Some commenters are lamenting that so few readers are commenting on this article and interpret this as lack of attention and a lack of concern for public schools and the millions of precious young future citizens who so desperately rely on them, particularly students of color.
As a retired Public School Administrator, I am passionately opposed to nearly everything Betsy DeVos says, does and stands for. I wish Had the strength to write all the reasons why, but I have spent so much time today on the following:
Going through my FB account and doing everything being suggested to protect and limit what outside advertisers and firms can harvest about me. I deleted over 400 vendors connected to me from a list on my profile that I previously didn't know even existed, for example.
Signing up for and attending a FaceTime meeting for Saturday's March.
Fundraising for the Democratic challenger in the NY11 Congressional race.
I am exhausted. Resisting in Trumpian America is a full time job.
DeVos is poison. That is all I can think of to say. I need a nap.
18
Millions of students face terrible dislocation, hundreds of thousands of educators face loss of employment. Billions of taxpayer dollars will end up in private, hands. Every state and local school system will suffer lost regulations and disappearing funding.
And only a dozen or so comments comment? Remember: these kids will vote and work one day. Give them a decent chance to learn.
10
At age 64, I remember the growing public education system throughout America.
New buildings and all the kids from the neighborhood crammed on buses going to school together. Gyms and stages where the community could come together after school hours to play basketball or put on a show. And sadly, the renaming of these buildings in honor of President Kennedy.
These public schools were a place to learn and a focus for the community, a place to meet.
American families need to demand a new commitment to our community public schools. Our society and children have suffered due to lack of support. 21st century innovations can bring our public school education back.
I fear DeVos is simply in it for her own personal crusade of profit and white priviledge.
16
No one is pointing out how this Billionaire who has every luxury want people who have less than her, to have even less.
16
The minority children who do not excel and those who have never are due to lack of involvement by their parents, lack of family involvement etc. We spend more money on education and the result is dismal. The money goes to the unions, pensions, salaries and other nonsense. That is how the tax dollar is spent.
3
Wow!
If a minority child struggles at school that automatically indicates a lack of parental/family involvement?
Not perhaps a learning disability?
Not perhaps ADD?
Not perhaps an ineffective uncertified teacher in front of the room?
Not perhaps poverty at home?
Not perhaps an empty, groaning stomach?
Not perhaps poor health, untreated allergies, hearing or vision issues - all unable to be addressed due to no health insurance?
Not perhaps shyness, insecurity, stress or bullying?
Not perhaps a shortage of books, equipment and supplies in the classroom?
Not perhaps overcrowded classes?
I am a retired teacher. These are some of the reasons WHITE kids struggle at school. And many white kids do struggle at school.
But you have deduced that minority kids struggle for only one reason, which is lazy parents and families?
God bless those minority kids who are immune to learning disabilities, ADD, lousy teachers, poverty, malnutrition, lack of healthcare, shyness, insecurity, bullying, book and equipment shortages and crowded classes! They sound like the master race!
17
You have to work hard to be as disliked as she is. She may not be good at her job but she is very good at making people dislike her.
Even if Trump was a great president (which is far from the truth), the longer he continues to support her, the more people will find reasons to seek alternatives (any alternative, even our vice president or the the speaker of the house). No Republican running for anything has much of a chance as long as this nonsense continues.
Just as Trump called on the Russians to save his sorry campaign, I call on the Republicans to put an end to the nonsense and make America respectable again. Republicans, I hope you are listening. I hope you can fix this. We are counting on you to do the right thing for the good of the country (and your own future as well).
4
Ms. DeVos' agenda has been clear for many years now. She has used her wealth to promote charter and private schools in her home state for both business and religious reasons. The sole basis for her "experience" was her funding of campaigns to expanding charter schools and to provide vouchers for private schools in Michigan. The results of this initiative demonstrate clearly that it has been an abject failure. Even she could not explain these results during her interview on "60 Minutes."
Let us also recall that her appointment was approved in the Senate through the single vote of Mike Pence. She authorized the US Education Department to reverse many important regulations that protect our most vulnerable students. She also significantly decreased the Department's offices that are concerned with safeguarding students' rights, lifted regulations regarding predatory student loan organizations, and has proposed no student safety regulations in light of the plethora of school shootings. Apparently, her master plan is to destroy public education for private profiteers. Couple this with the contract dispute with her department's union members that would devastate their bargaining rights, demonstrating her contempt for dedicated civil servants whose responsibilities are to promote educational equity in Pre-K-16 classrooms.
It is no surprise that she could not respond to important questions regarding the department's budget. Her sheer incompetence was on display for all to see!
13
Is it racially discriminatory to punish students for violence and defiance of authority? Apparently, at least that's what the left says. The result, as seen for example in the St. Paul, Minn. schools, is an explosion of violence and the collapse of the order necessary for teachers to teach and students to learn. Who pays the price for this? Not rich, white kids in affluent suburban or private schools. Rather, it's the poor minority kids who want to learn, but who are stuck in classrooms where the teachers hide under their desks, and the bullies and sociopaths are free to to roam.
Let's hope that Ms. DeVos has the courage to repeal the Obama-era regulations that prohibit schools from disciplining misbehaving minority students.
2
The issue is not doing something about violence in schools. The issue is how to work with students of diverse backgrounds in schools. There are alternatives, including restorative justice and meeting the needs of students who have existing difficulties in learning and behavior. Routinely arresting students who need help, not a criminal record, is not a way to deal with these problems. I speak as a former teacher in diverse communities, including at the high school level.
5
I wouldn't trust DeVos to think of what's best for my child and his education. By extension, I don't trust her to do what's best for anyone in America. She is not motivated to empower; instead, she is motivated by self-serving policies, serving, if not herself and her family, friends of hers who benefit from inequality and government money going to pad their own (already stuffed) pockets.
Prejudice and privilege (by being born into money and being white in America) are blindingly paired and very common amongst those who serve this current GOP run government.
VOTE GOPers OUT IN NOVEMBER. HIT THE EJECT BUTTON(S)!
12
Devos is a chaos tool, her statements and disregard have us all watching her while the men behind the curtain dismantle and destroy protection that has been fought hard to create. Ignore her and watch the education department, if that what they call themselves.
4
Betsy DeVos is unfit to even initiate a conversation on what the students really need. The fact that she is proposing a cut to an already failing budget further proves the point that she is merely another marionette in this quizzical presidency.
7
I am a retired teacher. I was also a juvenile probation officer and ran a rehabilitation center that used the marine environment to change delinquent behavior.
I can say after more than forty years of working with students and juveniles from every stratum in society that Betsy DeVos is what the educational system needs and has needed for a long time.
When I first started teaching I loved it. When Obama came to the presidency they changed the disciplinary rules. Under Eric Holder, criminal behavior was to be handled in the principal's office and no minorities were to be suspended or expelled. The states had to along if they wanted to keep their federal funding.
It seemed as though I went from being a teacher to a policeman in no short order, and by the time I left, I had become a zookeeper. No discipline, no education.
In any event, charter schools "water the flowers" while public schools "water the weeds". AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE AMOUNT OF MONEY.
Teachers left alone without the bureaucracy breathing down their necks do a pretty good job. But that is not how it is. Starting at the top incompetent leaders and bureaucrats have ruined the teaching environment.
Charter schools return us to parent involvement, discipline, and courses that lead to a rich life and with skills to operate withing that life.
I'm afraid neither money nor union are going to get the education system out of the hole it finds itself in.
Go DeVos !!!
4
I'm amazed that a populous, wealthy, and educated nation like the United States can give such important positions to such intellectually vapid people.
14
How did this article go from reporting on DeVos and Congress to collective bargaining between the American Federation of Government Employees and the U.S. Department of Education? This reads like two separate articles smashed together with no transition. At the very least, the name of the labor union should be give.
6
Incompetent and unqualified. Proof positive that the inherited-wealth billionaires worshiped by Republicans are often far less knowledgeable or talented than the average American.
11
I don't think she has her head in the sand; I think she is culpably, comfortably, unprofessionally, and corruptly ignorant, just like her boss.
14
Obviously, this fool and these other fools in the Trump administration do not realize that the Budget Shops in the Agencies are who prepare the budgets for the Appropriation Committees. It is a relationship that it nurtured for years and years. The Career folks in the Agencies are who make the Congress look good. Congress does not have big enough offices to do this.
2
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 is endangered as a piece of U.S. code. And De Vos is spearheading its abolition, paving the way for its removal in the educational bureaucracy. Better watch out not to make her mad or she'll have her brother, whose XE Corporation is the world's largest and richest vendor of mercenaries, sic his goons on you!
5
This is an important article for all to read and yet it wasn't a headline, rather it was a sub-title under an article about Ben Carson's dining room set??? Come on NYT, the important issues must be given their due, and this travesty is of major importance.
12
Betsy DeVos has a single talent: lying.
8
Barbara Lee speaks for me
2
Willfully, obscenely ignorant. The perfect choice for " education ".
Thanks, GOP/NRA Party. November.
7
DeVos is pushing to destroy the US public educational institutions by making the public PAY for their own destruction. The dirty little secret to her cutting back on the Education Dept. and pushing for vouchers is this:
She wants public funds to be attached to children in the form of how much, on average, the educational system spends per child in the system. If the child leaves the public school system and go private or chartered, the money goes with that child. For instance, if it costs $5000 per student in a certain school system, the $5000, in the form of a voucher, will go with that student should that student leave the public school system.
The REAL problem with this is that there are NO checks and balances. The private and/or chartered sector are not held accountable for the success of that child. If the child becomes an issue in any way, the private/charter schools can send that child back to the public schools WITHOUT THE $5000 that goes with that child.
In other words, DeVos is trying to create a system that has the Dracula effect: She is sucking the funds from public education and slowly leaving it to die under UNDERFUNDING, AND CHILDREN WHO ARE NOT THE DESIRED STUDENTS in the private/chartered sector....i.e: Black and Brown skinned children.
4
So,a child leaves the public school with his $5,000 voucher. His former class which had 25 kids now has 24. But the school district still must pay that teacher the same salary, still must pay for the heat, air-conditioning, maintenance and cleaning of that classroom, and every other expense for that same class, only now they have $5,000 less in funding. When enough kids in the school leave, the only way to keep the rest of the classes going is to cut the arts, after-school programs, supplies, equipment, guidance counselors or social workers, or collapse four classes into three raising class size and laying off one teacher, etc.
Vouchers steal funds needed for public education. And there is little to no oversight of many of these charter and religious schools that accept vouchers.
7
She doesn't have the qualifications and he is too dumb to know it.
3
The war on public education in the United States is only in part economically driven by those, like De Vos, who make money off the charter school industry. An examination of the ideological and "faith"-driven roots of many of these charter schools goes even further in explaining the assault on public education.
While the challenges and failures besetting public education are pointed to as justification for these attacks from the right, those are not the real reason. It's the role public education has played in the American experience. For most Americans the public school has been the primary agent through which he or she learns and assimilates traditional American values. Values such as open and free inquiry, equality of opportunity, educational and otherwise; respect for and tolerance of human differences; open, unhindered inquiry, free from dogmatic restraints; evidence-based science in addressing both the social and natural environment; secularism in the sense of a separation of church and state, and an open society.
All this explains why the ideologues of the political right slur public education as "government schools." As important as money is to De Vos and other detractors of public education, ideology seems an even stronger motive.
24
Her head is not in the sand and she does not need to be schooled.
She knows exactly what she is doing.
She is acting according to her priorities, which is to starve public schools of funding to promote charter schools, where she can make a profit.
If minority students, poor students, and educators suffer - so much the better.
Her constituency cares for none of the above.
And she does not care.
An educated population is a danger to those who cannot withstand questioning.
She must be removed - she actively working to dismantle public education to the detriment of the the public good.
42
Brava!!
7
Much as we need to see Trump's tax returns, we also need to see Betsy DeVos' record of investments and financial interests in private, for-profit education and loan companies that will benefit greatly from her proposals. That the public does not know what financial and personal benefits that DeVos will accrue from her time in government is an act of bad faith on her part. The only way forward is through full, open transparency on the part of Trump and his cabinet hires..
57
I wonder too if the budget includes buying cleaning supplies from her family's pyramid company Amway and having school security provided by her murderous mercenary brother Eric Prince's company of hired killers. She pretty much stated on camera that she felt the position should be hers after she donated so much $ to the GOP....a clear of example of her attitude of I bought my position, you owe this to me for my support....so twisted and so corrupt. She is a dangerous person who is a threat to our kids and to the future of this country. No/low ed = 3rd world economy...not the American Dream.
3
DeVos appears to be trying to dismantle public education in America to benefit entrepreneurs and the private sector and parochial religious schools. I know, we all know, that not all public schools are doing a good job, but taking away support and money from public education and giving it to often questionable charter schools is not the answer. It seems that DeVos and much of her staff have little understanding of not only issues impacting minority students, but students in general. She is a disaster as even many Republicans are finding.
53
The woman is a fundamentalist Christian. No matter the legislation, it is fundamentalist Christian schools she wants to fund.
"Charter Schools" is a conman's term of art.
4
If our public school system sends so many students on to receive bachelor degrees that said degrees now have a value equivalent to that of a High School degree from the Fifties... meaning that there is now such a glut of these degrees in the market place that they are almost worthless... how can our public school system be considered inefficient? This mendacious Republican White female billionaire simply wants to support schools that discourage diversity and punish schools that support it. Let's not forget about all the damage she did to the schools in her own home state. She doesn't care about education, she cares about pursuing a business plan to make her rich White collaborators even richer.
40
I think we should look to Parkland Florida for our education model. I have been amazed at the intelligence, articulation, and confidence those students are displaying. Maybe we should take money away from private schools and work to have all schools funded and following whatever method of teaching their schools are using.
74
Why do we give any money to private & religious schools? All taxpayer $ should go to public schools...if you choose a private/religious school then pay for it....as it always was in the past. I did, but I never griped about paying for public schools, I want to live in a country where everyone is well educated, it makes for a better country.....who wants to live in a country of illiterates who have no critical thinking skills? The students in Florida are impressive examples of what great public schools can do...I am SO impressed by these teens.....their generation is the face of the very real changes that are happening. Bravo! The future belongs to them.
6
they are reciting talking points not that hard to do and american teens excel at confidence but not much else
1
Privatization always benefits those who own the business, and never the consumers. Such schemes only maintain and increase social inequalities, and unless they charge a hefty fee they will not be able to attract the best and brightest teachers. DeVos doesn't care about students, she only cares about cashing in on what is essentially a money-making venture for her already wealthy cronies. I wonder how much DT will invest in such schools, after all he already scammed thousands of students out of an education so this is familiar territory for him.
68
Public schools are an institution of democracy. As imperfect as they may be, that is their aspiration: to educate all members of society regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, or socio-economics. Clearly, not what this administration, much less DeVos, believes in.
As a 30 year veteran of the public schools I say, "How dare you."
109
Why aren't members of Congress vocally demanding that she prioritize repairing the public school system over expanding private and charter schools which are PRIVATE and therefore undeserving of tax dollars? Why aren't they publicly confronting her with the disastrous results of charter schools in Michigan and declaring she has no right to spread that disaster to other states with federal dollars? Where is the vocal public school pushback?
It was a well-funded PUBLIC school system including robust federal funding of public university scientific research that created the Space and Information Ages, the era that Trump supporters believe was when America was "great". You want to make America great again? Return to taxing the wealthy and corporations fairly to repair and fund public school infrastructure. Declare this truth now, loudly and repeatedly!
And vote STRATEGICALLY in November for the best progressive results we can realistically achieve, not for ideological purity!
90
Watching Betsy DeVos in interviews it's hard to tell if she lacks intelligence of her own incompetence or is simply malevolent, calmly pushing through an agenda in her own image. More likely, though, she has always lived in an elite bubble and never looked outside. She seems remarkably incurious for the top educator.
125
Except she's not a top educator--she's never spent a day in her life teaching students.
5
"In the sand" is not an accurate description where her head is.
112
Mr. Henry!
24
Betsy DeVos and her brother, Erik Prince, have no regard for the public sector, transparency, or anything that entails honest service. That they are allocated public dollars to enact their will is disgraceful.
95
Shouldn't the Secretary of Education believe in public schools? Because it's clear that Betsy DeVos is on a mission to destroy the concept of public education.
136
Luckily, education is mostly a local issue, which should please states' rights GOP fanatics, so she probably won't accomplish her fatuous intentions.
2
DeVos: ignorant, imperious and insensitive--a trifecta!
68
The white House really should ask Devos to resign. She is no more qualified to act as Secretary of Education than a rock on the ground. As a former teacher, I find what she has to offer the nation nothing more than a piece of s on a stick. She believes in charter schools. However, she does not visit failing public schools to see what can be done to make them work much better. As a retired teacher, I can easily tell here there are many ways to make our public schools much better. One of the first ways is to begin paying teachers what they are really worth. Perhaps the good ones will stay in the classrooms and actually teach the students what they need to learn.
111