CURMUDGUCATION: Meanwhile...

CURMUDGUCATION: Meanwhile...:

Meanwhile...

It has been one of those days. Not bad, but about sixteen hours long, and so I have followed the DeVos hearing via occasional peeks at Twitter, and I'll catch up over the hours ahead in short burst so that my blood pressure does not shoot the nails off the ends of my fingers.

But I will confess that as strongly as I believe we should tell our senators repeatedly and loudly about Betsy's severe, extreme, total lack of qualifications for the post, and as strongly as I believe that we should fight her appointment to the office, I also believe that at some point, maybe after the political theater is over or maybe after her ethics paperwork has finally cleared or maybe once the senate thinks we're not paying such close attention-- at some point, Betsy DeVos will become our new Secretary of Education. And we will fight and stomp and kick about her policies and choices and attempts to trash US public education as we did with her predecessors. 

But meanwhile....

Meanwhile, there are other issues to pay attention to, other tables at which education debates are still raging, other threats to the future of this bedrock democratic institution.

Charter Baloney

There are places in this country where no federal intervention is needed to help charter schools make a hash out of the education system. Michigan has the DeVos family, but Ohio and Florida are also a miserable wild west mess of charterdom, and North Carolina aspires to be just as ineffective and wasteful. Jeanne Allen of the charter-loving Center for Education Reform says that over thirty states have charter-friendly folks in charge. And even if you aren't one of those states, I'll bet you CURMUDGUCATION: Meanwhile...: