‘Good riddance’ and other reactions to resignation of Education Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

‘Good riddance’ and other reactions to resignation of Education Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

‘Good riddance’ and other reactions to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s resignation

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has turned in her resignation, effective Friday, and after four years of her highly controversial tenure, the reaction is coming in thick and fast.

DeVos, a Michigan billionaire who called public schools a “dead end” before she became education secretary in 2017, was a hero to conservatives who wanted to expand charter schools, school vouchers and other alternatives to traditional school districts.

Critics saw her as a longtime leader of the movement to privatize education who got the job despite having no experience as a teacher or even a public school student — and her departure is delighting them. For example, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers union in the country, had two words for her: “Good riddance.”

DeVos and Weingarten had a mutually critical relationship: Weingarten accused DeVos of undermining public education and DeVos accused the teachers unions of wanting to maintain “the status quo” and caring only about their members.

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the country, was equally direct, tweeting: “Her complicity, cowardice, and complete incompetence will be her legacy.”

Betsy DeVos resigns as Education secretary, citing Trump’s role in riot

DeVos also antagonized teachers, Democratic legislators, parents and others with her policies. Some critics slammed her on social media for resigning now after spending four years standing by President Trump no matter how damaging his policies were to children.

Even some who supported her school-choice policies did not do much to praise her tenure Thursday night in their social media reactions CONTINUE READING: ‘Good riddance’ and other reactions to resignation of Education Betsy DeVos - The Washington Post

Mitchell Robinson: Betsy DeVos Resigns | Eclectablog

Betsy DeVos Resigns | Eclectablog

Betsy DeVos Resigns

I wish I could find more satisfaction in something I’ve hoped would happen for 4 years.

But as usual, Ms. DeVos did the absolute least she could do (resign), well past the time when it could have made a difference (with 13 days left in her lamest of all duck terms), and is probably only doing it to avoid doing something she doesn’t want to do (invoke the 25th Amendment).

DeVos resigned, allegedly, because her boss’ insurrection attempt was an “inflection point” she simply couldn’t ignore.

• Not gutting regulations intended to protect students, many of whom are veterans, minorities, and first-generation college attendees, from being defrauded by predatory schools and colleges, and putting the interests of these for-profit colleges—some of which she has personal financial interests in—ahead of students. She ignored that.
• Not dismissing civil rights complaints and ripping up guidance that urged public schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms that conform to their gender identity. She ignored that.
• Not rolling back sexual assault policies on college campuses, establishing a higher bar for victims reporting complaints, and forcing survivors to be cross-examined by their attackers in CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos Resigns | Eclectablog

Teacher Tom: Unstructured Play Outdoors Should Be the Foundation of Childhood

Teacher Tom: Unstructured Play Outdoors Should Be the Foundation of Childhood

Unstructured Play Outdoors Should Be the Foundation of Childhood

The central purpose of every human community that has ever existed is to care for children. As I wrote previously, the only question is "How?" Generally speaking, modern society has answered that question in a way that gives children a raw deal. While it's certainly true that we're good at keeping them alive by historic standards, the rate of diagnosable childhood mental illnesses is increasing at an alarming rate, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that as many of 20 percent of American children have been diagnosed with behavior problems, anxiety, depression or some other mental disorder.

This should concern us. It should make us step back and seriously examine how we are answering the foundational question of our society. Certainly, if we wanted to, we could do a better job of caring for children. Many individuals, including many of the readers of this blog, have done just that. I know that among the people reading this post there are thousands of homeschoolers and unschoolers, CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: Unstructured Play Outdoors Should Be the Foundation of Childhood

2021 Medley #1: Bye, Bye Betsy and other stories | Live Long and Prosper

2021 Medley #1: Bye, Bye Betsy and other stories | Live Long and Prosper

BYE, BYE BETSY

Betsy DeVos Resigns

I was ready to publish the rest of the articles in this post on Wednesday, but I got sidetracked by the horrible events in Washington D.C. Since then I have paused, while I figured out what I wanted to say. Then, last night, Betsy DeVos resigned…

I am against nearly everything DeVos has done during her term as Secretary. She has pushed her agenda of privatization and has rejected pleas to support students overwhelmed by debt. She has ignored racist education policies and neglected the students who need the most help. She hates public education and public educators. I doubt that she cares much for public school students, either. She was never qualified for her job. She never attended a public school. She never worked in a public school. She never sent her children to a public school. She’s an elitist billionaire who cares only about what she can control with her money.

I’m sure she will now return to private life and continue to wreak havoc on public education by buying legislators and using her billions to support private, religious education.

There are a lot of articles discussing DeVos’s resignation — the nation’s worst Secretary of Education appointed by the worst President. Mitchell Robinson CONTINUE READING: 2021 Medley #1: Bye, Bye Betsy and other stories | Live Long and Prosper

New Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona, Should Not Require Annual Standardized Testing in This COVID-19 School Year | janresseger

New Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona, Should Not Require Annual Standardized Testing in This COVID-19 School Year | janresseger

New Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona, Should Not Require Annual Standardized Testing in This COVID-19 School Year

Last weekend, the NY Times editorialized to demand that President Elect Joe Biden’s new Secretary of Education promptly “clear the wreckage” from Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education. The newspaper is correct to criticize Betsy DeVos’s abandonment of the department’s mission of protecting the civil rights of America’s public school students. And the editorial writers deserve praise for condemning DeVos’s dogged support for for-profit colleges and trade schools at the expense of indebted student borrowers.

But pretty quickly the Times editorial board steps into the old trap of endorsing federally mandated high stakes standardized testing and the collection of big data at the expense of the children and teachers who are struggling to make it through this school year being shunted back and forth from on-line schooling to in-person school and then back on-line as the COVID-19 numbers rise and fall. The editorial board has slipped into the No Child Left Behind mindset that values data over the lived experience of students and teachers:

“Mr. Cardona would need to pay close attention to how districts plan to deal with learning loss that many children will suffer while the schools are closed. Fall testing data analyzed by the nonprofit research organization NWEA suggests that setbacks have been less severe than were feared with students showing continued academic progress in reading and only modest setbacks in math. However, given a shortage of testing data for Black, Hispanic and poor children, it could well be that these groups have fared worse in the pandemic than their white CONTINUE READING: New Education Secretary, Dr. Miguel Cardona, Should Not Require Annual Standardized Testing in This COVID-19 School Year | janresseger

Americans’ Secular Faith in Schooling (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Americans’ Secular Faith in Schooling (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Americans’ Secular Faith in Schooling (Part 3)

With Part 3, readers have now seen most of the draft Introduction to my next book. Comments welcomed. For those readers wanting citations, please contact me.

Perverse outcomes of school reforms

Consider the massive effort by civil rights reformers to desegregate schools between the 1960s and 1980s following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown decision (1954).

Where students went to school in the U.S. depended upon where families lived.  In most cities and suburbs neighborhood were segregated producing schools that were nearly all-white, Black or Latino. Activists used both direct action such as boycotts and marches and legal strategies to get urban and suburban districts to desegregate through busing, building schools that straddled city and county attendance boundaries, and taking school boards to federal court for maintaining segregated schools—strategies that civil rights reformers believed would bring minority and white children together to learn.

Nonetheless, each generation of reformers believed in their hearts that they could solve thorny social, political, and economic problems. They knew what had to be done and had the answers. Public schools, they held, were the chief, if not the sole, determiner of individual and national success.  Schooling was the great CONTINUE READING: Americans’ Secular Faith in Schooling (Part 3) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Betsy DeVos Resigns, Citing Trump’s Support for Insurrection | Diane Ravitch's blog

Betsy DeVos Resigns, Citing Trump’s Support for Insurrection | Diane Ravitch's blog

Betsy DeVos Resigns, Citing Trump’s Support for Insurrection

With only a few days left in Trump’s term of office, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos resigned. She says she objected to his rhetoric in inciting the insurrection of his devoted loyalists. This is certainly an anti-climax. DeVos had to clear out anyway, but by resigning now she avoids the painful decision about forcing Trump to resign by the terms of the 25th Amendment. Whether she resigns or stays is irrelevant. Whether she uses her position to force the ouster of a malevolent, incompetent president does matter. She opted out.

The Washington Post reported:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos submitted her resignation Thursday, citing the president’s role in the riot on Capitol Hill.
“There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” she wrote in a letter to President Trump. The behavior of the “violent protestors overrunning theh U.S. Capitol” was “unconscionable,” she wrote.


“Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgment and model the CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos Resigns, Citing Trump’s Support for Insurrection | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Bails Out

CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Bails Out

Betsy DeVos Bails Out

Well, she finally had enough.

DeVos blamed Trumpian rhetoric for the riots, called it an "inflection point" for her, and became one more GOP Trump-fluffer to suddenly discover her shock and outrage for exactly the same kind of shit that he's been doing for four years. I mean, there's something deeply disingenuous about watching someone throw gasoline and matches around for four years and only getting all pearl clutchy and knicker twisty when the completely predictable fire actually starts.  

She also said "Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgement and model the behavior we hope they would emulate." Which is as true today as it was when President Pussy-grabber talked about shithole countries and very fine people on both sides. It's an odd time to suddenly grow scruples. But at this point, I guess the wounded lame duck can't really do anything for her. The full letter can be read here. It actually starts with another rehearsal of her "accomplishments" as ed secretary.

She helped build this. She stroked his ego, gave him credit for having a hand in education policies when he mostly ignored the department. She is just one of the many enablers who taught him that he need not consider the consequences of his actions, words, behavior, ever. Walking away now with a sudden attack of ethical whirlies doesn't change the work she's done over years to build up this circus.

When you make a deal with the devil, sooner or later the bill comes due. DeVos signed up for this clusterfest because she smelled a chance to make her policies everybody's policies. Is  she now CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Betsy DeVos Bails Out

What I Told My Students About Yesterday’s Attempted Trump Coup | gadflyonthewallblog

What I Told My Students About Yesterday’s Attempted Trump Coup | gadflyonthewallblog

What I Told My Students About Yesterday’s Attempted Trump Coup

The moment I had been dreading happened.

Student names started popping up on my screen waiting to be admitted into this morning’s first Zoom meeting.

What was I going to say to them?

Yesterday in Washington, DC, thousands of Trump supporters charged into the Capitol Building at his urging in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying his Presidential defeat.

What would I tell my middle schoolers?

What COULD I say?

We can’t offer you equitable resources. We can’t stop judging you with biased standardized tests. We can’t desegregate your schools. We can’t protect you from gun violence. We can’t even give you in-person classes because of a global pandemic CONTINUE READING: What I Told My Students About Yesterday’s Attempted Trump Coup | gadflyonthewallblog

NYC Educator: The Chancellor Responds to Current Events

NYC Educator: The Chancellor Responds to Current Events

The Chancellor Responds to Current Events

 Dear Colleagues,
 
Like so many other days in the past ten months, yesterday we experienced an alarming and frightening moment that was unprecedented in our lifetimes. And l have to tell you, I was relieved to see the breach of the U.S Capitol, I was absolutely certain that something like this would make you think about something other than my forcing you to work in the worst epidemic any of us have ever seen.  I am hopeful that such incidents redirect your sadness and anger. I’m tired of reading nasty crap you guys say and write about me. I’m just doing my job, man. 

I was equally disturbed by what I saw as the response of law enforcement, who apparently allowed the entry and later the peaceful dispersing of these violent rioters. If I drive you guys to strike, it won’t look like that at all. I’ll ask the police to drive vans right through the lot of you. There will be rockets red glare and carnage ahoy. The city cops endorsed Trump, you know.

My heart breaks to know that our young people have witnessed this violent assault on people, property, the rule of law, and on our democracy itself—If we do it here in New York, we’ll endeavor to cover it up much better than they did in DC. The best response at this time, as I see it, is to open all the school buildings, give a lot of CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: The Chancellor Responds to Current Events

Education Matters: Greene just doesn't get it.

Education Matters: Greene just doesn't get it.

Greene just doesn't get it

Greene just doesn't get it, and please don't take my word for it. Take hers.

Greene penned yet another letter to the staff, and in it, she points out how completely tone-deaf she is. 

Bold is my commentary.

Team Duval,

As we begin this new year, I am once again calling on you to be the voice of calm and the hand of stability during uncertain times.  Our students are certain to be affected by the events in Washington, D.C. earlier today.  Um, what about the pandemic every day? What about the learning environment set up by the district that isn't super conducive to learning? What about the risks everyday staff and students are required to endure? Yesterday was stressful, but so has every day since the election. This smacks of she saw something on-line and said, hmm I will send out a note.

 

I know that much has been asked of you already this year.  You think? Since you know, that is the case why learning arcs, why double downing on testing? Why, when many of us are just trying to survive, are you adding to our plates? I also understand that many of you are deeply CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: Greene just doesn't get it.

Cuomo’s Dishonest Math | JD2718

Cuomo’s Dishonest Math | JD2718

Cuomo’s Dishonest Math

Pitcher is getting shelled. “When you going to take him out?!?!” scream the fans. The manager says “when they have more hits than at bats” Huh? He just said he’s never taking the pitcher out. Idiot. And dishonest. Hits are never more than at bats. Why not just say what he means?

Repression’s getting bad in a far off country. People ask an NGO when they are getting added to a watch list. “When the number arrested is greater than the population” They just said they’re never adding the country. The number arrested can’t be more than the total population.Idiots. And dishonest.

A kid seems to be in the wrong level of a class. He is doing poorly on every assignment, every test. “We should move him back a level” – but the AP answers “we can move him if he gets more questions wrong than there are questions on the test.” She just said that she’s never moving the kid. The number wrong can never exceed the total number of questions. Idiot. Dishonest.

COVID is going up in NYC. When will they close schools. Cuomo says “when the rate in school is higher CONTINUE READING: Cuomo’s Dishonest Math | JD2718

NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY #BLM #BLACKLIVESMATTER

NewBlackMan (in Exile)

NewBlackMan (in Exile) TODAY

Big Education Ape: THIS WEEK WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE) - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2021/01/this-week-with-newblackman-in-exile-blm.html

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NewBlackMan (in Exile)