Posted on 11/23/2016 4:31:54 PM PST by mdittmar
WASHINGTON—In response to President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos to lead the Department of Education, AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement:
“The president-elect, in his selection of Betsy DeVos, has chosen the most ideological, anti-public education nominee put forward since President Carter created a Cabinet-level Department of Education.
“In nominating DeVos, Trump makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America.
“DeVos has no meaningful experience in the classroom or in our schools. The sum total of her involvement has been spending her family’s wealth in an effort to dismantle public education in Michigan. Every American should be concerned that she would impose her reckless and extreme ideology on the nation.
“We have an obligation to all children in America. That’s why we’ve fought to ensure that struggling schools get fixed, that we fight for kids to have the powerful learning, the social and emotional and wraparound services, and the great teachers they need. That’s why we fight for parents to have the voice they need and communities throughout the country to have the local decision-making for their schools and the investment they need, so we do everything we can to help all children have a great public education. What this pick means is far from ensuring that every child has the option of a great public education—the many who have it now will lose it. That’s been the experience of 25 years of privatizing: It helps very few, and many students now go to schools that have faced years of austerity and disinvestment.
“Betsy DeVos is everything Donald Trump said is wrong in America—an ultra-wealthy heiress who uses her money to game the system and push a special-interest agenda that is opposed by the majority of voters. Installing her in the Department of Education is the opposite of Trump’s promise to drain the swamp.”
Ok, I had some doubts but now I’m sold.
Here's hoping the folks here who blasted her on other threads would drop in and leave comments...........
When you take flack, you’re over the target.
I know there has been a lot of speculation among FReepers about De Vos’ stand on Common Core. I don’t know enough about her to even hazard a guess.
But I do notice that Trump is currently announcing appointments to what I might term honorable but second-tier positions, e.g. Nikki Haley as UN ambassador. I guess that Haley is a sop to both the GOPe and to female supporters. De Vos may fall in the same category.
The federal Department of Education will no doubt be cut back severely — or at least that’s what we might expect.
Perhaps by the middle of Trump’s term, De Vos will be basically an administration spokesman — and cheerleader — on education matters, as control of education returns to its rightful place at the state and local level.
Who knows — maybe she will end up as a one-person department? We can only hope.
Flak = Over Target.
if this were a movie, it would be called “And Now The Whining Starts”...
I wasn’t too sure about DeVos because of her support for Common Core; but reading this makes me feel much better about her!!
As I noted earlier today, for us people that have been watching the left on education policy, Common Core was NOTHING NEW. It was all the same crap from decades back and getting rid of it will not improve anything. In fact, I think Common Core worked to our advantage as it gave us a BIG FAT TARGET to go after, rather than this amorphous ‘blob’ (as Thomas Sowell calls it) that was continuing to destroy our children.
So her (apparent) earlier support for Common Core really doesn’t matter. I would guess she was like any naive person thinking that if we can just get education policy CENTRALIZED, it can then be fixed...but, of course, we here know how risky that is, because if WE do not control the direction of that centralized system, we can get screwed even worse.
As it is, her job is to carry out Trump’s policies, and Trump isn’t the kind of person to let his people go off the rails.
I would have been concerned if the liberals in the Teacher union were in favor of DeVos......now, I feel quite comfortable with her selection!
Not really. The worldview would still be there (thanks to schools of ed, publishers, bureaucrats, and politicians). There is also the risk that government regulation would follow vouchers etc. It may help some, but the solution is removing children from gov ed. Unfortunately, too many “conservatives” are education welfare queens who love the socialist education system.
I imagine the DOE is a very big swamp.
She must be great!!!
The government education system needs to be collapsed by withdrawing our children.
The Libs ALWAYS play the class-envy card.
My children were never in it, until they start community college.
I don’t think Trump ran on that. Bob Dole was the only gop nominee who ever proposed eliminating it
Be careful about Charter Schools. They are private-public alliance with your tax dollars going to fund them with no School boards so parents have no say in how they are run or the curriculum.
Jeb Bush is one of the board members/owners of one largest Charter School companies. These could actually be worse than public schools.
NOW I feel much better:)
She’s still alive. I’m 48 and feel like i’ve been reading about her since I was a kid
No, I don't think so, either. He was better than Hillary in spite of that, though.
Great reaction. Confirms Trump made an outstanding choice.
well, I was thinking that the free market choice of different schools would cure some of that PS bureaucrappy and negative world view, bad politics, etc......
once parents start moving their kids to better schools, that is... the bad schools might get the message and actually improve, too
this is how competitive markets work, after all..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.