Posted on 12/28/2016 4:35:02 AM PST by Kaslin
America's socialists -- I mean, progressives, are enraged that President-elect Trump chose Betsy DeVos to be his secretary of education.
"Not a good appointment," yelled Al Sharpton.
A "proponent of a for-profit institution! She does not believe in the public school system!" complained CNN's Bakari Sellers.
Wait. Is your for-profit local supermarket less "public" than your kid's school? No! For-profit institutions serve the public and usually do it better than governments do.
Let's stop calling government schools "public." Call them what they are: "government-run" schools.
Anyway, the charter schools DeVos supports are public. They're just not controlled by the usual crowd of education bureaucrats. That's why the education establishment hates them. The establishment has had total control for a century and doesn't want to lose it.
They complain that DeVos:
--Doesn't have a degree in education!
--Has no teaching experience!
--Didn't attend government schools!
--Didn't send her kids to "public" school!
But that was also true about Arne Duncan, President Obama's education secretary. We didn't hear the same complaints about Duncan. Perhaps avoiding government-run education helps people become successful.
For 50 years, the education establishment said that government schools struggled because they didn't have enough money. So America tripled spending per student.
That brought zero improvement. Again, today, they say, "Just give us more time, more money!"
No. Time is up. Children have suffered enough.
My consumer reporting taught me that things only work well when they are subject to market competition. Services improve when people are free to shop around and when competitive pressure inspires suppliers to invent better ways of doing things.
DeVos understands that. That's why she wants to allow parents to choose the schools their kids attend. Schools that do a better job will attract more students. Better schools will grow, while some inferior ones will close.
Inferior schools, like any failing business, should close. It's a disservice to students to keep them open.
Educrats and teachers unions refuse to look at it that way. They don't want kids escaping their grasp. Unions don't want to lose dues-paying members.
They prefer that kids stay trapped while bureaucrats decide what improvements, if any, need to be made.
Progressives are also upset because DeVos gave $200 million of her own money to the "wrong" schools, Christian schools.
A smear in the New Yorker suggests that DeVos will have government-run schools teach creationism: "DeVos is a fundamentalist Christian with a long history of opposition to science ... (S)he could shape science education decisively for the worse, by systematically depriving young people, in an era where biotechnology will play a key economic and health role worldwide, of a proper understanding of the very basis of modern biology: evolution."
That would be bad -- were it true, but DeVos' critics don't quote anything she says that shows "opposition to science." DeVos once told me that in a free society that shares her philosophy of education, "some religious schools might teach creationism, but not in science class."
Reason's J.D. Tuccille points out that DeVos "was instrumental in enacting Michigan's and Detroit's charter school program." Progressives say this was "tragic for Michigan's children ... Detroit's charter schools have shown themselves to be only incrementally stronger ... than traditional public schools."
Hello? Stronger is better, even if the difference is just "incremental." A Stanford study concluded that charter students achieved "two months of additional gains in reading and math."
That suggests DeVos has already done more to improve American education than most government education bureaucrats have.
DeVos won't have much power over your kids' schools. K-12 education is mostly locally and state run. In fact, the wasteful $90 billion education department should be abolished altogether. But DeVos' appointment sends the right message.
It tells educators they should face pressure to get up each morning looking for ways to improve education. That won't happen unless parents are free to experiment and escape experiments that fail.
I wouldn't want to be trapped in a bad restaurant while government debated how to improve it.
Everyone deserves the freedom to get out of there and try something better.
A+
More proof that Betsy DeVos is not only a good choice for this position, she is an excellent choice.
“America’s socialists — I mean, progressives...”
America’s Most Wanted criminals roam free as the damage continues...
Socialism Is Legal Plunder - Bastiat
This is total BS! DeVos has the ire of many education activists in both parties in her own state. She was a big fan of CC and this cannot be understated.Her connections to Jeb Bush are here : https://dianeravitch.net/2016/12/16/has-trump-outsourced-the-department-of-education-to-jeb-bush/
On top of that they are pushing School Choice and that will “privatize” public schools after they were set up to fail. (Research NCLB & ESSA)...this in turn will help the globalists neo-Marxists sell the takeover by the “privateers” (corporate fascism). Take a look at charters in New Orleans or the Gulenists chain of charters in Texas Harmony for example. Can you open records these schools? Yesterday I was checking out the CHARTER SCHOOL YESS in Houston. It targets minority anchor baby neighborhoods and is very “student-centered” and “individualized” (computer-run classrooms with Pavlov technique) . Check out their activities in the CONSTITUTIONAL LAW class LOL!- http://www.theanswerisyes.org/2016/12/14/student-created-lesson-inspires-authentic-political-activism/
The “choice” will end up being the middle finger when tax-payers realize they lost their rights to elect the school boards (representative governance) and they can’t even use open records to see what the hell is going on...
If you don’t believe me read Michelle Malkin on this topic.
People don’t know that “public School” was not the only option in our country when it first began.
and then two more green totalitarians after that. I blocked all three. This was after responding on a charter school stream. Charters will be drenched with Communist Core. It is going nowhere unless they overturn the laws that lead into this big big mess.
Since I realized all the propaganda and brainwashing in government schools, back when my daughter was in high school and I started doing a lot of reading on the subject, I have always called them “government schools”. I think words are important.
Besides, the word “public” is a muddy-the-water term. Sometimes it means government-owned, such as public park or public library, and sometimes it refers to private property, like a public shopping mall. People will say that a store or an amusement park is a public place, as in “the public goes there”. This confusion of terminology, common but misleading usage, persuades people to accept regulations and infringements on private property open to the public which they might reconsider if the distinction between public and private were
The distinction between public (government) property and private property is important. We should be clear in our terminology because it helps us and our listeners be clear in evaluating boundaries between regulation and liberty.
Now that she says she has changed her mind on common core? Is she still on Jeb’s board?
Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle puts it thus..."if a foreign power had imposed the public education system on the United States, it would be considered an act of war".
And it WAS an act of war....the culture war of socialism vs. freedom.
The truth of the matter is that with the availability of the internet, no child actually needs to go to a physical school. The left realizes this, so they tout the need for "socialization".
A Powerful Endorsement Of Trump Making An Excellent Choice:
“Not a good appointment,” yelled Al Sharpton.
Good post. Private businesses should be able to hire and fire whoever they want, and serve or refuse service to whoever they want. The free market will decide the winners. Government owned and run services that have no private competition are different.
Believing in public schools is like believing in a fairy tale. On what evidence would one BELIEVE in public schools? Americans understand that for profit is the only way to go for everything but K12. Why is that the exception?
Thanks for the heads-up. I hadn’t realized this.
Government schools get no right to choose whom they educate, Private schools do.
Education will not improve until parents send better behaved kids to school. Most people never consider that juvenile offenders are usually required to attend public school as a condition of parole/deferred sentence. That includes murderers.
A real concern is of course that the Charter schools will siphon off the cream of the crop and leave the dregs in public school.
If you had read my entire comment I said that government services don’t have the right to discriminate. I agree that the parents have a lot of blame, but that’s another problem.
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