Monday, March 12, 2018

Betsy DeVos’s stumbling ‘60 Minutes’ interview, annotated - WAPO

Betsy DeVos’s stumbling ‘60 Minutes’ interview, annotated - YouTube:

Why it was so easy for ‘60 Minutes’ to rebut Betsy DeVos’s charter-school arguments

Betsy DeVos was picked to run the Education Department largely to continue the work she had embraced through her philanthropic work: advocating an expansion of charter schools. Hers was the most controversial Cabinet nomination by President Trump, requiring Vice President Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote confirming her for the position. That controversy had many causes, but a significant one was that many in the education community were concerned about turning over the department to someone who advocated transferring scarce public funding to what amounted to educational experiments.
Which is to say that DeVos should, by now, be very aware that her advocacy of charter schools is contentious, to understate it a bit. Meaning, by extension, that when being interviewed by one of the most established television news programs in the country, she should be able to defend her position.
Yet when interviewed by “60 Minutes” for a program that aired on Sunday — she wasn’t.








Betsy DeVos struggles to provide answers to '60 Minutes' when asked for evidence to support school choice policies. http://bit.ly/2tJjstd 
“In places where there is a lot of choice that’s been introduced,” DeVos told CBS’s Lesley Stahl, “Florida, for example, studies show that when there’s a large number of students that opt to go to a different school or different schools, the traditional public schools actually, the results get better as well.” Continue Reading: Why it was so easy for ‘60 Minutes’ to rebut Betsy DeVos’s charter-school arguments - The Washington Post