Maybe Betsy DeVos was a Good Thing
By Thomas Ultican 10/17/2019
It is clear that President Trump selected a billionaire enemy of public education to be in charge of schools. However, Betsy DeVos is so easy to dislike and has shined such a big light on the destroy-public-education (DPE) movement that Democrats are fleeing the school choice agenda. If Hillary Clinton had become President, her policies may have permanently damage universal free public education. When WikiLeaks leaked John Podesta’s emails, Hillary Clinton’s campaign Policy Book and its K-12 public education policy recommendations were made public. Those recommendations were aligned with the DPE playbook supported by neoliberals.
Group Thinks’ Historical Background
In the last two decades of the 20th century, there was a general consensus reached by governing elites that America’s public education system was in dire straits and needed reform. The impetus for this goes back to the Reagan era’s “A Nation at Risk”. It masqueraded as a research paper, but was actually a polemic based on faulty understanding and a misreading of data. In 1991, researchers at the Sandia Laboratory in New Mexico debunked the main points of “A Nation at Risk,” but their report was barely noticed. A growing consensus based on a century old illusion had developed among policy wonks, politicians and leaders in education philanthropy. They all accepted beltway common knowledge and agreed on a broad outline of what needed to be done to confront the “undeniable failure” of public education:
- Institute standards
- Use testing to hold schools accountable
- Apply business based leadership
- Create alternate pathways for teacher certification
- Develop competition
- Provide school choice
- Marginalize teachers unions
- End the federalist system of school governance (i.e. locally elected school boards)
In 1985, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was CONTINUE READING: Maybe Betsy DeVos was a Good Thing | tultican
