lot money, none of which she earned. Who on God's green Earth pushed this clueless lightweight onto Trump and into cabinet?
1
Re: "...an interview that Lesley Stahl conducted with Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s education secretary and one of the richest members of his very rich cabinet. It was overwhelmingly seen as a disaster for DeVos, who struggled to answer very basic questions..."
I saw this cringe_worthy interview; I was / am amazed that someone so blessed by income / inheritance bracket could be such an ignorant imbecile, and...sadly...that she would appear on Tv this way...almost, as if to make sure EVERYONE knows she's grossly, incompetence!
Such incompetence_displays seems to be a requirement for ALL (Trump Cabinet) candidates; Aka: NO sense of embarrassment is permitted!
Q.) Given a year+ in office to demonstrate his advisory-choices...why would Trump feel a competent person is required for this position, (Sec.Edu.'), when he seems to feel that 'competence' is the major disqualifying factor for ALL cabinet positions?
1
The public school is one of the basic institutions of our country. It is the means of educating our people to participate in democracy, of enabling people to enjoy equal protection under the law, to appreciate tolerance for people with different faiths and different political perspectives. Every anti-democratic and anti-enlightenment group from would be elitists to religious fundamentalists who want an end to secular institutions have feared and loathed public schools because it makes their children doubt what they belief. This Secretary is just the latest person who thinks that public schools are threats to her best interests.
3
Kids need kids need to take personal responsibility for their actions
3
While I generally agree, every effort must be made to help young people avoid the slippery slope of entering into the criminal justice system during the formative years of their lives. Everyone makes mistakes, and should be afforded the fair opportunity to learn from them instead of simply being incarcerated.
6
I cannot emphasize the importance of recognizing the need to find ways to avoid the school-to-prison pipeline. One of my children who acted out in school, to the point the police were once called in, was given many opportunities where there was a restitutional punishment. My child did a turn around in the junior year of high school, was accepted early admission at a competitive college and was hired by a Fortune 500 company. if my child were not white, the story would probably have included reformatory school.
Although I didn't, I know parents who were lucky enough to have the money to send their children to reputable special schools and their children are now responsible adults. I know of school systems, in upper class communities that have alternative programs for children with discipline problems that have been successful. Not all children will be success stories, but we should not easily give up on a child.
11
it did not work for President Trump who was sent to an upstate military reform school for spoiled rich kids instead of the fine public high school a short walk from his house in Jamaica Estates.
Don’t know about “school-to-prison” pipeline, but have little doubt that Betsy DeVos will do her part to expand the “Trump-Executive-Branch-to-prison” pipeline. We’re “dumber-than-dirt” not demeaning to dirt, it would be the perfect moniker for Ms. DeVos.
Pottree
LOL Read the last sentence. 'Not all children will be success stories, but we should not easily give up on a child."
Incarcerating people is big business in the United States. Betsy DeVos is a jobs-creator by destroying our nation's public school systems, and creating jobs within the prison industry. Our nation's youth are the fuel that keeps prisons filled. Ruining the future of our nation's youth, by destroying their opportunity for a good education is also guaranteed to increase crime - creating job opportunities within the criminal justice system. "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
11
Leave the country if you can, for a civilised, educated democracy, no matter skin color or background, if you have children, plan to, or have grandkids. This is going to get worse - the only possible direction. It makes no difference who wins the Congress, as democratic leaders, now demanding "consequences" for Russians and decrying Russian racism, has not even publicly broached the topic of trump's unfitness. The strategy is to look better than him standing next to him. If he weren't there, they'd be empty. They will never impeach him, though it is clear he is hostile to the Constitution ( "enemy"; "disgusting", just for two examples of official presiidential statements issued from the White House) and has misused the high office to commit high crimes such as threats and slander against private citizens who do not stand and cheer and thank and praise but rather criticize him, including illegal actions to be taken such as smashing people's heads against cop car door frames because he, one man, says they must be guilty.
More than a pattern -- it's all that there is. There is no faithful execution of the office, ever, no protection, defense or preservation of the Constitution as it flies in the face of desire for presidency for life and prison for reporters and the beating of critics and the imprisonment of opponents, and job loss for protesters except, of course "fine" Nazis and Ku Klux Klan terrorists.
Land, air, water: "shyt-h0les.' for billionaires to dump in.
7
Miss DeVos's only attribute is that she was born with a silver spoon or more likely a golden spoon. Beyond that single attribute she is dumb as straw and without question the least qualified person to lead the Department of Education or any department.
People should remember President's promise that he will only hire only the BEST people to serve in his Administration. We should have suspected and now have proof that his template for 'best' is not the same as most people's notion of 'best'. It's safe to say that incompetent people select and surround themselves with other incompetent people as they are intimidated by competence.
When will our collective Trump nightmare end?
9
The Republican Party has constructed a repulsively elegant closed loop. Run on fear of black people and immigrants and disgust toward liberals. Use the political power gained through fear and disgust to defund government (except military, law enforcement, and prisons). Use the prison-industrial complex to lock up black people and immigrants. Use political power to suppress votes of minorities (and convicts!). Ignore evidence and science, continue to stoke fear through anecdote (e.g. Kate Steinle).
It can take a lot to break through the noise. We are already going back to sleep on guns, only a month after Parkland. Of course, there's always another school shooting, always another police shooting of an unarmed black man.
Wake up. Stay woke. Vote. Every time, every election. Yes, it's a travesty that affluent white people can breeze into the school down the block, vote, and be out in 10 minutes, while black people 5 miles away have to wait on line for hours to vote on a work day.
Wait on that line. Elect the Democrats who will pass laws to protect the franchise, and appoint judges who will defend it in court.
Vote these monsters out. The power is in our hands.
13
Actually, black men commit more violent crimes than white men, which is why they have more encounters with police. The police have a duty to protect the public, and have to remain alive to carry out this duty. Therefore, they have a right to protect themselves.
1
Maybe we will get lucky and DeVos will leave of her own accord or get fired like many in trump's WH.
4
Betsy DeVos should not be allowed within one hundred feet of a public school. She is brainless. She has been a disaster waiting to happen. And, It happened.
13
Isn't this DeVos's while reason for being? Make money off the kids, especially minority children and have taxpayers subsidize their education. Cash goes to private charter schools, if they fail the minority students, so what, they end up going to prisons which are appropriately held and subsidized by taxpayers. Continued income redistribution to the wealthy.
4
Will Betsy DeVos have her job tomorrow?
2
As with most things, the simplest answer is usually correct. DeVos favors "school choice" vouchers as a means to subsidize fundamentalist religious indoctrination under the guise of education. Her lack of qualifications as an educator are beside the point. Instilling in children the capacity for critical thinking is the very last thing on her agenda, just as protecting the environment is the last thing on Scott Pruitt's mind.
9
Betsy,
You can get get your GED while serving your time in prison.
Funds are provided by federal and state finances, are you going to cut those also?
4
DeVos cemented her plan philosophy in two comments. "I have never intentionally visited an under-performing school" and could not answer Stahl's question of why not. The second comment made reference to people with the financial resources who "have choices" to take their children out of public schools.
It appears to me that DeVos is telling us that in her view, our public schools don't need "systems" and maximum support to make them successful and that she sees them as "crowded and worthless". All teachers and principals and other school staffs should take this as an insult from an ignorant person.
Teachers are fighting back by continuing to teach, by respecting the innate worth of their students and continuing to be proud of their most important work.
4
Be careful what you wish for, and be glad you are not a billionaire. Betsy DeVos' embarrassing herself (when has she NOT done that?) brings to mind comments sometimes made by the ultra-rich revealing that they worry more about their children than normal people. The ultra-rich get isolated from society, and their children don't have the chance learn to succeed through hard work and learning. Betsy DeVos is embarrassing herself, her family, and certainly the Republican Party, in part because she is not intelligent or qualified and in part because she has never had to work for anything. It is pitiful to see her revealed, but not nearly as sad as her destructive influence on public education in the United States.
9
Oftentimes children with special needs, particularly kids with Autism and ADHD are restrained by having police called. Schools districts will even use this tactic to push or bully a parent to take their child out of school or because the school district simply does not have the staff or training it needs to help children with behavioral issues. Private schools, religious schools and charter schools find ways to not accommodate children with special needs leaving the public school as the only hope for some families. Through all of these discussions on education, guns, and violence in schools, I am always perplexed that no one seems to talk about strengthening the education of children with special needs. Only the most active parents are able to get the help they need for children as districts are financially constrained and looking for ways to cut corners. The corners they cut are often in areas of helping the most vulnerable kids. Betsey DeVos already showed her ignorance in areas of disability rights in education and shows not ability to be able to extend her knowledge and help those in need.
5
The "Cops on Campus" system resulted i criminalizing more children, not solving problems. two kids fight and one goes to Juvenile Hall. the Cops on campus rarely try to ge to the bottom of problems and solve them.
2
There are lots of SPED advocates working very hard and being soundly ignored by the current administration.
If I discuss education or the environment or national finances with any of my co-workers who voted for Trump---they simply tell me to stop "becoming hysterical" about every issue. Most do not even want to hear details such as this concerning DeVos. They simply do not care about any details. They remain pleased that there is no liberal in the white house, immigration is under fire, and regulations of all kinds are being eliminated. All else registers as being sour grapes from the left.
I'm afraid that the NYC is preaching to the converted, and to no one else. The right does not care about details or criticism, rarely reads the NYT. and will not be changing their vote in the next presidential election. The folks reading your articles already agree with your view point. Nothing is changing. Whichever side can get out the vote in the future will elect their candidates. Logic and issues will not be involved.
9
The federal government had to get involved with local school systems to eliminate racial segregation. There was no other way. But their involvement in education itself has absolutely reduced the quality. The evidence is everywhere.
3
trump filled his cabinet with low caliber , unprepared, inept , unwise rich people and DeVos is one of them !
6
At least they are the best of the low caliber, unprepared, inept and unwise.
2
The US department of education estimates that in 2021, 91 percent of children will be in public school. Betsey DeVos is hated because she is seen as a threat to the majority of American families that are satisfied with public education and have schools that remain the center of their communities where parents and families gather for events from school plays to football games. We remember our senior proms and parties put together by the local PTA. Betsey DeVos might want to attend some of these PTA meetings. Many of these parents would have much to offer her in advice, and Mrs. DeVos certainly seems in need of advice.
1
Rubio's assertion that this guidance "'may have contributed to systemic failures' to report the suspected Parkland gunman, Nikolas Cruz, to the police" overlooks three facts:
First, Nikolas Cruz WAS known to the police... he was visited by them on several occasions
Second, neither the police nor the FBI who have been wrongly pilloried for their inaction had any way to confiscate the weapons he possessed.
Third, as noted in Erica Greens article on this issue, "Black students have never been the culprits in the mass shootings that have shocked the nation’s conscience nor have minority schools been the targets."
This link between Obama's civil rights directive and school shootings is preposterous... and any repetition of it is irresponsible.
16
I saw that interview, and I was shocked at how openly she evaded the question of racism in schools. She and the rest of trump's administration are racist even if some think they're not.
8
The lesson of the Vietnam war was this: If you give young men the education intended for the ruling class, they won't fight your wars for you. The ruling class has been working to withhold that education ever since.
In the current world it's not just a concern about who will fight their wars, it's also a concern for the disappearance of a peasant class.
16
It's obvious that Betsy Devos did not receive a good education growing up. Some of her critics also have not received much of an education. There is a single mother to prison pipeline. People who have not taught their kids how to behave in school should not be complaining about their kids being sent to prison. I have seen no study on the types of misbehavior committed by African Americans as opposed to others. The schools have rules on when it is appropriate to call the police and as far as I know they follow them.
3
Lesley Stahl was very evidently stunned that someone like DeVos was actually running anything in government, let alone America's school system; that which the nation's future survival is precariously resting upon.
5
David, you have put your finger on the situation precisely. Students in schools with leaders as principals are the ones with higher graduation rates and better citizens as adults.
The nations capacity to realize school improvement is within reach. It is a difficult position for the best among us. And it does take a great leader time in the position to strengthen the school culture. The servant model of leadership is transformative. My high school principal was one of those leaders.
Rather than grouse about individuals at the federal level, we as citizens ought to let superintendents and local boards of education know that true leaders at the building level is how they can make a difference and how they will be judged.
Betsy Devoss knows nothing about the school
System in America. She bought and paid for her title and we can only pray to God that she falls on her stupid face soon. She is a corrupting alien and should go away. Being a Trump buddy hire is a sickening disadvantage to anyone with brains— something she entirely lacks.
4
Leslie Stahl was persistent in NOT letting her (DeVos) off her own petard. See how wealth and privilege does buy everything?. Maybe DeVos's education is lacking (an irony?) Stahl should interview Trump with similar deference, meaning, calling him on any blatant lies. he would offer up.
Additionally Stahl was kind not to mention DeVos's brother, Eric Prince, but let's not forget him or his past (Iraq) and present (Seychelles) background. TBC by S.P. Mueller.
6
Looking at the wealth concentrated in the Trumpworld cabinet should remind us of one thing. Super rich folks are not like you and me. They are taught from birth that they deserve their incredible wealth. Good old American Calvinism. Ayn Rand. We're special. We can do no wrong. Let the lackeys around us do the hard work. We'll step in for the credit. Let's take everything. The Bible speaks of the rich as the enemy. Let's just buy some clerics and turn that around. Take the faith and sell it back. This is war. Everyone else is the enemy. We are going to own everything even the truth. People, there's no reasoning here. Nothing to argue with. No mind to change.
4
"unprepared" is remediable, "incurious" or "clueless" is another matter...ms devos has neither the aptitude nor the appetite for education, she is just another opinionista rather stuck on her talking points (not unlike the congress and the media in their realms) than driven by any passion for the discovery and development of our kids' potential.
in this she is like do many of the bloated administrative class that has taken schools away from teachers, dulled the excitement of learning (that whitehead tells us is both the motive and cure for student diligence and initiative) and encumbered the public trust of her office with a private, personal agenda.
1
Or I get it now! It is Betsy's fault that you white folks posting here are keeping your off-springs either in private schools or all-white suburban public schools. Why don't you move them back into the under-performing schools?
3
No, it's not her fault that there are underperforming public schools. But she is at fault for trying to destroy public education instead of fix it.
3
As an afterthought, it wasn't that long ago that Republican candidates for Congress and president were pledging that, "If I get elected, I'll abolish the Department of Education."
Well? What are you waiting for? Or is DeVos' appointment how you plan to do it?
2
Probably, if somebody will explain "pipeline" to her and, if it's a charter prison.
2
Does she or her kin own private prison/detention center corporation stocks?
If so, she has financial interests in and profits by feeding children into prisons or their parents into lucrative immigration camps.
It's human trafficking.
3
Does the phrase "low intellect person" ring any bells? If not, take a look at your secretary of education. Take a deep deep breath and, even if you are an unbeliever, pray for the future of the country. "Keep America stupid and entertained" should be the clown and GOP slogan henceforth.
5
I'm reminded of my very first class in education when our professor told us that everyone thinks they're an expert on education because they went to school. Unless you've spent quality time in front of students (most of whom wish they were anywhere but in a classroom), trying to teach them about the Fall of Rome, quadratic equations, or the necessity of the Oxford comma, you don't have a clue, just like Betsy.
4
"I love the poorly educated," said Trump on the campaign trail.
His reasoning was sound. A majority of voters with little education voted for him. A majority of college graduates voted against him.
Now, through his Secretary of Education, he has the power to create more voters in the image of his supporters. Why wouldn't he?
6
Betsy DeVoss is so incompetent. Educators should be marching to get rid of her. She is clueless. But then she can also join the other clueless members of the Trump cabinet. There is Wilber Ross holding up a can of Campbell soup, Sessions who is gets nervous when asked questions by a strong female senator, Pruitt who is afraid of comments from passengers on a plane, John Kelly who belittles women, Minuchin who cheats people out of their money, Zinke who flies a flag when he is in his office, Pompeo who meets with Russian spies and doesn't tell anyone and on and on. The snakes and alligators are running out of the swamp because Trump's cabinet have taken over.
4
School-to-prison is what happens to kids in school who commit crimes. The police aren't randomly hauling these kids out of computer lab. Goldberg (how did she get hired here) is an ideologue.
She is apparently not aware that the murderer at Parkland was outside of the "school-to-prison pipeline" because the DOE imposed new guidelines to keep kids from getting juvenile prison records for infractions, which could include violence and assault. Had those liberal guidelines -- based on Goldberg's type of thinking, not been in place, Cruz would have had a record and been unable to buy a gun.
Cliches make bad policy. At Parkland, they killed 17 kids.
2
Betsy Devos is the pits. She is among the many incompetents, or saboteur contrarians, Trump "hired" to dismantle the very agencies, departments they were nominated to lead. From within, Devos and her ilk have done everything in their power to reverse the goals of their agencies, to actualize their self-fulfilling prophecies, starving government, then making it out to be the culprit for failure. This is what the American people voted for. Yes, I know, three million fewer than Hillary. But in a nation ignorant of how to be activist citizen who demands reform, they sit by, fat and happy, willing to take whatever the Republicans throw at them. How long will they be fooled by Trump, Ryan and McConnell. We shall see.
DD
Manhattan
5
While black lives do not matter to Betsy DeVos nor to Donald Trump they are not the architects of black mass incarceration. And they inherited rather than invented the malign 'School-to-Prison Pipeline' for black Americans that is already infamously number one.
The 2.3 million Americans in prison are 25 percent of the planets prisoners with only 5 percent of humans. And while blacks are only 13 percent of Americans they are 40 percent of prisoners because they are persecuted for doing the same things while black that whites do without any criminal justice consequences.
That criminal injustice practice continuing modern incarnation began with Richard Nixon's campaign against 'crime in the streets' which was a euphemism for black crime. The Ronald W.Reagan, George H.W. Bush and William J. Clinton 'War on Drugs' treated black drug use and sale as a criminal justice problem and white drug use and sale as a social welfare and medical health issue. Neither George W. Bush nor Barack H. Obama substantively nor significantly changed that immoral inhumane color aka race bigoted imprisonment process.
See 'The New Jim Crow' by Michelle Alexander ; 'The Condemnation of Blackness' by Khalil Muhammad; 'Slavery by Another Name' Douglas Blackmon; 'Locking Up Our Own' by James Forman, Jr.
3
The 'Make America White again' movement as it applies to our education system.
This entire cabal of incompetent, racist, unpatriotic, money-grabbing sycophants needs to go. And soon is not soon enough.
2
I would not be surprised if the Trump administration, ala Betsy DeVos, proposed just ending mandatory American public school education altogether; making it optional for those gaining vouchers or rich enough to attend charter and private schools to do so. The ones who don't attend school can work. The GOP and Trump's labor secretary (for cheap child labor) would most likely enjoy an even greater population of uneducated and controllable citizens.
5
Actually, there is no Federal law mandating education and education is mostly run on a state-by-state basis.
2
Don't give them any ideas.
I agree, Ms. deVos is horribly unprepared for her position. We knew that long before the Parkland shootings. However, the larger question presented in this editorial goes unanswered, are black students disciplined disproportionately solely because of their race? One expert in the article claims there is " fairly good evidence" but Ms. Goldberg does not include that evidence. Ms. Goldberg then says black children are suspended 3.8 times more than white children, but herself admits this alone is not evidence of racism. The only direct evidence in the article is a single case of unequal discipline sited by Ms. Goldberg. If Ms. Goldberg is serious about this issue and not just Trump bashing, she should be asking these questions. Is this about race or economic class ? Are wealthy black and white students disciplined equally? Are poor white children disciplined proportionally to poor black children ? Are wealthy black children disciplined proportionally to poor white children? Was Nicolas Cruz considered black and treated differently? This is a very important issue and should be treated as such. I'll give Ms. Goldberg a C- on this report, but allow her to come back with with an improved attempt.
4
Virtually everything you need to know about Betsy DeVos is that the combination of large quantities of Amway cash, combined with Evangelical religious zealotry, is a toxic admixture for someone tasked with running the US' education system.
In our household, we've stopped calling them "Evangelicals" and instead substitute, in equal measures, Fundamentalist faux-Christians or Body Snatchers. The Invasion is well underway, led by DeVos, and they're coming for your children.
4
DeVos is yet another Incompentent Trump Troll.
However, the article presumes that the higher disciplinary rates for black students is due to racism. Sadly, the higher rate correlates very well with the disproportionately higher rate (7X) of violent crimes committed by (largely) young black men. Lessor crimes rates are also disproportionately larger.
While racism may be the root cause for the difference, higher disciplinary rates for black student may be legitimately due to their class room behavior.
2
The 2014 Dear Colleague Letter was written to address an obvious flaw in the system - children of color were being turned over to the police at a much higher rate than their white classmates.
From what I know, jails and prisons don't rehabilitate their inmates, they allow them to learn new criminal skills and make criminal connections. These places are no substitute for schools.
To withdraw this letter and revert to the prior situation creates an unfair and discriminatory situation for all children of color. It is not only unAmerican but is it unGodly. How anyone, especially someone claiming to be a believer, could support this withdrawal is beyond belief.
3
DeVos is out of touch, so the states just have to proceed as they have been and work on educational issues and reform without her. My hope is that she will eventually step down from all the heat about her poor performance, and get the Dems in office to offset this morass of an administration.
Every time one of the members of this administration speaks the level of arrogant incompetence from top to bottom is staggering.
4
DeVos exemplifies all that is wrong with the U.S.: A privileged billionaire in charge of 'educating the masses', no less, which consists of boosting the already bursting prison population, many of whose inmates toil for 30 cents/hour on behalf of corporations avoiding the $ 15 minimum wage.
This is shaping up like some Dantean vision of Hell.
3
Betsy DeVoss, the minion of a racist president...Why is anyone surprised?
3
Absolute truth here. The best way to manage institutional racism is to put someone in charge who isn't even aware there are Black students in our schools. What Trump supporters want is for this country never to acknowledge, much less address the fact that a Black class clown goes to jail and a White cut up goes to the White House. All this coming from someone who looks in the mirror and can't tell you if she has two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth. You know an expert. Now she is heading the new school safety commission. Where the first witnesses will discuss "The Danger Grizzly Bears Pose To Our Pre-K Students". The Kingdom of Trumplandia certainly has its Village Idiot. And they couldn't have picked a better one even if they tried. You're doing a helluva job, Betsy.
4
Between her, Ben “I’m shocked at the cost!” Carson, Rick “I’m in charge of the nukes!?” Perry, and the Mad Hobbit Jeff Sessions, you couldn’t script a surer way to destroy this nation.
1
Is Betsy DeVos as stupid as she appears or is all an act of an uncaring zealot intent on using her power to destroy American public schools as much as possible during her tenure?
3
DeVos and Rubio- two morons....America deserves so much better, but only if you vote better people in...
3
This is a neo-Nazi assertion that if there were no racially impure children in school with their precious aryan white children, they wouldn't be contaminated and thus wouldn't have to commit these mass killings in response. This is just how Hitler conditioned his followers to begin the genocide against the Jews in Europe.
3
Uh, that's nuts -- I have never read it -- Nikolas Cruz was a white kid and he killed white kids and white teachers in his mostly all white upper-class elite public school.
2
Clearly, Ms DeVos needs to go back to school. She appears to have missed an awful lot of learnin’.
That's because she went to one of her charter schools.
Devos is devoid of the skill set necessary for her position. I give her an C+ for effort and an F for failure.
The toughest thing about being black in america is that you have to be the bigger person. You have to look at all of this hate thrown at you and be expected to rise to a higher moral standing, and when we do speak out we're seen as violent and full of disdain for white people.
Why, why do white people hate us so much? Seriously, what have we done to you in the past 300 years to deserve such hatred?
4
Read L Johnson's statements.
What’s far more is why Cruz, the accused mass murderer in the Parkland, FL school shooting massacre, regularly wore Make America Great Again caps and was a white supremacist?
Why so many school shooter’s are young, angry white men?
Why only when the accused school shooter and mass murderer is white is mental health used as an excuse (Blacks are violent thugs, Hispanics should never have been in this country, Muslims are terrorists, instead).
Those questions will never be answered by our racist President and his racist administration.
6
The only up side of the current Congress and Administration is that they are now fully revealed as the prime carpet baggers of the 21st Century.
"Hardening schools" = making them concentration camps.
1
The buck stops with the bigot in the White House. In every election, people should vote as if their lives depended on their vote. If the bigots can come for one of us, they can come for any of us, for any reason, since the law just does not matter. And the idiots who vote for Trump and the Republicans (how's that for naming a prison rock group ?) could care less.
2
>
What else is there to say but...
Thanks Bernie supporters that did NOT vote for HRC. You really showed us with your Yosemite Sam logic. If we all could just be as smart as you. May your student loans haunt you for the rest of your life. God knows, your voting decisions will haunt me the rest of my life, and probably have changed all humanity from bad to worse.
A simple binary choice had to be made and to quote Robert Di Niro, “you blew it”.
http://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-trump-2016-election-654320
7
In the article's cover picture I can only interpret Stahl's grin and expresion as "wow Devos really is an idiot"!
4
Do black newborns lying in their bassinet in a hospital nursery dislike the white newborn in the bassinet next to them? Likewise, do white newborns dislike black babies in the bassinets next to them. No, this is learned behavior from narrow-minded, unsympathetic, callous, and cruel adults and thus peers. Where did Betsy learn her attitudes from?
2
Spot on.
You guys sure are getting a lot of mileage out of that train wreck of an interview. We all know DeVos is terrible - editorializing about it in the NYT doesn't solve the problem. Vote!
2
With Betsy in charge of ethnic cleansing it’s time for us to decide where we’ll seek refugee shelter.
1
If racist White teachers in Red states can legally shoot and kill Black children think how much cheaper that will be than sending them to prison and how much more effective it will be as Black population control. When asked why they used their weapon I am sure that a sufficient excuse will be that the Black child's behavior made them fear for their very lives.
2
Betsy-Boop and Bimbo in Minnie the Moocher. Lordie, is this entire Administration one stale cartoon reel after the other?
The main character in the cracked comedy, Wimpie, the simp whose a blimp and his tagline “I'll gladly repay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
“Selling America down the river and leaving it down the drain.” - Donald Trump
1
Does one need a high school diploma to attend Calvin College? Did Betsy DeVos graduate from a real high school. Only an idiot would appoint an idiot like Betsy to any position in government. Oh I forgot, our idiot would.
Trumpism/GOPism will damage our country for centuries after they warp our children. VOTE THEM OUT Ray Sipe
1
Looks like we will soon have a three primary education options: public schools, private schools, and prison schools.
Poorly-argued piece. Goldberg's rebuttal to the assertion that the Dear Colleague reforms lead to the massacre is to cite a former official saying "It doesn't bear scrutiny." That isn't an argument.
She then says that there is no debate among experts that race plays a roll in discipline. Her support is that there is "some fairly good empirical evidence" that race plays a roll. "Some fairly good empirical evidence" does not equal "no debate."
There had been some very serious reports about Nikolas Cruz indicating that he was a threat, but no law-enforcement action was taken. This in a county that had made a big push to reduce arrests of students. Goldberg wants us to believe those two facts have no connection. She can't make that case on the weak evidence and arguments she provides.
1
This op-ed suggests strongly that racism is behind harsher punishments for black students than white students, for the same infractions. It also may be worth adding that at least in some instances, teachers, on average, might fear disciplining white students more than they fear disciplining black students. They might wish to impose the same harsh punishment -- say, expulsion -- on extreme white misbehavior, but fear the power (on average, compared to black families) of the white students' parents, their money, their access to lawyers...
I don't mean to downplay the likelihood that racism is at work in these disparities. But there are ways in which that racism may come more from the societal level (the different levels of power on average of white vs. black families) instead of residing in a supposedly hateful heart or un-woke brain of a particular teacher. In this scenario, for example, it's easy to image a black teacher cracking down harder on a black student than a white one, and not out of any internalized racism or self-hatred.
Perhaps we are missing something. Why not wed public schools (populated mostly by children of the undeserving) with the prison system. The latter is already hardened, has guards with weapons. A real plus of this idea is that "bad kids" could just be "kept" after school. Ms DeVos could take credit for ridding the country of future criminals who might otherwise be set loose to cause offense to the privately schooled more deserving. Just a thought.
Yes but Betsy Devos has lots of money so that makes her one of the best people.
This administration's appeal to its voters is racism, period.
The intentional obliviousness on the part of DeVos and the rest is not an accident. Their policy aims are to destroy, not protect, civil rights.
Horrifying absolutely. Surprising, no.
People like DeVos need not only to visit schools where these problems are rampant, they need to camp out there. Politicians of all stripes, local, state and federal are woefully ignorant about the problems of inner city families and, therefore, inner city schools. I say that because I've been there. I was a stay at home mom who returned to the teaching field after my 3 kids were in college - applied for a second semester job in January, early 90s.The only thing available at that time was in the poorest area of a large Texas city. I worked there for 7 years. It was an elementary school - I'm sure high school work is more difficult - but after two years, my lily white, solidly middle class eyes were opened. Yes, two years it took. A beautiful little black girl, 5th grade, helped me with that, a funny little incident that I'll never forget. I began to see the people -who they are, what they've endured, what their hopes are, as well as how many have given up. They're good people; the needs are great; the likelihood of those needs being sufficiently addressed are miniscule. Politicians don't get it - they won't spend a hour inside those walls, much less two (or 7) years, and certainly not adequate funding. They wouldn't touch those little kids - the remains of our Jim Crow era (yes, really!) - when they come flying down the hall crying. And certainly not little Miss Betsy Devos, who is as blind as bat, hasn't the foggiest idea how much she doesn't know.
1
DeVos is so thoroughly ignorant and incompetent that it becomes nearly impossible to discern what she does out of overt malice vs. mere trust-fund-kiddie truculent stupidity.
But to answer with “I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming" ... is breath-taking ... however one parses it.
There are good, dedicated teachers in public education who are doing their best to help all students make the most of their inherent gifts so they can lead productive lives. There are teachers in every public school who truly love each and every one of their students, who try to help them succeed, who are heartbroken when they fail and who take much of the responsibility for failure on themselves. Racism is a problem this country has never dealt with. Its insidiousness is part of the institutional creep that stalks schools as well as every other place in this country. Deal with racism in all its ugliness everywhere in America and watch the attendant issues melt. This constant tinkering with test scores, with grades, with artificial determiners of successful learning are so very "beside the point." And now? Now there is a movement to arm teachers? This is how Americans deal with problems. Ignore the basic evil and and treat the symptoms with placebos. We are going to risk killing more children rather than face down the NRA?
95
What are your specific suggestions on ways to "deal with racism" that have not already been tried? What do you want to see done that has not been done, bearing in mind that Affirmative Action has been in place going on 60 years, and that racial discrimination is illegal in hiring, housing, education, access to health care, transportation, any retail service imaginable...
We should always put the education of our children first. right now we are having a societal discussion about the benefits and problems of public schools vs. private. While this discussion may be valuable, we lose the basic issue of educating our children who are people not societal pawns.
Betsy DeVos seems to have no clue as to how to implement effective education. She must bring educators who have proven their competence into the discussion and not concentrate on the ideological concepts of private vs. public schools. Let's concentrate on educating and caring for our students which requires adequate funding and thoughtful implementation rather than pitting one ideology against another.
1
Kids wont be learning as well, discussing guns all day in class. Of course there is the loonies who will go on and on about this or that type of gun, drooling over an invention that only serves to destroy lives and never to acquire what is good in life.
DeVos is grossly incompetent. She shouldn't be put in charge of anything. But it's the same old thing. Toss a lot of money someone's way and you suddenly become an expert. That she is not and never will be.
1
Trust fund baby of a detroit auto inventor, sibling to a hated murderer brother gutless Erik Prince who doesn't have the nerve to live in his own country, and now a stooge for all her wealthy friends. A person who can't do a 60 minutes interview without stuttering like a village idiot. What a role model. We'd be better off with the other blond, Stormy Daniels, in charge of Education. Really. Betsy only unintentionally visits public schools that have the public in them.
Yes, African-American students will end up shot to death simply because of their race by the armed school personnel that the Trump Administration wants to install. There have been studies showing that African-American children, especially teenagers, are often not viewed as children, but as adults.
The notion that trying to eliminate racial disparities in school discipline makes schools less safe seems to be yet another nonsensical (but dangerous) Republican talking point that is now making the rounds of politicians and commentators. I often wonder who is the guru who thinks up these notions that spread like wildfire within the Republican universe. Republicans cannot be bothered to think for themselves.
1
"Black public school students are suspended at 3.8 times the rate of white students. That discrepancy alone doesn’t necessarily demonstrate discrimination, but..."
The statistics are very clear, blacks commit criminal offenses at a disproportionate rate to their percentage of the population. In school and out of school. On the streets offenders are removed from the general population. Why should it be any different in school? And why use qualifiers such as 'neccesarily' and the always present 'but' when addressing this issue?
4
Had Nikolaus Cruz been arrested by the School Resource Officer during one of the many altercations that led to his expulsion, he would have been kept from buying a weapon, and the shooting would not have occurred. That he wasn't arrested is a direct outcome of Obama's Dear Colleague letter to personnel to "understand that they, rather than school resource officers and other security or law enforcement personnel, are responsible for administering routine student discipline.”
But this goes well beyond the 17 murdered at Parkland, and the blood on the hands of Robert Runcie, the local Sheriff's department, and the Obama administration.
If you have a studious child, a disciplined child, or just a child who doesn't act like a wild animal - this policy hurts them. It creates a hostile learning environment by taking a hands off approach to enforcement. And for what?
Does anyone here really, honestly doubt that different racial groups commit crime at different rates? Black on white murders documented by the FBI for 2015 - the latest year available - were ~500. White on black murders were ~200. This difference despite the gross population disparity; blacks only make up 13% of the population. And yet they make up ~70% of the prison population.
Are these numbers really just a legacy of structural racism? Is the body count in Chicago "fake news?" Are white liberals with money avoiding black majority neighborhoods and schools because black criminality is a myth? This is madness!
3
Thank you for being a realist.
Thank you Michelle. I watched the interview on 60 Minutes and was appalled. DeVos got her job by being a wealthy, white, Republican, super Christian airhead.
4
When Lesley Stahl, asked Ms. DeVos if she had ever visited a failing school in her state, she already knew the answer. (She hadn't.)
The most striking thing about their conversation is that Betsy DeVos didn't care. Her answer wasn't the least bit embarrassing to her. She is, by virtue of her enormous wealth, completely immune to any criticism what so ever. There was no contrition on her failed policies or even the slightest sense of responsibility.
Ms. DeVos, is an ideologue. It's her way, and everyone else can pound sand.
The Democrats have their own DeVos, in the name of Nancy Pelosi. Not an outward ideologue, (not the least bit progressive), but there for her money to the DNC. Both parties are feeding at the same trough.
Ms. Stahl, should ask Nancy why she isn't for single payer, or free college education or cutting back the military. She would get the same nonsensical answers.
I have to say that Leslie Stahl interview on 60 Minutes was both jaded and biased. CBS and the NYT should be ashamed. The continuous bashing of both this administration and its appointees is unending. Stahl was constantly badgering Ms. Devos, apparently for her alt left ratings. Would an Obama appointee have been treated so crudely and rudely? I think not. Stahl’s “race baiting” in this interview was despicable. When Devos tried to answer questions fairly, Stahl cut her off, or kept reiterating negative remarks to try and upset Devos. Fortunately Ms. Devos has way more class than Leslie Stahl, and, she did not respond in kind. Leslie Stahl should retire. She is a mean spirited, classless woman, who should be ashamed of her bias. This was not an interview. Horrible.
3
Thank you, Michelle Goldberg, for watching and reporting on a show I couldn't bear to watch.
1
Just compare the 60 Minutes interview with her "meeting" (heard on NPR Monday morning). What a liar!
"There’s a lesson here that applies across the administration. Don’t let the clownishness distract you from the bigotry."
There's a better lesson: never elect sociopaths.
1
I am sure her wealthy friends who run for-profit prisons hope so. DeVos is probably an investor and it would be a nice assignment for an NYT journalist to go find out.
Increasingly, after school shootings, more measures are taken to secure schools. As proven, these steps are aimed at the wrong targets. Mirroring life on the streets, blacks are punished more harshly for the same "crimes" than whites.
Statista reports that 56% of mass shootings in schools are enacted by whites. 16% by blacks. By creating systems that funnel (black) students to jails, DeVos and Co. prove they are not interested in a solution. They continue to fire away at a preferred target.
Why do schools abroad perform better than our schools in the states? Let's begin at the top. Would the governments in say Japan or Germany or France or Sweden appoint someone with the qualifications of Betsy DeVos as minister of education? Only in America, where we proclaim education as a priority, do we appoint non-educators to that supposed very important post. I should add, not to let President Obama off the hook, but, Arne Duncan was only mildly more "competent" than DeVos.
Incompetence continues to rule in this administration. The swamp overflows with rich but not well read and in some cases, uneducated, inexperienced individuals who will continue to serve at the pleasure of the president until America changes that.
1
Maybe she could enlist her brother Eric Prince and bring back Blackwater to "harden" the schools.
2
Well, Michelle, you wanted women in all positions of power so they can rid the world of iniquity in all matters gender and otherwise.
How is Betsy working out for you so far?
We do need more women in high levels of government, industry, etc. I don't think Michelle said "any" woman.
2
There are many smart women out there. Trump only picks the dumb ones to be cabinet members.
1
... And don't let the bigotry distract you from the facts that real solutions to real problems so desperately need.
3
If only Trump and his minion Republicans had the capacity for embarrassment and shame.
2
Is this honesty or is she really that dumb? Maybe both? She is demonstrating that she has no business leading an organization, especially one as important as a federal agency. DeVos really needs a mirror to tell her to go home and bake cookies (or have your servants do it). I know that is not nice, but true.
2
So now liberals -- Michelle Goldberg? -- refer to public school privatization as "school choice"?
No wonder the center-left can never win an argument.
3
Betsy Devos, just another brick in the wall. How can it be that parents can't see that she is a leach on education and everything else America originally and supposedly still values??
1
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Betsy DeVos,
education does not need you.
2
Oh Betsy, please leave government service. You have no idea how Grand Rapids misses you and all the good work you can do for that community and others in West Michigan.
1
Maybe she actually IS the worst Trump Cabinet pick.
Arrogant, willfully ignorant, bigoted, kind of stupid, in way over her head.
At whose expense? Children. Children who need their schools to be funded, who need their schools to be safe, who need access to social services not available in their homes or communities, who need kind and helpful teachers and not crazy billionaire ideologue nuts to be the biggest influence in their education.
2
Cruella DeVos' lack of experience in education is just a part of what makes her unfit for her job. She lacks the intellectual curiosity that would, hopefully, provide her with basic understanding of educational issues and would lead to innovative solutions. Her egalitarian background has left her with little empathy and a view of educational reform that is basically, let whites choose the best schools (and taxpayers pay) and let the rest suffer, hopefully in silence. She's awful and a true poster child for this moronic administration.
3
I think this points out the problems with our schools in general, not a disproportion of race based punishments. Our schools are basically prisons already. They are architecturally designed like prisons. Students have little to no freedoms. A think blacks are probably 3.8 times smarter thsn whites because they realize they are already in jail much faster. For that, they should get an A+++.
So reverse racism is fine with you....
From the head down. A quote from the liar in chief at a "rally", "I love the uneducated", obviously a stated policy position, a vision for our future.
2
Did he really say that? And I am sure that those same people clapped and cheered him on. What an insult to the American people. But then Donald Trump is an embarrassment and insult to our country. I can't call him president. President was Obama, Truman, Roosevelt (Teddy and Franklin), Washington, Jefferson, Adams (son and father) and even Bush (Father and son). So many great presidents and we get a moron for president.
Betsy DeVos is incompetent, dim, irresponsible, thoughtlessly greedy, insulated, Christian in the worst way, and ultimately shocking as a Cabinet member. Disheartening.
But I’m not convinced that her readiness to cancel an Obama-era policy that encouraged schools to discipline unruly students in their own ways before summoning law enforcement proves that DeVos is exceptionally racist or even stupid.
She’s just being a Republican.
The majority of Republicans believe that white citizens have been the most disadvantaged by government policies, and that blacks have been privileged. So of course they don’t support policies intended to protect African-American teens from being punished severely, inequitably, for bad behavior. They trust punishment.
What’s more, Republicans are generally militaristic. They like calling in the police! Guys with guns. And they like jails! for other people.
Donald Trump wants to train more elementary and high-school teachers to carry weapons and encourage retired military men and policemen to become teachers. The NRA approves (and apparently handed Trump and Rubio a few talking points). Having some trouble with your school? Get more guns!
DeVos doesn’t stand out as an exception in this crowd. She’s going with the flow ...
1
It's okay if Betsy DeVos is dumb as a stone. In Donald Trump's world, if you are rich, you are qualified to lead! She made my skin crawl.
2
Plain and simple, she would rather spend money on suburban, white Christian students. They don't cause any problems, in her mind. All others can fend for themselves. Anybody involved in a pyramid scheme like Amway should be nowhere near our school system, public or private.
1
I couldn’t agree more. I was amazed at the gross incompetence displayed by DeVos during the “60 Minutes” piece Sunday. How can someone so incompetent, and mean-spirited, be heading the federal Department of Education. It makes you want to cry.
2
Leslie Stahl's questions were extremely unfair and totally blindsided Ms. DeVos. I mean, no one at Amway has ever EVER treated her like this.
2
Are you serious? The questions were not unfair. A first year teacher would be able to answer those questions.
Come on -- Stahl was instructed by her very liberal producers to attack DeVos and make her look bad. End of story.
It has nothing to do with Amway.
The greatest failure of Secretary DeVos is that she did not address the threat No 1 to school safety: the grisly bear.
2
Are there any initiatives that are changing the discrepancy between how an infraction by a child of color is dealt with compared to the same infraction committed by a white child? Are there trainings available? Any success stories?
Maybe kids who are expelled posed a physical danger to other kids, and to teachers, as well? Would readers prefer to see students or teachers beaten or killed in classrooms? I have seen video from one school in FL, and I am not exaggerating. Video cameras should be in classrooms, some locker rooms, and corridors, btw. They provide instructive and useful information.
1
The real problem isn't the alleged bias against blacks in the classroom, even if this article's implication that many teachers are bigots is true. The real problem is bias against boys, who are disciplined by (frequently female) teachers at rates much higher than for girls. The boy-girl discrepancy in discipline is many times greater than the black-white discrepancy.
While Ms. Goldberg was not paying attention.........we consolodated all the schools in America.....providing them with Armed Guards, Survelience Cameras, and scheduled Lockdowns.......
Effectively our schools ARE prisons.......a place for the adults to shunt their children off while they go work two jobs just to pay taxes to support the "education" system.
I was struck while watching the DeVos interview that the word "teacher" never came from her lips. She talked about students, she talked about buildings, she talked about "systems." Apparently in her vision of education students come to buildings and are educated by systems. The notion that living, breathing human beings called teachers are involved in the process of nurturing our young seems to have escaped her notice.
4
DeVos was nominated to her job by Trump to disrupt and dismantle the public school system. That is her goal and so far she seems to be doing the job that her friend Don has tasked her with. She, like other Cabinet members, was put in place to destroy not strengthen and improve our public education system. When DeVos is done, she can either retire or resign and there will be no need for a new Education Secretary, because there will be no public instruction to oversee. She will have accomplished what Trump hired her to do.
3
Betsy's brother is Erik Prince, and both are heirs to money before amassing more, in DeVos's case from marriage. Her role is to build an empire of charter schools. The Stahl interview was excellent for it revealed as plain as could be DeVos's absolute ignorance of all things educational. Other than, of course, the charter schools. Take a look people at these basically unregulated schools that operate with some tax -payer money while pulling out those funds from public school funding. And we are always where the US Supreme Court tried to pry us away...segregation de jure in economics, education, incarceration, and even more, to separate the federal government from the states so that charters can grow, grow, grow. The concept sold under many different choices has many in the GOP in the same field, from Neil Bush, brother of George, who got in trouble in Colorado with his charter school outfit, to many others who have the same goals in mind. Public schools are a mainstay in this country which today, as much as any time, need our attention: for safe learning environments, for excellent learning, for life where community is embraced in the larger sense.
1
I am at a loss when trying to comment on such behavior of the entire Trumpist
minded government. The 'leaders' of this country ...?There's nothing to say...
2
Some folks want to eliminate the pipeline and put undesirables directly into private prisons. We all have dreams, or nightmares. Your choice?
What's the point of expelling any student? Outside school, they're not being monitored let alone controlled. Better to move them to classes with other troublemakers led by teacher-guards. Arming those teachers is dangerous. As in prisons, there's every chance for the guns to end up in the hands of the inmates.
1
Richard,
I was a teacher and an administrator. I could never understand the policy of suspending students. Yes there are students who should be suspended but put something in place to educate them outside of a school setting. Why aren't we looking at setting up programs that work with angry and unengaged students? Wouldn't it make sense to rehabilitate these kids and educate them so they don't end up on the street and in jail. Maybe I am out of touch but I don't think we do anything to help our "lost kids". And they are lost.
That woman's interview on 60 Minutes was far worse than the worst train wreck ever. She and that person in the White House are equally unqualified for their jobs. He's destroying the country, she's destroying our Public School system. Sad for our country, sad fir our children. Not only does she know less than nothing about her job, she thinks it's very funny. Sorry betsy, we don't think it's funny at all. Do everyone a favor, including yourself and resign....you keep embarrassing yourself. Do everyone a favor and resign.
1
I wish we were all as rich as Ms. DeVos as a matter of fact we view them everyday in the White House. Everyone else has to study and work hard. Her interview on 60 minutes once again her white rich privileged . Her pretend sincerity will not provide a security net for our children her inability to learn will hurt the entire society not just for this generation but for future ones. We have handed our children over to the care of a individual who is busy tearing apart democracy and public education.
1
DeVos is a charter member of the racist Trump administration, so no surprise.
Education reform, before DeVos, was a racist enterprise. "No excuses" discipline in places like KIPP Schools view students of color as problems to solve, not children to love. Punishment and tough love don't work. Any rudimentary knowledge of psychology reveals the idiocy of treating children this way. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A leading reformer was once ask to defend the "no excuses" policies he supported in schools with primarily minority enrollment. His kids go to fancy private schools, where these practices would lead to parents filing lawsuits to protect their tender offspring. His response? "They need it."
Trump, DeVos and other so-called reformers think children of color need to be civilized. It is blatant racism and deeply offensive. This is not surprising from a president who referred to Congresswoman Maxine Waters as "low IQ."
This is disgusting.
1
What Ms. DeVos did to Michigan schools would earn a grade of F.
Instead, she was given an A+ by Trump and made Education Secretary.
Her performance in Michigan and her performance as Education Secretary leads to only one conclusion - money can buy you anything. Michigan students could learn a lesson and bribe their way to passing grades, but they're too poor.
11
"DeVos" and "education" are, like all things trump, a classical oxymoron: "mid 17th century, from Greek oxumōron, neuter (used as a noun) of oxumōros ‘pointedly foolish.’
6
Yes they are clowns. Yes they are racists. But the bottom line for these people is money and power. Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for themselves, manipulative politics. This is what politics becomes when you turn it into a business.
13
Well, shucks, all the staff was always so nice to her at the country club. Why this?
Kakistocracy.
9
Just the moment it takes to read the headline, puts it in a perspective so vile, so morally bankrupted, that it's unnecessary to read on. There becomes no point in reading such abominable information.
And lately, the headlines are all the voyeurism one can stand.
5
The only thing I can think of to say is, how long must we endure this incompetent president (lowercase intended) and his incompetent family and cabinet members?
5
Betsy DeVos has long funded and championed groups which want “Intelligent Design,” to be taught in America’s schools. However, as her Senate confirmation hearings and now Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interview have proven once again, God neglected to include her in “the plan.”
4
I taught in an inner-city school system for 34 years. Let me tell you a secret. The WORST kids I had to deal with were white. The worst parents were white. The kids with the biggest problems were from two-parent families. In spite of that, students of color received more serious punishments for acting out than white students did. What's new with that? In the criminal injustice system, black and brown people go to prison for years for the same drug offenses white people get probation and counseling. This is a racist country now led by a racist president. I know some people don't want to hear this, but you've got to get your head out of the sand and face reality.
11
DeVos is a poseur with money who has been given our children to do her social experiments.
Our local church of her denomination dropped out of the larger national organization when they allowed women to deliver sermons.
4
Betsy De Vos is unqualified to continue as Education Secretary since she has no interest in facts, no curiosity,
no aptitude to lead and formulate policies to improve schools based on careful analysis. She is beyond an embarrassment. She is an unintelligent and lazy
ideologue who is harming our children's future.
She needs to be fired immediately and replaced by an experienced and knowledgeable educator who cares about public schools.
Trump is supposedly experienced at firing people.
But obviously it is only on television. Otherwise Betsy would be relieved of her duties and Trump could return to his own television series on Breitbart forthwith!
5
Ms. DeVos, and her boss, remind me of a little poem we used to laugh about in high school:
A bumble bee's a busy soul
But sometimes has no self-control
And that is why, in times like these
You see so many sons-of-bees
5
Betsy deVos is awful as education secretary, clueless of what;s going on, with obvious ethnic discrimination, if not racism, in her words. She has no business holding public office in such an irresponsible manner, she is harming students, and their talent, expected to be tomorrow's leaders and give back to society...if we allow them. Of course, Ms deVos is but one of the members of Trump, the ugly American in- chief, a pluto-kleptocracy with a huge social distance from the common man and woman, hence unable to walk the talk.
3
Well, well, well... why am I not surprised. Nothing new here, just confirmation of the inept preschool Whitehouse. Good night America. Sleep well despite the nightmares.
3
This this is what happens when a Clown is elected as President. I hope that everyone who voted for him is having a very serious case of Buyers Remorse about now
3
But, there's good news. Betsy Cruella DeVos is now very serious competition for Rick Perry, as the worst Cabinet Secretary. I always knew old Rick would step and dance his way into better than last place. Go, Rick, Go. Betsy, you are obviously extremely well suited for running a ScamWay empire. You found you niche, just embrace it. Seriously.
3
"Lhamon told me about one elementary school where a black girl was suspended for poking a student with a pencil. When a white girl in the same grade threw a rock that hit another child in the head and broke the teacher’s sunglasses, she was made to help the teacher clean the classroom during lunch."
Anyone who says that racism does not exist in our society is either in blatant, willful denial or is a fool.
2
It is better the purple line is dismantled so that we can cover up childhood crime so that shootings and threats like what happened in floods can occur or the crimes of Trayvon martin and b covered up.
1
DeVos being education secretary is worse than a cruel joke. If there ever was someone unqualified for a position, this is the quintessential example. She has zero empathy and, obviously, zero knowledge of what happens in classrooms.
In addition to studying about the IDEA, DeVos should look up Dunning-Kruger effect. (it could be put in an IEP)
Then again, her family fortune is absolutely dependent on people not understanding math…
3
So what?
DeVos is still the secretary of education and will continue to be despite all of our whining.
Nothing matters.
1
Let's step back, after I read this great article and then a lot of the comments I am struck with how has this happen. The GOP has a little over 24 percent of register voters and for the life of me can't figure out how this weed has become so prevalent. We are the people for the people so take back your country and get involved and vote.
6
It is difficult to separate the fools from the bigots in camp Trump. DeVo strikes me as a clueless dilettante. Born on third base and clueless as to how she got there. The Trump glitterati have never experienced the life that those not born to means have.
The idea that somehow they will understand and improve the system for those in need is absurd.
If we cannot educate our children; if we cannot give the poor a hand and a ladder out, then who exactly do we believe lives in the Land of Opportunity?
3
Further proof that the insulated, heartless, and obscenely wealthy people inhabiting our government should be thrown into a six by six cell, and the keys thrown away. How despicable can you get?
4
I cannot begin to imagine what it is like for a dedicated, experienced, staffer, possibly with advanced degrees, at the Dept of Education, or indeed, any of the executive agencies, to have to work for the horrifyingly unqualified individuals who were plunked down in front on them a year ago as their new CEO's.
For any and all of them who may be reading, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart as an American for continuing to do your job in the face of the daily, unbearable, destructive obstacles this administration has put in your way.
Hang in there. We are rooting for you.
5
I may be interpreting this incorrectly, but it seems to me that perhaps the overarching goal of the Trump administration is to introduce Florida’s own Stand Your Ground law into classrooms all across America.
We saw how well this worked in 2012 when Trayvon Martin walked home from a convenience store—while minding his own business. So let’s call this Trump proposal what it is—classrooms to death.
Marco Rubio and the rest of the Republican caucus on The Hill spend all their time poring over every Obama-era directive in search of any openings that can be exploited to overturn minority protections and legally point us back down the road to JIm Crow-ism.
Rubio (at the behest of Jefferson Davis Sessions III, perhaps?) took a white student’s behavior and, in some sort of twisted logic, makes it seem as though a policy that benefited minority students created the vacuum for Nikolas Cruz’s killing fields. I get it: use protections for under-served kids to justify—a priori—a policy from several years earlier, to point out glaring weakness so that an eve even more repressive rules are established to further exacerbate a charged classroom environment in which race is always uppermost.
Rubio/Trump/DeVos—aren’t they all working toward the same goal? The school as slaughter house? Especially if the kids aren’t white?
2
Isn't DeVos' family heavily invested in private prisons as well as for-profit fake "universities"?
What would any expect from someone weaned on the most successful pyramid scheme in American history, the Amway con job?
And whose brother is pushing private armies, ie, mercenaries, to replace the US Military in as many circumstances as possible.
No conflict of interest there, right?
2
Listening to the 60 minutes interview of Betsy DeVos brought to mind the president’s declaration that he has “the best people”.
He does, have the “best people” at totally embarrassing the United States in the world view.
1
No occasion to admire Marco Rubio's fundamental shamelessness should be lost in any update in the President's persistent bigotry. When the grotesque moral fix is in, our lads really have no occasion so much as to think anymore, or disturb their present round of golf.
1
The pipeline to prison begins with a crime being committed, not some mythical "school-to-prison" pipeline. Another quirky, yet inane, leftist slogan with no validity.
Maybe black students are in fact 3.8 times more disruptive in schools than white students. If so society must identify the root causes of the behavior problems and make a serious attempt to fix them.
Constantly yelling racism will not, and has not, solved anything.
4
The reason everything in the Trump administration is upside down starts with the intellectually challenged but wealthy offspring of miscreants and thieves who believe the nonsensical saying, "If you're so rich, why ain't you smart?" As the old joke goes, these dummies were born on third base and thought they hit a home run. The planet would be in a lot better shape if more people asked, "If you're so rich, why ain't you smart?"
It's no coincidence so many of the puppet masters pulling the GOP's strings (including the Koch, DeVos, Mercer, and Trump families) are angry and spiteful lawbreakers out to dismantle the government for having the audacity to hold them legally responsible for their reprehensible and illegal acts.
2
One needs to understand that sadistic Trump has appointed people to his cabinet that oppose the very policies they are supposed to carry and administer.
In fact Trump himself the head of the Government openly hates the very Givernment he is head of.
Fools seldom agree but in Trump’s cabinet the gathering of the fools are agreeing on everything.
1
It is astounding the level of incompetence and ignorance these people exhibited to the basic norms of common sense and dignity. This administration is appalling, it is a cancer on our democracy and the office of the President of the United States.
1
And how many people of color have been mass shooters in schools in recent history? Zero.
2
DeVos, Rubio and their rightist media appear to have a similar mind set as that of the GOP dominated Georgia legislature. The latter is on its way to cutting voting hours ONLY in the city of Atlanta with its large African-American community. Or, we can hearken back to the 1980s when a bust for cocaine use, a "white drug" by got a relative slap on the wrist, while the "black drug" crack user got real time lockup time. The more things change...
1
Dang just when I had secured Sessions a couple times in Gail's poll as the worst of Trump's cabinet, DeVos had to go and pull another I am so stupid answers. She does rank at the top of horrid people, but she has a lot of competition with Zinke, Pruit, Sessions, Carson, Perry, etc. Who picked these clowns to help run our government and don't republicans in the senate have any conscience, they let all of this happen.
2
In the real world, the Secretary of Education has first been a teacher, a principal and has achieved a doctorate in education. Unfortunately In Trumpworld the Secretary of Education has never been a teacher or school administrator and doesn't possess any type of degree in education. Being a billionaire is the only qualification this person needs.
This is who the unqualified Betsey DeVos is. She's just another swamp dweller in Trump's cabinet.
3
It's a low bar, but she is one of the 3 cabinet secretaries with the lowest IQ's. Her, Carson, and Mnuchin. Heaven help us with an administration like this one.
2
Betsy DeVos is exhibit A that wealth does not bestow wisdom! How she could have been around Education for so long and absorbed so little basic information is stunning.Her tenure as Education secretary is a disaster for our children who more than ever need a quality educational experience to prepare for 21st century occupations.Her thinly veiled racism is inexcusable.Thanks to 60 Minutes for exposing this incompetency.
1
The author of this piece pushes an argument without credible facts. A charge of bigotry from the left can easily be interpreted as intolerance from the left. Is it possible that black students are committing more school violations than Asian or white students? We are not given the facts. We need portraits, not landscapes.
The last sentence of this piece says it all: "Don’t let the clownishness distract you from the bigotry".
If you don't think racism is endemic in this administration, you're not paying attention. Tragically, they don't care that they are harming our children.
Privatizing schools. Privatizing prisons. Betsy DeVos burns the candle of arrogance and greed on both ends, but it casts no light of knowledge. There is none to be found here.
Is it November yet?
2
De Vos and Ben Carson are both breath-takingly mediocre. So much for hiring "the best people". It is a shameful embarrassment to have them in charge of the urgent agendas of education and housing.
Redistribute all oligarchical wealth in this country.
And lock her up.
2
Let's just come out with it. Trump's very white lackeys (even Carson) would be very happy if people of color were eliminated from our country. Those of us who believe in equality must stand up and not be afraid to call it what it is; hatred for anyone different from what we see in our own mirror. Remember, there is only one race, the human race.
De Vos is a disgrace to the office that Trump awarded her for her millions.
As an American citizen living now through an authoritarian regime, I feel it is my patriotic duty to post any Andy Borowitz satire where apt. This one is very apt, to laugh at thru tears.
“BETSY DeVOS CALLS 60 MINUTES A WASTE OF A HALF HOUR" by Andy Borowitz.
“Furious about her treatment on CBS Sunday night, Betsy DeVos spoke to reporters Monday, and called “60 Minutes” a “total waste of a half hour.”
“I had never watched ‘60 Minutes’ before, but I can tell you this, I will never watch it again,” the Education Secretary said. “I have better things to do with a half hour of my time.”
Calling her interviewer, Lesley Stahl, a practitioner of “gotcha journalism at its worst,” DeVos said that it was “very unfair of her to ask me so many questions about education.”
“She asked me one thing about schools, and then another, and another,” she said. “If I had to answer every question she had about schools, I would have had to bone up on education for a month.”
DeVos said that she was “frustrated” that Stahl neglected to ask her about any of her “really good ideas” for the nation’s schools, such as “purchasing guns for teachers with money that is currently being wasted on books.”
“If a bear comes into your classroom, throwing a book at him will only stun him momentarily, at best,” DeVos said.”
(If a Trump comes into your classroom, what do throw at him to protect the class?)
As a black woman, I want to say thank you for writing this and thank you for listening. Both you and Lindy West are truly allies indeed.
Brothers and Sisters.
Eric Prince is brother to Betsy DeVos.
How much worse can it get for family reunion time? Privatizing schools and military in the good old US of A by rich people. They’ll take care of us poor folk, all right.
1
To be clear, DeVos paid for her job with over 10 million dollars in donations to the GOP. She is not even qualified to run a Dairy Queen let alone be appointed as Education Secretary. Her goal is to strip public schools and public school teachers of funding to ultimately pay for Christian based private education. Sure some charter schools and Christian schools outperform some public schools but overall, they do NOT perform as a whole above most public schools and are discriminatory against who they admit into their schools.
The Obama administration policy makes no sense, and if carried to its logical conclusion, would make many urban high schools places of uncontrollable violence. Serious violent injuries are not committed equally across racial or sexual lines. About 80% of homicides in the US are committed by males, and nearly 50% are committed by black males. Accordingly, no one has ever said that males could not be disciplined more often than females. For the same reason, disciplinary rules cannot assume that black boys are no more likely to engage in violent disruption than other pupils. The evidence runs entirely in the other direction. And other black children will be the main losers when inner city schools become uncontrollable.
1
For students of color, Ms. DeVos seems to believe choice for them means a choice to select the upper or lower bunk in a prison cell. People who are intelligent will like make more money than others but the converse is not true--people with a lot of money, especially through inheritance or marriage, are not pari passu more intelligent. Ms. DeVos is living proof of this.
I'm not a supporter of Trump. I'm appalled that Devos is unqualified for her job. But as a parent who sent two kids to public schools, I know Goldberg has no answers. Schools are not the reason some kids end up in prison. That's a lie. Progressives continue to inflict irreparable harm to our education system with their ill-informed often idiotic ideas. I wish these pompous fanatics would figure out why so many parents are abandoning public schools. Obama's 2014 directive which made it harder to discipline bad kids was a giant step backward. Slandering America’s teachers as racists, pinning the discipline disparity on them & systematically undermining their authority...insane. It's not the job of teachers to be social workers. We need to make it easier for teachers to remove violent & disruptive pupils. No matter what stage you are in your life, there're consequences for your actions & school is no exception. Teachers need to be able to set boundaries in their classrooms. A class without boundaries & consequences is a great disservice to every student in that room. If you believe teachers should not be allowed to punish students, you should homeschool your child. When your child misbehaves in school, they're cheating the other kids out of their education because the teacher can't teach when they're dealing with this disruption. All of this should be very obvious to anyone except those with a Ph.D. in Education. This column is a cheap shot & offers no viable solutions.
2
I watched this interview with my normally very quiet, sort-of-apolitical spouse, and she had a lot to say about DeVos being incompetent and bearing an agenda for the elite.
After reading this opinion I regret to say that I think a lot of black kids are going to be getting shot by teachers. As if they weren't up against enough already with aberrant law enforcement. This arming teachers is easily one of the most horrible ideas ever.
1
Michelle Goldberg just does not care about children, at all.
It remains to be seen what, if anything, Ms DeVos can do about it, but public education collapsed long before Donald Trump and Betsy Devos ever walked on to the public stage. And, all the blame should go to the people who have been in charged of the public schools for nearly 60 years: that noxious syndicate of education school professors and teachers unions I like to call "The Education Mafia".
But, Ms Goldberg would rather snipe at Ms DeVos than shine a light on the architects of this diaster.
2
Who would have ever thought it would take an admin filled with second rate, angry, resentful, and incompetent narcissists to make people appreciate the government we once had, even with all of it's flaws.
2
DeVos is clueless or worse-care-less. She fits right in with Trump and the GOP.
1
Goldberg exhibits callous disregard got disruptive students who destroy the educational opportunities of other students.
If her education had been destroyed by this disruption, she would not be NYT Opinion columnist now.
Her goal seems to be strongly partisan attacks rather than balanced analysis.
1
Your well-founded comment will earn you the title of "deplorable" by the HRC crew. With that and throwing the accusation of using dog whistle politics at you progressive thinkers can avoid a severe case of cognitive dissonance.
1
In 2009 while at the Department of Education I found data in the D Ed Office of Civil Rights that showed massive racial and ethnic disparities in school suspensions and expulsion rates.
I brought it to the attention of the Director of the National Center for Education Statistics.
I wrote a rather compelling narrative about how the process has been documented to start with disparities in expulsions in pre K programs, is translated through disparities in school resources and drop out rates to school failure and expulsions.
The collective response was ..."...duh....who cares".
My supervisor said "we don't do research". I then found out that no one using the statistics churned out by the NCES school crime program for much of anything.
Michael Wiatrowski Ph.D.
LTC, U.S. Army Retired
Leander, Texas
1
DeVos has levitated above the masses her whole wealthy privileged life. She has no life experience or educational training that would give her one iota of insight into the problems or solutions needed to manage the educational system. She fits the Trump template of having ultra wealthy people around him that think they know everything about everything, but in reality they are inept, as she is.
I'm sure Trump considers DeVos a shining star in his cabinet. She knows nothing about education and educational policies, she is unconditionally loyal to him and she has a brother, Eric Prince, who will do anything Trump wants, no matter how corrupt, for enough money. Let's not forget that the family will be huge donors to his re-election campaign.
DeVos - just another swamp creature.
An undereducated population is this administrations best customer.
1
How many other people with money that know nothing are stalking the halls of education, finance and politics.
Given the total adoration of the buck in the US, you get what you deserve. Karma kids.
Here’s an idea: The Dept of Education is a useless bureaucracy. Let’s get rid of it.
Problem solved. You’re welcome.
1
If memory serves, Trump talked a whole lot about “draining the swamp” when he ran for office. It seems Devos is queen of the swamp things. She does not care about poor children or underperforming schools, because she lives in a bubble of privilege. It’s disgusting to me that she was granted this position to begin with. She shouldn’t be anywhere near the school system, because she is way too out of touch.
The danger of the having a person ignorant to the vagaries of working in schools is underlined in this issue. The “Dear Colleague” letter opened up important discussion of serious discrepancies in dispensing discipline. Mrs.DeVos does not seem up to the task.
Michelle, just keep writing. Never give up. Love you for your never-ending truth tellling. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
This is what happens when you nominate an unqualified person for the job. Someone who has no empathy for public schools, the students, or the parents or public school students. Someone who led a sheltered life and then married into money.
It seems that the intent of this administration is to enrich businesses at the expense of the rest of us. A free education is one of the greatest gifts that a society can give to its citizens. It is a great equalizer; those who start at the bottom can get an education and work their way up.
This administration, wants to keep rich people rich, and let the rest of us fight it out for the crumbs that are left over.
171
On the contrary, she has great empathy for poor kids and has been a life long advocate of improving education for them, as opposed to Democrats who are wholly owned by teacher's unions and so are content to let children languish in failing public schools.
"Will Betsy DeVos Expand the School-to-Prison Pipeline?"
I sure hope so! I have investments in private security firms and private prisons, and I see preK-12 education as the next frontier in a still-largely untapped reservoir of profit potential. We've only just started the kind of hands-on policing (what some of us are calling "adolescent security management") we'd like to see in every school, at every grade level. This will not only keep schools safe (at least for teachers and "school resource officers"), but it will provide an important revenue stream for local law enforcement. Finally, it will teach these kids important lessons about what we value, what we expect of them, and most important, that there is no corner of the earth where they can't find some way to make some money. God bless this great country, and God bless Betsy DeVos.
1
I sincerely hope that you are being sarcastic.
1
The truly sad and worrisome reality is that this problem has festered for several decades amid a clash of ideology between those who recognize the problem and those who politically oppose it. Thus a standstill. Some states have forged ahead with reforms in the area of working with at risk youth in the schools, making sure they remain, have appropriate programming, in alternative placements if necessary, and tightening up coordination with mental health systems. But the same forces which created the problem are still present: attitudes towards non-white populations, resistance to public school improvements, and get tough criminal policy. The right wing does not pay attention to research, they just beat their chests and send out the same hateful talking points to gain power and never look back at the damage.
As with virtually all issues today, it is all about race. DeVos is a graduate of Calvin College, a conservative Christian college established and operated in large part by a fundamentalist, originally Dutch, denomination. She is a typical product of an isolated life in which individuals associate principally with members of the same race, religion and political party. College should, and usually do, allow students to explore other religions, races, philosophies, ideas and beliefs, and to meet individuals from different races, religions, customs and beliefs. DeVos should not be criticized. Trump should be castigated for appointing her and others with similar ideals.
One must spend some time outside of the US to grasp the full extent of America's obsession with race, the original sin of our country that it seems will never be resolved.
1
Education Secreatry, Betsy DeVos, like most of the Trump cabinet of oligarchs including the President himself is "unqualified." Like Scott Pruitt at EPA, her job was to dismantle public school education by pushing the transfer of public funds to charter schools and voucher programs and reducing the power of teachers unions. As retired professor who evaluated school programs including Head Start and education vouchers, I can say unequivocally that Head Start works and vouchers do not. Head Start students have lower crime rate, higher educational achievement and personal and professional success, and lower use of public services. For every dollar invested, there is a $7 return to the public, Yet, the program is chronically underfunded. That is true in general for public school education where funding is based on real estate taxes meaning that wealthy school districts are well-funded and inner-city and many rural districts are not. The result is that we have many failed schools where discipline replaces teaching and students are on a conveyor belt to jail or poverty or both. We need to address the fundamental cause--education funding inequality--and not the symptoms of our failure to invest in our children.
195
Its not the failure to invest in schools in Minneapolis or in other schools across the nation. It is the failure to stop the disruption in those schools so that all children can learn. In Minneapolis, even though the rule book says if you swear at a teacher, you get suspended, many administrators fight that. They think just talking to a student is sufficient.
Strangely, most studies of Head Start programs find that any minor positive effects they may have disappear by about third grade. A Head Start program can't overcome the disfunction at home that hampers children in learning.
America is so intensely dependent on the development of her human capital and Betsy is in charge of that critical role.
It is really hard trying to provide a dignified response to this woman and the things that come out of her mouth. One calls to mind that esteemed psychologist of years past, Fred Sanford, when he would turn and say, “What a dummy.”
She is not in charge of anything except a barrel of cash. You are being fooled into focusing on her instead of your local school boards and state, county and municipal governments. That's where the control is, not in some DC bureaucrat's office.
When will this charade stop? I'm not talking about DeVos, I'm talking about the pretense that the Department of Education has any real power at all. They can't inspect schools. They can't sue school districts, except over misusing money. All they can do is dispense money with strings attached and parade around pretending that they matter. Trump's "arm teachers" is a similarly empty threat or promise, depending on your point of view. And you can add many similar "initiatives" to the list of Federal smoke and mirrors.
Let me share a story.There were 2 black male students in my 7th grade English class earlier this year who struggled to pay attention one afternoon during class. Clearly, reading was not their thing. During managed independent reading, one of them (I will call him Z) asked me if he could go to the bathroom. Pretty darn sure he was merely seeking a diversion from the task at hand, I promptly replied "No."
Z looked at me, then over at his classmate (another black student) with a guilty smile before turning to me and saying, "Is it because I'm black?" I could have responded with righteous indignation, could have thought, "How dare he...?" I did neither. Instead I smiled and said "Absolutely not, many of my best friends are black. If you start reading you can be one of my best friends too!'' This's when he flashed a look of feigned horror about the very uncool possibility of being friends with white, middle- aged female me. However, Z high fives me every time he sees me in the hall and says, "How are you doing, Ms. M?''
My point? Ms. DeVos and others are afraid of black students; inexperienced with the cultural, social and nuanced ways of interacting with "students of color." Her worldview is so limited that she is dangerous. As are others who seem to have answers in the field of education that are at odds with reality. It's true, many of my best friends are black. All of them have suffered discrimination but are successful DESPITE DeVos and others like her.
Try teaching in a public school where there are omly two whites in your class. Come back to tell how that eorked out for you. Or better yet have your children be among the only two whites in your class.
2
I don't care if you are a Republican or a Democrat. If this uniformed, clueless, intellectually deficient woman is heading education, then both parties need to move on getting her out. I know Pence voted for her because of the tie, but money can buy you a job, but it cannot, apparently, give you knowledge. Her answers on 60 minutes seemed unsure, weak, ignorant, and vague about under achieving schools. Vague? Our schools in our state today suffer because our GOP governor put in a woman (who had never taught) in charge of our schools. It is going to take years to recover.
Every proponent of charter schools that I have ever met share one trait. They are all wealthy.
2
The wealthy hate public school's because #1 they don't utilize them, they send their children to private schools, and #2, they hate unions, and teacher's unions are one of the few strong remaining unions in this country.
1
Betsy, the hollow-man, headpiece filled with straw may have actually found that the key to improving discipline in the classroom is to arm the teachers. It won't be classroom to prison but rather classroom to grave. I can picture that unruly 8 yr old begging for his life for pulling a girl's pigtail. Twenty yrs hence a study will show children were more likely to get killed by a teacher than an intruder. But you can be sure the kids will shut up and sit down when he(or she) waves his gun and fires a warning shot.
"There’s a lesson here that applies across the administration. Don’t let the clownishness distract you from the bigotry."
Thank you for driving home the real issue Michelle. It's exhausting watching the media chase the trivial while so many assaults to policies providing basic protections and decency are steadily eroded by the gang in power right now.
2
What has any Secretary of Education accomplished? What did Arnie Duncan do? Help create the ill-fated common core? The trend in this country of putting people that never taught as head of secretary of education, has led to the decline of the State of Education in the US.
1
I wonder if Lesley Stahl held an emergency family meeting after conducting this interview and said stop everything and start packing to escape to Canada!
School choice is an ideology, not evidence-based public policy. Always has been, ever since Reagan popularized it as a way to ensure that your kids don't have to go to school with Blacks and Latinos. Imagine what our cities would have looked like, if we had just done this in 1964, instead of all the white people moving out to separate suburb municipalities. Oh, the possibilities.
EVERY article about Betsy DeVos should tell you who her brother is and question if she got her job because of her brother!
America is a big country with many people eminently qualified and capable of being the Secretary of Education. Betsy DeVos is CLEARLY not one of those people. The Republicans could have chosen to work constructively with Trump and improve his chances at success by making sure he surrounded himself with competent Cabinet officials. Instead they enabled him to fill his administration with unqualified crackpots (like Ben Carson at HUD). How is this ultimately good for Trump, the Republican Party, or America?
Why does it seem the Republicans just give Trump a blank check on everything when performing their Constitutional role as a check (and balance) would force Trump to do a better job for America?
Can we require Empathy Lessons of all those who govern? They do it in acting classes. Try on being the other person. You have no money or rights and you get blamed when a problem erupts. Try it on long enough to get the feel of the Other you are ignoring. Of course, some who occupy the highest offices do not know how to empathize...
What DeVos and the Right has wanted since the Desegregation Ruling is find ways to eliminate public schools so they don't have to integrate them. This is clear, in your very insightful analysis as well as by the fact that nearly half the states sought to eliminate the funding of public education in response to Brown v Board of Ed. I am surprised the school shootings have not energized their approach by making the case that public schools are dangerous and education should be something parents and neighborhoods can do better without putting children at risk. Corporations and textbook companies could create courses and assessment tools. Why send kids to school where they'll be exposed to social and economic diversity and other more nefarious dangers? DeVos and the Right argue that parents are legally responsible for educating their children and parents who send their children to unsafe schools (i.e., public ones) are responsible for what befalls them. Democracy and public education are the enemies of the rich, the powerful, and the fundamentalist.
1
I sent this email to both of my Senators:
Betsy DeVos: Completely unqualified for her job. Could not answer basic questions on 60 Minutes interview, and seemed like a parrot repeating memorized phrases. What is she doing in this job?! Our public schools are the great equalizers for our country. How are you protecting US Citizens from Trump's Cabinet?! God help us all. When England was a "super power" rich families would BUY an officer position for their sons. Average citizens drafted into the armed forces were at the mercy of these rich boys who did not know anything about battle or war and probably saw the soldiers as disposable and less than human. You are from a wealthy family -- do you see us as less than human too? I sound harsh because I feel frustrated and used.
1
At least give her credit for marrying yuge money that gave her the ability to purchase her cabinet position. It's called pay to play.
According to Marco Rubio, the Obama administration policies are to blame for the Florida school shootings and the failure to discipline minority students. Not the availability of weapons by youngsters or diligent background checks that could weed out potential dangerous individuals, but the policies of the former president.
This attack was taken up with alacrity by the sitting president who also conveniently backtracked from a momentary stance against the NRA before buckling under to that powerful lobby’s pressure.
As Betsy DeVos makes very plain, race does matter in the country today as much as it does in her agency’s attitude towards minority students. DeVos, Rubio and the president are saying, very loudly, that black students are violent and don't know how to conduct themselves in school and need strict supervision and dire punitive measures if they misbehave. Therefore, sterner measures are needed to keep them in line.
Here are some ideas for prison deterrence...
How about some proper parenting? With Both parents or at least a man, who can teach a young boy how to be a man.
Less time with electronic devices in the car and at home.
More time reading books and spending time at the library in lieu of watching endless afternoon sex and violent programs.
Fewer prescriptions for anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications and more time Exercising Outside, getting dirty and skinning a few knees, instead of filling kids faces with demon sugar and carbs.
Put those kids to work! Shovel snow, deliver the NY Times, babysitting, volunteering and other forms of community service.
Considering her repeatedly embarrassing gaffes, her documented ineptitude, her brother now getting tied up in the Trump-Russia scandal, and her comments that Trump is a poor role model, it may be that Betsy will be the next contestant voted off Trump's shrinking island.
Pretty soon it'll just be him, waist deep in his own swamp.
1
Betsy DeVos gave enough money to the GOP so she was given a job. In past administrations, Democrat and Republican, people like her were made Ambassador to Barbados or Lichtenstein or something innocuous like that.
But unfortunately not so with DeVos, who is perhaps the least accomplished person ever to run any cabinet department:
1. DeVos has zero true experience in education.
2. DeVos has zero true experience in business, at least not in running one. She made her money by being born into a family that became very rich (her father founded the Prince Corporation, which was sold to Johnson Controls) and then by marrying a very rich man, whose father founded Amway. Because of all of her donations, she frequently gets appointed to the boards of things.
3. She has no experience in government or in running anything remotely like the Department of Education.
4. DeVos knows nothing about public schools, other than she doesn't like the idea of them. Neither she nor her husband nor her kids attended them.
5. Her big "thing" is that she wants the government to hand out education vouchers to everyone, paid for with tax dollars, and let them use them to pay for any private school they want. She wants to privatize something she knows nothing about.
It could be worse. Scott Pruitt is competent, devious and cunning enough to truly destroy the EPA. Betsy DeVos will play "Madame Secretary" for a couple of years and then head back to Michigan.
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Our government did the same thing to the national laboratories, handing them over to for-profit organizations like Bechtel . . . organizations that know nothing about science. It fits that Trump has now put Rick Perry, another ignoramus who's clueless about science, in charge of the Department of Energy.
1
Hunter S. Thompson had her and her followers in his sights when he observed that "peas rattle loud in an empty head." Watching her body language while listening to her responses confirmed a self-assured person unconcerned about the impact or consequences of her words. If there is one person who embodies the ethos of this administration, it has to be dear Betsy.
10
One other stunner from the DeVos interview was her admission that Michigan schools had not improved but that “pockets” were doing well. I would hazard a guess that those schools that were doing well just happened to be located in wealthy school districts.
For Republicans hostile to public education, DeVos is a dream Secretary — at best a bumbler and at worst a crook whose aim is to gut the public schools for the benefit of private charter schools run by Republican friends and benefactors.
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I suspect that the "pockets" Ms DeVos refers to are the increasingly well lined ones of her friends and benefactors who peddle private charter school programs.
4
I do hope DeVos expands the school to prison (or record) pipeline. The misguided Obama era policies allowed the recent Florida school shooter to avoid arrests and mental health records that would have either put him on gun purchase deny or hold for further checking by the FBI list. Perhaps they might then have paid attention to the numerous warnings they received about him.
2
One more time, everybody: THANKS, OBAMA!
Mashiach (Its Italian, look it up) could be Sec of Ed and these kids are still ending up in prison. Don’t blame the shortcomings of a segment of society on the government
2
Her policies are so distorted by the interests of lenders and for-profits and her brother’s unsavory connections and add in the misogyny that elected Trump that she is an solid bet for prison herself if you are playing that sort of bingo. Notice she never wears orange.
3
Re her brother's "unsavory connections": he is far more then unsavory, he is an actual mercenary, a gun for hire, literally a paid killer.....far more sinister then merely "unsavory". His record is shockingly unAmerican and I wonder why he is not in prison for his crimes.
Time is of the essence in educating young minds.
While I cannot say for sure Ms. Devos is qualified for her position, her ignorance on many basic policies is disturbing, but I’m not quite ready to declare her unfit for the position, nor do I criticize her support of school choice for families as long as the results are there.
Lost years in education are not easily recaptured and public education has had too many failures for too many. Maybe Ms Devos is addressing the concerns of those Americans that are being failed by the current public education system. I’ve experienced the disparity between public schools and its impact on my own children.
Also, the Bernie Sanders neo-liberal, knee jerk love of everything European is equally ignorant. Europe has many challenges that are often ignored by the revisionists that tout European style governance as a panacea for all that is wrong in the US more broadly and Donald Trump specifically.
Time is a thief in education and we’d be better off not pointing fingers and collaboratively brainstorming solutions that put education first and foremost. Disrespectful and disruptive students are entitled to an education as well, but not at the cost of well behaved children. Those that disrupt the education process must be segregated, evaluated and the underlying causes of their behavior should be addressed regardless of upfront costs.
In those cases, time is truly a thief and the consequences to our society are very dire and more costly.
31
Ron, check your use of the term neo-liberal to describe Bernie Sanders. Neoliberalism is a philosophy that relies on deregulation, privatization, and austerity policies. Liberalism as a political term is the opposite. Apples and oranges.
2
American kids are being failed mostly by their parent(s), not the school system.
1
I don't think you are well informed about Bernie Sanders...btw he is not a Neo Liberal and he does not think we should copy Europe. Please get informed, it's so important.
2
As WaPo's Dana Milbank put it, "Whenever DeVos speaks, it feels as though the sum total of human knowledge is somehow diminished."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-unappreciated-genius-of-bets...
When it comes to Trump administration officials, however, she is hardly unique in this regard. Pruitt, Zinke, and Perry come immediately to mind, just for starters. Talk about negative synergy...
4
I agree completely with every disparagement of DeVos here, but I'd like to bring up one illuminating tidbit. When Michael Bloomberg bought himself a third term, he nominated Cathie Black to be Schools Chancellor, someone's who's only qualification was that she and the mayor attended the same cocktail parties. Fortunately, she lasted just 95 days. What do Bloomberg and Trump have in common besides being arrogant NYC billionaires?: the idea that wealth automatically confers wisdom. Sadly, many in this country still believe that if you are rich, you must be smart and it is that misbelief that has given us both these guys along with a host of other obtuse politicians. If you are an evangelical in its US incarnation, you also subscribe to the notion that wealth is a sign from God, a big lollipop announcing your inherent goodness, an idea even more corrupting.
7
“You can only do what you can do.”
I first thought it was just hillbilly double-talk when I first heard it sixty years ago passing through Appalachia. It’s stayed with me and I now realize the remarkable wisdom gained from mountain folk.
Vision tends to be limited by beliefs and experience but vision can be expanded if one is willing to suspend beliefs while listening to other voices.
Betsy DeVos’ primary education came during the period when there was fear, strong and successful resistance to public school desegregation even though there weren’t enough Black kids in her community for desegregation to even matter.
Almost on the same day as the “Brown” decision, Milton Friedman coined the phrase “freedom of choice” and suggested vouchers as a way to avoid “forced integration.”
DeVos was home-schooled and never had the experience of a public education and the racial and/or class diversity it oftentimes has.
Betsy DeVos’s vision is limited and “she can only do what she can do.” It’s not an excuse, it’s the fact of a limited vision.
2
DeVos was very wealthy and went to private academies, so "desegregation" was hardly an issue. Also, there is no evidence she is a racist.
I think "home schooled" is meaningless for billionaires who can afford private tutors and all kinds of extras for their kids.
BTW: plenty of liberals home school their kids too, so it has nothing to do with racism. With liberals, it is often to offer intensive education and advantages. With some conservatives, it is usually to have a religious-based education. I've honestly not seen it done for reasons of racism. I know families in my liberal blue community where BLACK parents home school kids, and our schools are 88% black.
BTW: Barack Obama was raised by wealthy white grandparents in a beachfront condo, and HE attended the very best private schools, never public schools. Why was that OK?
1
Betsy (Price) DeVos didn’t come from a wealthy family. Her husband made his fortune as the founder of Amway—a multi-layered marketing organization.
I don’t think I even implied that DeVos is a racist. I simply noted that solutions to America’s educational problems re-quire solutions far beyond her own educational experiences.
One of the essential aims of private schools was to assure a homogeneity of class interests—that did include race.
The private schools—especially religious ones—found a new growth when the strategy of the NAACP changed from de-segregation to integration. Desegregation only required an equitable distribution of resources, but integration required busing and quotas which did have race as the driving issue.
Your assumption is that all non-performing schools are minority schools. Not true. Most studies conclude that educational achievement is correlated to income. There are a number of poor performing white schools that DeVos has not visited.
Barack Obama’s white grandparents were not wealthy. A better example could have been Clarence Thomas who only attended private Catholic schools (including Holy Cross Uni-versity) but managed to cobble a racial philosophy based up-on “Bigger Thomas,” Malcolm X and Long Dong Silver.
Most minority schools do perform lower than white schools but all American schools perform lower than 10 other nations—when America used to lead. DeVos’ theme should be “Make American Schools great AGAIN.”
Whether it is conscious or not, trump and his privileged appointees simply ooze bigotry and racism. Given that the first step in changing a person on this front is getting them to see that their actions are in fact bigoted and racist, I hold no illusions that anything will change with this self-unaware crew. The ballot box will need to speak for us and hopefully it will speak loudly. To all the readers of the Times, be a voter, be a person who makes a difference and saves our country!
6
DeVos drives so much anger from the commentariat because she is uniquely unqualified for the position she holds. We don’t need more religion in the schools and we don’t necessarily need more choice. What we do need is national standards, a longer school day, after school tutoring and more social workers.
Betsy is here to destroy her agency, defund our public schools and weaken our teacher unions - that is why she gets our ire - she is here to make money at the expense of our children.
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She's also a major financier of the evangelical Christian Dominionist movement which aims to destroy all secular institutions of power and replace them with white fundamentalist Christian-sanctioned institutions. They don't want a well-educated populace whatsoever because the well-educated ask complex questions that can't be answered by simplistic Christian authority. There's a tremendous amount of evidence online that she and her group are working towards a total white evangelical Christian grip on American institutions and culture.
As a refugee from a fundamentalist evangelical Christian school founded by graduates of Bob Jones University, I see the power behind the Christian Dominionist movement as a direct threat to the future of America. Yet, very little is mentioned about the movement. Why didn't Stahl question her documented statements of "advancing God's kingdom" through the takeover and eradication of the country's public education system? Why doesn't the NYTimes continually expose the deep-pocketed Dominionist influence actively undermining the progressive gains of the 20th Century, unions and universal public education included?
DeVos's religious extremism can not be separated from her policies and this is a very real threat to all of us. Send reporters to Holland, MI and dig into the wealth, depth, and reach of Dominionists. Expose it and keep it foremost in all reporting of DeVos!
10
What we need is money! If we spent 5% of what we spend on the military on education, we would have the BEST schools on the planet, guaranteed pre-K and Kindergarten for EVERY kid, for free! All we need to do is spend 95% of what we do on the military now - not exactly a huge reduction - and the national security benefits from excellent national education will far surpass the costs. But we in America are too stupid to understand this, let alone act on it.
1
You nailed it!
DeVos was involved with an education services company wherein kids learn remotely, on computers, with "customized learning" programs instead of going to school. Just what we need, right? Let's further isolate kids, sit them in front of a computer screen, and not even have to pay teachers!
Lesley Stahl did a great job exposing her total oblivious mindset. DeVos hasn't visited struggling schools because she doesn't care about them. In her own state the charter schools are a mess and the public schools (minus the funds redistributed to charters) are also a mess.
6
The smiling clown show and its mantra, "doing-good-for-children" facepaints the blue funk of denial, America's new approach to problems. Rethink Trump's methods, the pillar of his authority and policy, his cabinet's ideology, the belief system of his supporters—even his media coverage is installed and garrisoned by denial. Denial is assertion, deflection, diversion, and projection. Its lies and fantasies, blame-claims and bias can be aggressive or defensive, direct or hidden. Fundamentally it means refusing to accept the truth and downplaying or exaggerating consequences. Politically, it's cover.
Climate change is denied. Holocaust denial says the events of genocide didn't happen. Colleges and men deny sexual misconduct. Denial twists logic: we are told the best means for remembering the horrors of slavery is to honor men on iron pedestals who fought to preserve it!
Denial pulls double duty: the meme, “black students-are-lazy,” conceals that many blacks do well, while making it more difficult for others to succeed.
Denial is also operational! Applications, funds, and meetings are denied. Benefits are denied—as often is justice, always gun control.
Trump accelerated and widened denial's use, in every policy from national security to military deaths, from tariffs to morality. Think of any pronouncement or policy of his, strip it of context/content, and denial is its zombie lawn stake.
DeVos uses denial like a blind mule.
4
We would be so much better off had a glib life long politician become Education Secretary. She would spouted a bunch of very caring pablum then we could all look away as our schools continue to fail.
2
Trump’s cabinet is filled with people like DeVos. Ben Carson at HUD, Ryan Zinke at Interior, Rick Perry at Energy, and Scott Pruitt at EPA, along with DeVos and the GOP army of flacks lack the competence to manage government agencies. But that’s the point. Their purpose is to destroy functioning government as a reality and an idea.
The oligarchs hate anyone telling them that their lives and wealth may have any limits. A democratically elected government is the greatest threat to their status and power. Gated communities, tinted windows, and private everything—schools, planes, health care, islands—are not enough to keep the proles at bay. The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling granting money the power to speak has privatized our elections.
The only thing left is government. We might think these leaders in the Executive Branch, elected to Congress, and appointed to the federal bench as inept, but they are doing the job of debasing government institutions. It’s a sick joke that these clowns are making, but only the oligarchs are laughing.
484
Yes sir, you have nailed it. The stated goal, at least per the repellent Steve Bannon, himself financed by the billionaire Mercer family, was to destroy the administrative state. Who else but the oligarchs would profit from that? No one.
8
You are right. They are doing what they were put in place to do, and it's sickening.
3
Well, obviously David, the schools have not been functioning very well before Trump was elected since this "pipeline" was already in place long before that.
My daughter, a high senior came home one day and told me this story:
another senior, a white male, was overheard by a teacher bragging about selling pot to a student while at school. It was immediately reported. This person, an honors, IB student, was eventually suspended after a lengthy process, but was eventually reinstated with the violation wiped from his record.
The one he sold the pot to was an academically average female black student who was immediately suspended. Violation not expunged from record.
12
Arming the teachers where this "disproportion of discipline" exists could result in an escalation of blowback from the target students.
Statistics tell us there are differences in discipline applied to whites and students of color. This is racism, therefore abhorrent.
However, would it not be better to apply strict discipline currently weighed toward students of color to all students rather than easing standards of acceptable conduct.
Seems to me this would take more disruptive students out of the classroom, therefore improving the environment for all students truly there to learn.
1
Disruptive children need to be controlled, whether through disciplinary measures, such as a trip to the principal's office, or by way of more drastic measures,i.e., suspension or explulsion. Schools and teachers are not equipped and are not intended to functionas behavioral therapy providers. You do what you can.
5
Let's hope that the voters of Maine remember that it was Susan Collins' vote that first allowed Ms DeVos to advance to the position she now holds.
12
After living in the State of Michigan for 55+ years and getting to know literally dozens of retired teachers, I can't think of one who would condone what DeVos has done to our public schools. It is especially apparent around the most impoverished areas, that is those areas where students need and would benefit the most from a good public education. The day DeVos steps down, retires or gets fired will be a glorious day for Michigan and education across the entire country.
7
When Trump told us he only hires the best people he did not explain he meant individuals with the most money regardless of any other qualifications. Pubic schools will take years to recover from her lack of knowledge and absence of leadership skills.
1
The linkage of “clownishness” and “bigotry” resonates with much of Trumps rhetoric and style in that he always goes for the laugh as he strikes on or even creates a prejudice. “Lamb the sham” is a comedic trick to paint a perspective through laughter rather than reason. “I’d go in, even without a gun” distracts from the failure of a policy of armed guards in schools by mocking others through contrast with the inference of cowardice.
We have to remember that the tears on a clown are just make-up, the tears on Trump’s targets are real.
2
I've been involved in civil rights issues since... I was 12. That was the JFK and LBJ era. We have progressed much... but in the wrong direction, in a draconian Dickensian direction.
5
Whenever Betsy DeVos is discussed, her close connection to her brother, Erik Prince, should be considered as well. They seem to share a sinister insouciance with regard to their evil intentions: she, with her deliberate attempts to destroy the public school system, and he with his efforts to facilitate the collusion of the Trump administration with Vladimir Putin in his attempt to establish back channel communications with the Russians and the Trump campaign in the Seychelles in 2016.
3
How such a person did reach the position as Secretary of Education remains in the dark. She has been unqualified even before she set a foot in her office. But she pretends to know the way for education in the 21st Century. Unbelievable!
2
People often have no respect or even conception for the kinds of talent they lack, and many conservatives just aren't creative thinkers. Liberal minds tend to be the problem solvers and the creators of world changing ideas and products. Even in the world of plutocrats you can compare Bill Gates to David Koch to exemplify my point.
For right wing conservatives, ideology will always trump ideas and discipline will trump creative thinking. This is why liberals are almost always on the right side of history- they actually steer it, conservatives are the brakes.
It is always a matter of pushing ideologues like DeVos aside so that liberal thinkers can perpetuate progress. Bring on the midterms!
4
Trump can’t get honorable cabinet members in his administration. So students all over the United States will be victims of a totally inexperienced billionaire private school supporter.
1
I can not understand why the US, as (one of) the most powerful and wealthiest countries on earth, is going down the road to a country with social destruction.
Drugs, sectatrian churches, surveillance, guns, etc. There is no social safety net, but there
is hire and fire culture (just making people sick instead of productive), "guns to fight guns", money for military and surveillance etc. But the most horrible of all, from my point of view, is what DeVos is doing with the education system. Because without fair and good schools for everyone this spiral of social destruction will tighten.
The US was once a forerunner of a modern country, it could be a forerunner of a modern society if it were to invest all its money into improving instead of destroying. But it seems to me its too late, Trumps administration is too good in destroying "things".
5
ChrisQ,
GOP: Greed over People.
Guns, God, Gold.
The Corp. played a long game and bought both parties.
The huge amount of $$$ to be made from such short term grifts/thefts keeps the do-gooders too busy trying to clean-up afterwards and save those that can be helped.
Evil is not punished and niceness is weakness.
America got played.
10% went along to profit, 20% applauded, 70% are shell shocked and trying to stay alive.
1
Will Betsy DeVos Expand the School-to-Prison Pipeline?
The short answer: as long as it is profitable, yes.
4
DeVos is in this office because Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted her out of committee despite the ethics report tying her to student debt collection firm. (Note recent changes to rules regarding student debt collections, from which DeVos should have recused herself.) Once her nomination was released out of La Mar Alexander's committee to the general Senate, Collins and Murkowski chnaged their votes to no, another example of McConnell's manipulations. I hope that the voters in Maine, Alaska, Kentucky, and Tennesse will remember their actions because these elected officials are depending on us to forget.
3
We need laws to ensure that future presidents can't even propose someone for a cabinet position unless he or she meets a prescribed list of qualifications in both education and experience. The Republicans never should have confirmed DeVos, Carson, Perry, Tillerson and several others. But first, they never should have been nominated. Of course, Trump would probably say they are all doing a "heck of a job."
3
Lousy public education, which we see paired up with low-income neighborhoods in low-income states- like so many here in Miss.- simply becomes another self-defeating prophecy, cheating the country, and the student out of decent, predictable results.
And also, where does our social (racial) lack of unity come from anyway?
If we do not share anything socially- and public education gives us the chance to repair divisiveness on a generational basis- then where are we going?
What hope do we have that things will improve?
Here in Miss. we can see the plain result of failure in this regard.
Back fifty years ago, when public education was integrated, so many white families here opted to pay for private church-schools rather that subject their children to the social integration of public schools.
And what has been accomplished here?
Instead of keeping standards high for every student- regardless of low familial income and poor pre-school preparation- we have more Jim Crowe economic segregation and way too much lousy public school performance.
And then we see the plan take form.
Just another part of the police-state, managing the school-to-prison pipeline which will keep our private contract prison system paying somebody very well.
1
Seems obvious for every SRO in our schools there is a need for a defense arbitrator to represent kids being disproportionately singled out for serve discipline. DeVos and Trump are refusing to recognize a common occurrence and in fact actively seeking to make it worse.
Arming teachers will only escalate this problem and lead to tragedy.
2
In New York City, the transfer of school safety officers to the police department nearly two decades ago receives some of the credit for persistent reports of the school-to-prison pipeline. Educators have called for various reforms to the system. But debates about the pipeline aside, it should be clear that disciplinary rules have absolutely nothing to do with the kind of violence we've seen across the country in mass shootings. Oh well, Devos will be heading up the task force to address school violence, so I guess we don't have to worry that anything will be accomplished.
1
Please keep up the good work, Ms. Goldberg. Excellent.
1
Minority children suffer more than anyone else from a refusal to remove violently disruptive students from class. Statistically, minority students are more likely to attend school with each other, so allowing someone who hurts a teacher or another student to stay in the classroom because he is a minority is likely to disrupt the education of many other minority students.
5
The irony of someone like Ms. DeVos being confirmed as Secretary of Education by the republicans in the senate says as much about them as it does about her. Once the nightmare of the Trump administration and this GOP congress passes - and pass it will - the things that will be said about them will make what has been written about James Buchanan seem like high praise.
269
Thank you for citing James Buchanan. As I've learned (to my horror), he was the founding father of all things dark and ugly: the plot to destroy democracy.
1
Your confident words, "and pass it will," gave me a brief, but noticeable sense of relief. Thanks!
1
Betsy DeVos' habit of suddenly smiling oddly as she speaks her gibberish is an intentional habit that sends unintended signals. She's delivering falsehoods, but the constant smiling, bordering on a sneer, is a vain attempt to give what she is saying the veneer of truth and candor. If it feels vaguely familiar, it's because it's also something Sarah Huckabee Sanders does on a regular basis.
Most people who spend time out in nature where wild animals roam have been taught not to show their teeth when confronted by a threatening animal -- that the act of smiling, to an animal, isn't seen as friendliness, but rather an aggressive threat, the baring of teeth.
Poor Betsy thinks she's charming us with her smile, not realizing it has the opposite effect on a primal level. If you think about it, it's also a habit Carter Page can't tame.
Interesting how they are all connected.
430
I'm reminded of the constantly smiling, somewhat smirking and smug face of Phyliss Schlafly, who in slapped women in the face during the Women's Movement of the 60's and 70's suggesting we stay home, quiet down, clean house, and mind our kids. Betsy DeVos is Mrs. Schlafly all over again. This administration would like all of us to be quiet and let them undo all that is Obama or democratic or fair.
8
Ivanka shares this same disturbing habit.
7
As to your point about fake smiling when dissembling and animals in the wild interpreting that as "baring of teeth", let's not forget Steve Mnuchin's performance on Meet the Press last Sunday and Colbert's hilarious send up impression the following night.
6
With Trump's cabinet, appoint a clown and get a circus. Inept is the norm.
20
DeVoss's level of incompetence, ignorance, inexperience and downright stupidity is breathtaking. I couldn't stomach her interview on 60 Minutes and had to turn it off. How could anyone with an IQ over 70 take what this woman says seriously? But Trump only hires the "best" people. Right.
Her idea of making schools better is it defund schools that aren't doing well. That's like saying we wont feed sick people and only allow healthy people to eat. Then the sick people will die and that gets rid of the problem.
She has never taught a class! She has no training in education! She admits that she doesn't even visit troubled schools! What does she do?
DeVoss is to education as Trump is to the truth. The two are completely disconnected. No wonder he likes her. Neither has a clue.
How can she address school discipline issues if she can't even help kids learn to read? DeVoss is as big an embarrassment as Pruitt and just as damaging to society. Her incompetence hurts kids today. Pruitt will hurt them later in life.
47
Betsy DeVos is utterly unqualified for her position, being ignorant of the laws and policies she is to implement. However it is critical to remember that she is also driven by her extreme evangelical faith which seeks to undermine public education in order to enhance and perpetuate religiously-based education. Trump’s giving of the Secretary of Education post to her was, not only the reward for her financial support, it was intended to make Trump’s so-called Christian base happy. Our children and the secular rule of law and education are all the worse for it.
125
Trump targeting Europe with anti-competitive trade sanctions is indeed odd, and note only since European markets are relatively free and open, but as Professor Krugman also points out, because they are so out of step with his almost otherwise consistently racist policies. To anyone else who missed Leslie Stahl's interview with Davos, Michelle Goldberg gives a great recap in this article, and here's a hint of the plot: Bigots needn't worry their hateful heads about Trump's bizarre aberration from racism on the single issue of European trade, because Betsy Davos more than makes up for it with blatantly racist policies in school discipline:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/opinion/devos-school-prison-pipeline....®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article
13
Err, this comment was actually intended for Paul Krugman's column, and not only that, it doesn't make much sense here at all. Oh well, at least I got the chance to show I could spell and use "not only that" correctly, more or less.
17
Hey Gary, well at least when you goof up you are quick to admit it. Not only not withstanding.
Trying to keep a classroom full of diverse learners focused and productive is part talent, part experience, part quality planning, and part determination. When a teacher has spent hours preparing a lesson that is going well but is repeatedly interrupted by one student who cannot refrain from behavior that distracts others it is stressful and frustrating for everyone in the room.
So, what happens next is crucial. Teachers are human. They are frustrated when their lessons must struggle against disruptive behavior. They are not psychiatrists, nor social workers, nor magicians. Yet they must function as all three sometimes in trying to manage behavior. With experience, good teachers develop winning strategies, but there are always tough cases that just are so enervating. These tough cases need to be handled by a committee of professional student support personnel with a wholistic approach to all the outside factors driving the behavior and to doing everything possible to handle discipline in-house.
Sadly, this type of school personnel (social workers, psychologists, guidance counselors) are rarely full time, stretched way too thin and grossly underfunded, especially in schools populated by students of color. DeVos would siphon even more funding away for her "choice" schemes, sadly raising the likelihood that, absent the appropriate expertise and capacity, students are simply suspended. She admitted has not even visited a struggling school! Alas, the pipeline may well fill up.
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"Diverse learners", that's pretty good.
One class clown is a tradition. 10 Class clowns makes for a catastrophic situation.
1
Not that I need much persuading (she is, after all, a Trump appointee), but I was absolutely gobsmacked watching her on 60 minutes. She gives an entirely new meaning to the adjective 'clueless'.
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The strangest thing is that rich people who are unqualified for a given position and know it, or at least realize it very quickly, continue to seek office and authority. This leads them to end up in situations like the 60 Minutes interview with DeVos. This has to be a personal humiliation for her, and her family. Her friends watched and are aware of the ineptitude she displayed. Why did she or do they subject themselves to this kind of ordeal. After the disaster are her confirmation hearing, didn't she know that no good would come from this pursuit of political power.
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No, she didn't know. In that interview, she was exposed for what she is, clueless, and what her role in Don the Con's administration is, to make America the land of the uneducated, desperate, and poor. It is unnerving to watch what Donald Trump is doing to our country, and yet and still Congress is nowhere in sight.
3
I don't know, Davos family and friends are probably inept and clueless too.
2
I doubt she feels humiliated.
1
"School to prison pipeline" is inaccurate and blames schools for problems in families. We should perhaps instead be saying, "The womb to prison pipeline". That phrase makes it clear where the problem lies -- in families and communities which produce kids who are unable to function normally in school.
While schools can certainly do some things to help children who've been raised in very unhealthy settings, we have to stop expecting schools to be free daycare centers, providing babysitting for disruptive kids. THis isn't fair to other children, who dont' have behavior problems, and who are at school to learn.
When I was in public school, that's what we did, learn. Kids who weren't there to learn or who had serious behavior problems were taken out of the classroom, and the rest of us were not prevented from getting an education because some kids were out of control. We need to return to this process.
Disruptive dysfunctional kids can be helped, but this can't be at the cost of the others' education. Take them out of class and work with them separately until they can go to class to learn. IF this isn't possible, please don't blame the school, because this problem didn't begin in school.
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You are conflating two different problems. The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the racism in applying uneven standards of behavior to majority and minority students.
The problems with 'families' - your womb to prison extension - are a different source of anti-social behavior and needs to be addressed separately. Black unemployment, although at 'historic' lows, is still twice that of white unemployment. The 'new Jim Crow' resulting in high incarceration rates for men of color, has the unintended (?) consequence of destabilizing the family unit, lowers household income, disenfranchises large numbers of people and is re-inforced by the schools' unequal application of discipline.
Is it really a punishment for an undisciplined child who does not want to be in school to be suspended?
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Did you not read the statistics about difference s in discipline between students of different races?
You must have also walked ,to school 10 miles barefoot in the snow.
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The author correctly points out minority children are disciplined more harshly than white for the same infraction. Your take is to blame the minority.
3
It is not a school-to-prison pipeline. It is a preschool-to-prison pipeline. Our infants, toddlers & preschool babes of color are getting suspended & expelled from their child care programs every single day. Departments of Corrections look at kindergarten reading scores to project their future budgets & beds. This Pipeline is real.
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As a retired Associate Commissioner of the NYC Department of Probation, I can tell you that the idea that preschool reading scores have anything to do with planning, let alone budgeting, is absurd on more levels than I can count, and one of the more bizarre things I've read.
Operating budgets are requested a year in advance, capital budgets 5 years in advance. Statistically, these tests probably do a middling job of projecting reading scores 5 years in advance, let alone crime rates 10 years hence. And statistical instruments developed within the criminal justice system to forecast recidivism on existing offenders have weak predictive value, at best.
2
Does the DOC really do that? It's not nice to cast doubt by asking you to provide your source, but it would be fascinating to have it, to see how long this(these) metric(s) have been used, and how close the correlations are.
A while back Canada Tire found a good correlation between its card holder's creditworthiness and certain items they bought. E.g. discount motor oil=bad, felt furniture sliders=good, skull shift knob=bad, bird seed=good. As I recall, Canadian Tire had to stop using this very reliable data to make individual judgments on credit (too much information, apparently). Maybe the DOC is not as shy.
1
Most schools never send a student to the police. A relatively small number of schools refer a good number of students. The problem is mostly local. Schools in violent areas have violence problems of their own. Most Education Secretaries address nationwide problems that affect all our schools. The stated mission of the Department of Education is to "promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access." Addressing police discipline is tangential, at best, for the Department. The attack on Ms. DeVos for a non-priority issue like this is gotcha journalism.
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Educators all over this country warned against her appointment. She is an embarrassment - if this “administration” were capable of embarrassment.
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She is actually a positive role model - demonstrating that anyone can become a cabinet secretary. Anyone.
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Anyone who contributes millions of dollars to the political party of their choice.
3
And keep the job despite the total lack of intelligence or ability!
2
She is exhibit #1 that money buys power
1
The Land Ordinance of 1785 standardized a number of issues related to land in the undeveloped “west.” This included surveying the entire area into squares of townships that were six miles on a side subdivided into thirty-six sections, each one mile on a side. The 16th section was set aside in each township for education – for building a school house and with enough land to be sold to sustain the school.
The “Founding Fathers,” including Jefferson, understood from the colonial experience the need to educate the children and for the resources to be available to do so.
This was also seen as part of building a sense of engagement with, and thus institutionalizing, democratic ideals by having the community govern the township, its education, and maintaining order. It was believed this engagement in local self-governance was key to the nation’s sustained success as a democracy. It had been proven during the colonial period, especially in the New England area.
Obviously the self-entitled wealthy want “for-profit” schools. Our political system of community self-governance is democratic. Businesses are “mobile monarchies”, as my son, Justin, labeled them in his first book on scaling democracy. Of course these monarchy pretenders want to take over and eradicate this keystone to sustaining our democracy. Just as obvious, the Senate Republicans thought an ignoramus such as Betsy “Amway” DeVos would be a willing dupe and never question what she was doing to extinguish our democracy.
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Betsy DeVos came across as a blooming idiot in that interview. Whether by design or unintentional candor, she seemed to misunderstand most of the questions--or was it, willfully ignoring them?
They say she is the most hated Cabinet member in Trumps's Confederacy of Dunces. to which I say, with good reason.
Does it really matter if she's unintentionally ignorant or simply ignorant? If I Didn't Know Better, I would think she was mocking Lesley Stahl.
But then it hit me: she wanted to be misunderstood in order to continue the fantasy she's not racist or driven by her self-interested agenda of privatizing public education in order to further the goals of her educational consulting company.
The last person who should be running the Department of Education is the one person who wants to destroy it for personal gain.
But then again, the same can be said for most of Trumps' unqualified grifter cabinet.
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How's racial desegregation working out in your city's public school system?
Jp: since you so snarkily ask, I'd remind you that Massachusetts is a progressive state and Number One on the state rankings of education systems, according to US News and World Report, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education
Yes, Massachusetts had its problems with desegration back in the day, but in the town west of Boston where I live, with a highly multicultural school population, things are just fine.
If you take the time to read the full list, you'll see your state listed at #36. Betsy DeVos has a highly publicized agenda to privatize public education, using taxpayer dollars to skim the best students off into charter schools, leaving the rest without the funding to properly educate the students. She was chosen specifically for this agenda, pushed by anti-government Republicans who want nothing more than to privatize just about everything.
4
@Christine: I didn't see anything in that article about desegregated public schools.
No doubt your education system is great, but that wasn't the question.
It is quite clear that African American children, as a group, are treated more harshly than white children for similar offenses. That Ms. DeVos doesn’t acknowledge the empirical data is tremendously problematic.
That said, any systemic issues that led law enforcement to overlook the Parkland school shooter must be eliminated. But safety shouldn’t be used as an excuse for prolonging or abetting racism.
13
Actually, I think you are wrong -- looking down the wrong end of the telescope.
It is far more likely that badly behaved white kids like Nikolas Cruz are NOT treated harshly ENOUGH -- perhaps getting a "pass" for being wealthy or white.
Badly behaved kids steal the educations of good kids. They need to be disciplined and put into strict reform schools, absolutely regardless of race or ethnicity.
2
When Devos said, "I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming, Stahl suggested, "Maybe you should."
Smiling, with the blankest look on her face, Devos responded, "Maybe I should" as if such a thought had never occurred to her before.
In that moment, I understood that Betsy Devos, was "the empty barrel" John Kelly so meanly, unfairly and dishonestly characterized Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson as.
That's what they all are in the Trump administration, empty barrels, rolling over anyone not of their ilk, smashing civility and accepted norms, empty of any empathy toward the people they're supposed to protect and lacking even the slightest concern for promoting the common good.
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Notice the weird use of 'intentionally.' Does this imply she may have visited them accidentally?
2
It's all of a piece. Erik Prince the master mercenary, his sister Betsy DeVos - in fact there's a dynasty.*
So sure, she's eager to put those uppity kids in prison and it has a side benefit (or sneaky purpose), they can never vote again: the new Jim Crow.
But if that doesn't work, now they'll have guns in the classrooms (perhaps for "bears", like she said in her Congressional hearing?). And since they want teachers screened for far-right fake religion (the one that respects life before but not after birth) any "different" kids can be accidentally or purpose shot.
It's a mistake to expect this bunch of good intentions. Inside that hair and makeup is a deeply unappealing selfishness and blindness to others.
They're perfectly happy with the idea of eliminating, by death or prison or whatever means available, anyone who opposes their self-worshiping religion. And they take that religion very very seriously.
When they're not worshiping themselves, they're worshiping machines of death, and organizations (mercenaries) who are efficient at eliminating their enemies.
If there's one thing too many of us do, it's suspecting these people of hiding their good intentions. What's hidden, my opinion, is some publicly unacceptable bad intentions.
* https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/default/news/2017/01/23/296947/t... The only lives they respect are their kleptocratic colleagues and lily-white bigots.
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It's a bit of warning sign when the United States Secretary of Education belongs in a special education class.
Collapsing the American IQ for decades and decades, the Party of God, Greed and Guns has hit dumb pay dirt with Betsy 'Amway' DeVos, a Calvinistic Christian Crusader and Republican megadonor posing as a a fake educator.
In a 2001 interview for The Gathering, a group focused on advancing Christian faith through philanthropy, Betsy DeVos and her Amway billionaire husband offered a rare public glimpse of their views. Asked whether Christian schools should continue to rely on giving—rather than pushing for taxpayer money through vouchers—Betsy DeVos replied, “There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education…Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God’s kingdom.”
"An uneducated, uninformed voter from religious fantasy land is our best supporter": GOP 2018
Please, 'God', save America's children from this intellectual dead-end of a woman.
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Right about everything, Socrates, except the Special Education line.
For one, special needs (ed) students aren't always intellectually disadvantaged; they have a wide spectrum of needs, and many can be quite bright. Strike one for DeVoss.
Also, the special needs students I see and work with daily are sweet, affectionate, empathetic, and love people. Hardly accurate descriptors for our miseducator-in-chief.
I'd only put DeVoss in these classes as great places for her to learn some social skills; the kids far outclass her as human beings, and I wouldn't denigrate them by equating them with her.
Cheers, and I always enjoy your comments.
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You were not very kind to special education classes there. My son is in one, and you should hear his views on the subject of DeVos and the GOP. He recently went on a trip to Albany to advocate for the rights of people like himself.
9
Hear hear
2
If all else fails in Ms. DeVos lack of experience, training or even insight in dealing with the desperate need to make our schools safer, the Trump policy of arming non teachers and various and sundry school "staff", we could see some very regrettable mishaps with Ms. DeVos tin-eared total lack of interest, concern, much less knowledge of the racial issues children of color, especially black children, are already subject to in our schools. This is going to end badly; Trump's proposal and Ms. DeVos "leading the charge" to protect schools from gun violence.
Please, please don't let her brother, Eric Prince, who did such a godawful job in Irag that his business had to be shut down, be in charge of hiring security.
The last thing we need is to keep this issue "all in the family". One from the Prince family is more than we can bear.
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If Betsey's brother Eric Prince takes over the probably very lucrative contract to "protect' our students & teachers I wonder how many innocent students will be murdered on campus by one/some of his out of control paid mercenaries? it will be the same quality of protection he provided for big $ in Iraq. Guns do not belong in schools and teachers should not be packing weapons on campus. It's that simple.
2
There just aren’t words for how inappropriate Betsy DeVos is for the job of Secretary of Education. She wants a system that only educates people who are going to succeed anyway. She has absolutely nothing to do for people who need a helping hand. And her brother founded Blackwater, a private military training organization, so naturally she wants guns in schools.
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Her brother Eric is not heading a "military training organization", (how about letting our military do that?), he runs a for guns hire mercenary business, that's right, hired killers....and his company has a horrifying record. Neither of these people should be trusted and neither are worthy of being called an American. They do not represent American values. Both of them seem paranoid, scared of the public and and present themselves as Christian....LOL! Mercenary & Christian are not compatible values. Money grubbers who seek to control others because they feel they are superior...LOL. Amway (the original illegal pyramid scheme) anyone? Both of them need to go away and stop interfering in our lives.
1
This Imposter Secretary of Education holds the "distinction" of being the first Cabinet officer, in the country's history, to have required for confirmation the vote of the Vice-President to break a Senatorial tie. Given her dismal, polarized functioning in that critical position for the past year, it is accurate to now declare that since a near-flunking performance at her confirmation hearing, everything has been going downhill in her stewardship of that department.
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Ms. Devos's longtime support for efforts to undermine public education is revealed as prophetic: she knew that the Senate might at any time knowingly confirm an incompetent to run the Department of Education.
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The DeVos interview was a shameful display of the inadequacy of the entire Trump administration. DeVos was, and continues to be, woefully unprepared to be Secretary of Education. Smiling her way through the 60 Minutes interview could not hide the fact that she knows absolutely nothing about the job for which she is appointed.
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Ikr! The same way she cringingly smiled through the confirmation hearings!
2
With the proposed arming of teachers and the widely accepted premise that blacks are disciplined at a far greater and more sinister rate than whites the recipe for a disaster is brewing. The republican party has taken the place of yesterday's "white citizen's council".
27
Is there any twisting path that Republicans won't follow in order to blame President Obama for something? Senator Rubio's attempt to hang a school shooting on a "Dear Colleague" letter is just the latest desperate grasp at a straw.
The data clearly show that students of color end up getting arrested and jailed for offenses that land white kids in after-school detention. The "Dear Colleague" letter was a reminder that the statistics were lopsided. The letter did not instruct schools and resource officers to overlook problems; it suggested that they apply disciplinary measures evenly to all students.
Connecting imaginary dots to a school shooting is an attempted distraction and does nothing to move us toward a solution.
47
For people "like" Secretary De Vos to recognize, much less discuss race would require them to admit the degree to which their race has played in accumulating vast amounts of wealth, and how the systemic disparities of education and lifestyle upon which their existence rest contribute to violence.
Because for Secretary De Vos and her ilk to acknowledge that historical set of facts, they would need to stare into the horror of our country's construction vis a vis slavery, the Middle Passage and so many other inconvenient facts.
Speaking as someone who presents as "white," who has gone to great lengths to educate myself about these racialized inequities, looking at our country's history, not as the dominant culture has massage it into a "safe" place is to induce a form of psychosis.
Instead of looking at those ugly facts, white people like Secretary De Vos do everything they can to avoid and look away from the horrific facts and elect, as we've seen, someone like Mr. Trump who can voice their unbearable discomfort with the truth.
27
After one year on the job, Secretary DeVos still does not what she is talking about. Who knew that education was so complicated? Steep learning curve.
35
Using the phrase, "school-to-prison-pipeline" is an insult to the hundreds of thousands of teachers and administrators who work tirelessly in underfunded, high needs schools while opening doors of opportunity - not doors of prison cells. Betsy DeVos may continue to avoid visiting such schools, probably out of the guilt she feels for exacerbating the sub-standard conditions by siphoning desperately needed public money into private and parochial schools. But I would suggest the author spend one week substituting in a high needs middle school or high school in Detroit or Baltimore, or DC or the Bronx, before she decides to promote that offensive phrase and foolish notion that public schools offer little more to minority students that ticket to prison.
19
I was not aware of DeVos's interview with Lesley Stahl. And I am speechless. Just today alone readers have read both Ms Goldberg's column and the Times' piece - actually several pieces - on Trump's back-tracking of his "consider-the-source pledge" to put an end to these mass shootings, particularly at our schools, targeting innocent children and educators and every other employee within firing range.
So correct me if I am misinterpreting what I am reading, very possible with the overload of unsettling news 24/7. There will be no banning of assault weapons. And the government is encouraging the "best" teachers to arm themselves to protect their students. Add to the toxic mix, Ms DeVille, er, DeVos, wanting to eliminate President Obama's directive to protect minority students. But, but, wasn't it a deranged, white kid, who was merely "expelled" from another school rather than going to juvie, who pulled the trigger in Parkland, Florida?
The criminality occurring in this administration has got to end. There has to be a point when money and corrupt power no longer control a democracy. Where is justice? Who will defend us from these wretches called Trump, DeVos, Pruitt, Zinke, Carson, et al? It seems as if this paradigm is becoming more ominous and treacherous with each passing day.
184
Ms DeVille; er, DeVos wins the Internet for today.
1
If DeVos wanted to help kids in schools she could have used her money to feed hungry kids, upgrade school buildings and provide school supplies rather than build private schools that cherry pick students. Somehow there's money for guns in schools but not to pay teachers a decent wage. Also, she is woefully uneducated about public schools and what could be done to improve them. Just another rich person trying to force her beliefs about what is best on the rest of us.
57
Stamford's solution to school segregation:
"The district achieves this goal by frequently reexamining attendance boundaries for neighborhood schools and weighting magnet school lotteries by both educational disadvantage (balancing the percentage of disadvantaged students at each school) and geographic zone (allowing preference for students from certain zones where neighborhood schools are overenrolled or imbalanced)"
https://tcf.org/content/report/stamford-public-schools/
Magnet schools, yep.
1
It is not casual sarcasm to question whether DeVos is demented to the point of madness, or just profoundly stupid. I don't know. There is no way to be absolutely certain. Of course, some physicians would diagnose it is a remarkably symmetrically distribution of both maladies.
DeVos is as deeply knowledgeable about education as Ben Carson is about housing and urban development, or Rick Perry is about nuclear physics. But that is the intended point: the deconstruction of the administrative state is code for the deconstruction of democracy, what little we have of it.
The current administration is a mental health crisis in need of the voter's attention on Nov. 6th to deliver them over to those medical facilities most capable of addressing their dire needs.
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Nowhere in this piece do you actually discuss whether or not giving Cruz repeated passes under the Obama policy may have lead to his easy access to guns. People forget that when you fail to deal with violent or trouble making students the biggest losers are the other students who pay the price of having to try to learn in a violent or disruptive environment. And those children are often minorities as well.
4
The point is that the Obama policy was not why Cruz was "given a pass".
2
Sec. DeVos's refusal to acknowledge the discriminatory disciplinary practices in many schools that have been well documented is consistent with the policies of the entire Trump administration.
The Civil Rights Division of DOE is instead busy insuring due process rights for accused sexual assailants. I'm all for due process, but the Secretary seems to have forgotten that discrimination in school discipline violates the due process rights of black kids in those underperforming school she has yet to visit.
None of this is surprising. Sec. DeVos might very well be a nice person, but this 'nice' person is pushing an agenda to destroy unions and transfer huge amounts of public money into private hands.
Sec. DeVos, this nice billionaire who can't understand why there is so much anger around her policies seems unable or unwilling to see the trail of pain and destruction that she's creating under the false banner of school reform.
Sec. DeVos was quite clear on one point when she said "the money shouldn't go to a school system, it should follow the student." So once that student is disconnected from a public school a vast new market is created.
While that market is currently served by many religious schools, she intends for it to grow and the for profit education corporations to eventually take over. Your local public school is the first stage of a democracy and under her leadership it is slowly being destroyed.
28
The DeVos interview was very scary but this article is even worse. The racism and bigotry are what keep Trump supporters loving Trump (see PA rally on Saturday) and the Trump administration going in spite of internal conflicts.
DeVos is so massively unqualified. Hope that her incompetence prevents her from actually making any of her 'reforms' see the light of day.
22
It is unfair to the country that the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, does not even have any college education in education!
She determines the knowledge base of the children of this country, yet she has no formal education or experience regarding any part of education itself!
How dare Donald Trump to hand us that for our children - at any level - preschool, grade school, high school, or college, someone heading the education of this country, with no clue.
This is an insult to teachers, students, parents, everyone striving to be educated or provide the means to it.
Instead, is this all about defunding public schools for religion? Vouchers for parochial schools? School choice is one thing, but being educating in what you’re doing would only be sensible. But then again, look at who made the appointment - at our kids and grandkids expense. He has no clue, either.
34
Betsy DeVos could be a nice, well-meaning Christian lady; however, she believed that her significant financial contributions to charter schools qualified her for the undermining the finances of our nation's public school systems and the "end run" around our teachers' unions.
Money doesn't make you qualified, correct, or even capable of acing an interview with Lesley Stahl.
Betsy DeVos' egg timer is synchronized with the end of Donald Trumps' first-and-only term.
Our nation's school boards, administrators, and PTA's ARE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY; and I refuse to be cajoled by Republican leaders who belittle our institutions and our professionals because they want to de-democratize America and replace it with privatized corporations that they can control to access taxpayer dollars for public services.
If parents want to put their children in the private schools that sprung from the end of public school segregation, then it's on you and your pocket book. I will never give up on democratic institutions.
32
Betsy DeVos is an expression of our right wing culture that is currently in control off our federal government. I was astonished to see her try to stay on message. It is essentially a message holding survival of the fittest as the law of the land. It was also embarrassing to hear her described as a Christian. Christians are not so near sighted and selfish as is Mrs. DeVos
26
Seems like a reasonable conclusion to draw if schools are no longer able to remove extremely disruptive students they’re increasing the chances of dangers.
2
The biggest attack on DeVos came when she described historically black colleges as “pioneers when it comes to school choice.” It surprised me that this was a scandal.
Black colleges include schools of the quality of top liberal arts colleges, such as Morehouse, Spellman, and Howard. It is true that these all-black schools were a product of segregation. But it is also true that the finest black educators chose to respond to segregation with schools of their own. These schools indeed represented a choice -- to pursue excellence apart. And they indeed were created by pioneers in education who had made a choice.
Literally Ms. DeVos was correct. The all black schools were created by top educators who were making a choice. But she glossed over the matter of discrimination, and there in lies the rub. Whether or not she was literally accurate, she was insensitive to matters of discrimination. Was that racist? I'd say it was subtle and the vehement attacks on her were way out of proportion. They were purposeful exaggerations by those otherwise against Vos. Honest observers wondered what was the big deal.
3
"Whether or not she was literally accurate, she was insensitive to matters of discrimination. Was that racist?'
Dunno Mrs. Bunker, maybe you should ask Archie?
3
DeVos barely squeaked by in her confirmation hearing. She has zero qualifications for this job and I find it appalling that she has yet to visit a single underperforming school in Michigan since she took office.
The only thing Miss Betsy wants is for private religious schools to take over K-12 education and leave the poor public systems to fend for themselves, or to shut down altogether.
Betsy "Clueless" DeVos as Secretary of Education and Ben "This Is Harder Than I Thought" Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development:
The Dysfunctional Duo.
21
In this administration its more like the Dysfunctional Dozen. Scary stuff.
3
hard to decide which Cabinet member is the most frightening, but she can't be ruled out, by any means.
20
Great reporting - looks as though DeVos may be rattled by the impending imprisonment of her brother, Erik Prince (Seychelles). Or perhaps the threat of grizzlies. To improve our schools, we should look to the most successful public schools in the world, which are in Finland. Children do not begin school until they are 7, and only "broad guidelines" for curriculum are followed. Students take one mandatory standardized test at 16, and are not "measured" at all during their first 6 years of education. Teachers share the same high status with doctors and lawyers, and schools are 100% funded by the government. Finnish kids come out at the TOP when measured by international standards in science, reading and math. About 93% graduate from high school, with 66% going on to college and 43% to vocational schools.
I got this information from businessinsider.com. Oh - and Finland spends 30% LESS per student than we do. There you go, Betsy. Let's try it.
65
Finland is a small all white nation where everyone speaks the same language. You can't really compare them to the U.S.
2
Finland's immigrant population is over 6%; in the U.S., it's 13%.
4
Yes, the standard conservative response--anything that works elsewhere can't work because ... well, just because we are the U.S. and they aren't.
3
Seems DeVos is unconcerned with the less served kids in our country, more than happy to write them off as irrelevant, a drain on all of us. This is completely unsurprising. I think she should be required to spend a day in the unheated and filthy classrooms that we require of our most important assets, the kids. We need to undo the rule by the very wealthy (and seemingly uneducated) who have no awareness or care for the forgotten and neglected.
13
What better way to share the spoils with her brother.Surely his companies are lining up to be the private prison keepers of choice.
25
I give Lesley Stahl some credit for challenging some of the nonsense De Vos was peddling.
De Vos' response time and again was to put on a fake smile and lie some more. The closest thing to admitting she was wrong was when Stahl asked her if she had ever gone to a "failing" school and she said, "I've never gone intentionally. Maybe I should."
With due (dis)respect to Rick Perry and Tom Price, Betsy De Vos is the WORST cabinet appointment Trump has made.
26
One thing that strikes me about Trump's cabinet is how inhumanly emotionless they act whenever they're confronted over their lies, their racism, their lack of qualifications, their personal histories of perfidy and greed. It's as if they've all taken a tranquilizer before speaking to an audience or sitting for a TV interview. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump's anti-public housing director and fine dining maven, Ben Carson MD, also doubles as Dr. Feelgood. I can't think of any other explanation for either their kowtowing to Boss Trump or their attitude of bored disdain for regular people.
Betsy DeVos is so clueless that she told Lesley Stahl that the widespread criticism of her feels just like root canal surgery, before admitting that she herself has never personally undergone root canal surgery. This mentally and emotionally anesthetized woman seems never to have experienced a painful or insightful moment in her whole life. Any normal person would have resigned in embarrassment by now.
And Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin, as a just-released video shows, was booed for the entire duration of a talk he gave at UCLA last month. He didn't appear at all fazed that people can't stand him; he just kept talking and talking, acting bemused by the catcalls all around him..
Sarah Sanders is another one, lying her way through every presser with that trademark scowl and spooky flat affect.
To paraphrase Bob Dylan, there's an idiot wind blowing every time they move their mouths.
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What a beautiful fleshing out of these robotic zombies.
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Karen Garcia: Brilliant post. I am similarly shocked by the cold, callous manner in which this Administration's 'soldiers' simply deny everything. It is worse than Orwellian, it is downright Dantesque. And you have Sarah Huckabee Sanders, an ugly version of Phoebe Munster, responding to every single question with the standard 'false facts' retort, and doing so with the concern and charm of a rattlesnake.
What I fail to understand, as an 'internationalist' raised and steeped in the northern European tradition, is how U.S. politicians fail to understand the long term damage they are doing to their society. I have trouble deciding whether they are treasonous or simply stupid: Neither attribute bodes well for the future of the United States.
Please get your act together: We need global equilibrium, and this won't be achieved by a self-destructive empire that finally has to start WWIII to arrest its socio-economic decline.
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"woman seems never to have experienced a painful or insightful moment in her whole life. "
It's quite possible that is true. And the tranquilizer common to all of these Cabinet members is a nice, soft, endless bed of money to catch them when they fall. Like Trump, these are people who have never had to perform in order to keep an actual job to pay the bills (look at DeVos' "CV" for a prime example, she's never had an actual job, much less one in education). They've never had to live with the consequences of their actions. "Working" for them is a choice, not a necessity. And it shows. Bigly.
What's even worse is that after they flame out (one hopes!) of their current positions that nice soft bed of money will be there for them just as it always has been. In fact, it will probably be even deeper and softer. And even it somehow miraculously disappeared, they know that the right-wing-nut wealthfare system (Fox News pundits, consulting, directorships, "think" tank positions, etc.) will be there to prop them up.
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Of all Trump’s senior people, I’m not the most ardent of DeVos supporters on professionalism grounds, and I have serious problems with Sessions as AG, freighted as he is with clearly demonstrated attitudes regarding race that I find both deeply offensive and very dangerous. However, this column by Michelle is one-sided, undoubtedly will be popular with the commentariat, but is needful of SOME balance. I guess I’m elected to provide it.
Clearly, the lady is largely oblivious of race; but many Republicans are, and not just the wealthy ones. The reasoning goes that we spend altogether too much time, energy and other resources agonizing over “identity” in this country, and this results in assumptions that outcomes in life are directly associated with identity; when instead we should pay greater attention to what binds us not divides us, and growth-goals that are universal. Hence, in a more balanced view of these convictions, the “school-to-prison pipeline” has more to do with poverty and family dysfunction than it has to do with complexion. While many can’t avoid recognition that family dysfunction often is a function of poverty, and that poverty in our country is disproportionately non-white, many believe that by focusing on helping people overcome poverty irrespective of race (or generally identity), we do greater, more strategically sustainable, good.
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Insofar as my own views go, there’s something to that argument. Where I part from it is that, while I agree that the target state of an educated young person should be universal, identity, and particularly race, present unique challenges to achieving that state due to ancient American attitudes that are very resistant to change; and that we need to insert facilitators to even the playing field, PERMITTING near-universal attainment of the target state from any social starting-point. If we don’t then we won’t break the generational cycle of poverty, and we won’t see significant interdiction of the “school-to-prison pipeline”.
That’s an argument that needs to be presented to Ms. DeVos, but one that I am NOT convinced she is unwilling or incapable of understanding and embracing.
She lacks sophisticated staff capacities, which explains in large part her unpreparedness for interviews of the Stahl type, which should prepare her far better for such in-your-face and highly competent challenges. She lacks staff that can help her understand our current educational state in all its complexity, our target state in what should be a more simplified and effective reality, and the bridges that can be built to get from one state to the other – in a REPUBLICAN way that’s also effective.
Sorry, but she should have never accepted the position as she is completely unqualified to administer an education program. This is not about the capabilities of her staff in the face not-so-tough questions on 60 minutes. It is about not having any qualified advisors at all and an inability to recognize where help is needed. DeVos is promoting an ideology that does not have any basis on improving student performance. And, to date, all evidence indicates that she just does not care.
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Your attempt to provide “balance” to a piece about DeVos’s disastrous interview amounts to speaking for all Republicans on racial matters, is that it?
DeVos is so out of her depth that not only did she not provide adequate answers to Leslie Stahl, in some cases she didn’t appear to understand the (fairly straightforward) questions. Forget about “staff capacities.”
It’s her own capacity that is in question.
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More evidence that very rich people make very bad government officials.
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"Will Betsy DeVos Expand the School-to-Prison Pipeline?"
Why would she? If schools are "hardened" and teachers armed, the schools will take on many attributes of prisons.
The fifth estate needs to stay on top of this because it has much wider implications.
First, DeVos said on 60 Minutes that "she had asked" to head the commission that will look into school safety. Hardening schools to look like airports will be a very lucrative bonanza to the security industry. DeVos' brother Erik Prince has a history of involvement with security firms. How much would he stand to gain?
Secondly, DeVos, Trump and the rest of them insist that armed teachers must be expert, adept, proficient, or some similar adjective, with firearms. Why such stringent standards for handling weapons in schools, when anything goes outside of school?
Thirdly, why only schools? Logically, other spaces where people gather need to be hardened - shopping malls, theaters, churches, airport ticketing and baggage claim areas, commuter rail terminals....
This is where I'm going: any or all of these measures encroach on our freedom to come and go as we please, and make the US look like the kind of police state that Americans were once told we abhorred.
Before we trade away our freedom of movement for the questionable right of individuals to bear weapons of war, we must put our collective foot down and say a loud and insistent NO!
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My daughter went to a high school in New York. Variance in racial discipline is exacerbated by links with another area where minorities are often excluded. Advanced Placement classes. This high school had AP students in all AP classes, and they were in my memory all white. Katie said if she was in the hall after the bell rang, nobody said a word since she was an AP student, but if the hoi polloi were in the hall after the bell rang discipline followed. My daughter noted the reality the process was self-reinforcing, the AP students considering themselves superior to the other students.
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Public education from pre-school to college is a right, not a privilege. It is a sacred compact to each other and our children.
Until we embed this into our constitution, public education will remain under assault by forces promoting privatization.
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Raise your hand; if you like to amend 2nd amendment to include K12+4 education as a right as well.
2
In a cabinet of Gross misfits
Ms Betsy is clearly the pits,
No student of Race,
School reforms in bad place,
Made lots of errors, but no hits!
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