Russ on Reading: Heavens to Betsy (DeVos)!

Russ on Reading: Heavens to Betsy (DeVos)!:

Heavens to Betsy (DeVos)!

My paternal grandmother, Eleanor Cunningham Walsh, disdained the use of coarse language of any type. Whenever one of her many grandchildren would do something particularly boneheaded, the most virulent epithet she could muster was, "Heavens to Betsy!" When president-elect, Donald Trump, announced his choice for Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, I must admit that "Heavens to Betsy" was not the first phrase that came to my mind, but on reflection I think it is very appropriate.

DeVos is the ultimate privatizer of education. Not satisfied with using quasi-public charter schools as a way to drain resources from actual public schools, DeVos goes Full Monty on vouchers. She wants to eliminate public education entirely by giving every child a government check to go find the private school or religious school of choice. It is, of course, "the civil rights issue of our time." I have cataloged the danger and false promises of vouchers in this post from a few years ago. It is important to note that the heavily education reform-minded Obama administration rejected vouchers as a solution because it drained public dollars from public schools that were already strapped for resources and because vouchers did not work.

The idiocy and danger of this appointment has been well documented by other bloggers. If you have not done so all ready, I suggest you read the posts of the always on target Peter Greene here and here and here, Jersey Jazzman's analysis of Devos' husband's charter school fiasco here, and Michigan State University professor, Mitchell Robinson's account from Russ on Reading: Heavens to Betsy (DeVos)!: