Posted on 11/23/2016 2:32:32 PM PST by BlackFemaleArmyColonel
Q+A
Q: What are 5 things we might not know about you?
I’m a grandmother! My husband (Dick) and I have four children and five grandchildren.
I was born and raised in Michigan. Born in Holland, MI, I’ve been a lifelong resident of Michigan.
I’m an advocate for children. I’ve been involved with education issues for 28 years. I’ve been on the front lines fighting to make education better for all children.
I’m an activist. I’m a total outsider to elective office and government, but I’m no stranger to the political process. A citizen volunteer, I have served in local, state, and national offices.
I’m an entrepreneur. I have started new and innovative companies that help make our community better.
Q: There’s been a lot of talk about Common Core. Can you provide some straight talk on this topic?
Certainly. I am not a supporter—period.
I do support high standards, strong accountability, and local control. When Governors such as John Engler, Mike Huckabee, and Mike Pence were driving the conversation on voluntary high standards driven by local voices, it all made sense.
Have organizations that I have been a part of supported Common Core? Of course. But that’s not my position. Sometimes it’s not just students who need to do their homework.
However, along the way, it got turned into a federalized boondoggle.
Above all, I believe every child, no matter their zip code or their parents’ jobs, deserves access to a quality education.
Q: What are your thoughts about specific education policies?
I am very excited to get to work and to talk about my thoughts and ideas on making American education great again. The status quo is not acceptable. I am committed to transforming our education system into the best in the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at betsydevos.com ...
Yes.
Smoke-a-troll on the hoof, for your flaming pleasure ping.
“DeVos is being dishonest.”
Maybe. Maybe not. That ISN’T the only explanation, and her membership on that implementation board doesn’t stand as proof, either.
It ever occur to you that maybe it’s GOOD thing to have an OPPONENT of Common Core participating in how it gets implemented? What if the only people in charge of the implementation were the dyed-in-the-wool Kool-aide swillers on the educrat left? Seeing as that freight train was coming on with no Legislature willing to stop it, what better option was there for a well-positioned opponent, but to get as hands-on as possible and work to soften the blow?
I’m not saying you’re absolutely wrong, but you might be.
And don’t forget that Common Core wasn’t supposed to end up like it did. Back in 2010 when they took the wraps off of Common Core, there was a chorus of dismay, and one quarter where that chorus was loudest was among educators who had heard it was in the works, and thought it would be TOTALLY different from what finally emerged. People in the know had high hopes that Common Core would be, truly, a POSITIVE thing. But the development team wrecked it thoroughly, and the hobbling quasimodo of social engineering that they produced resembled NOTHING that had been hoped for by serious educators. At that point, what were you to do if you’d been getting positioned to implement something really good, and then see it come out horrible? If it doesn’t get stopped at The State House, it’s coming to the classrooms with or without your influence. Seems to me if you’re already in position, having some influence as to how it gets implemented is better than having none.
So, I’m not ready to say DeVos is lying about her stance on Common Core, and her position on that Board could as easily be a blessing or a curse depending upon particulars. I’ll wait ‘til I learn more.
As the son of an English Teacher, I heartily agree.
bttt
The Common Core Standards include fairly reasonable lists of grade level goals.
The insanity of the enforced curricula created or revamped to interpret those lists, and the data wildly extrapolated from the results is...beyond measure.
Mate not mare. Lol.
I home schooled. my kids are stellar... ask Jim.
DeVos throws out "local control," but avoids PARENTAL control.
Betsy Devoss, I and my wife are "activists" as well, with 34 years of home schooling and teaching families in four countries (one a communist country) how to stay away from government and home school their children. Often having to instruct parents, in places where there are no libraries(!), to research and design their families' own curriculum. We've seen, not only successful education, but successful FAMILIES AND HOMES, AND DADDIES LOVING MOM AND CHILDREN.
GET GOVERNMENT OUT of the education business (and unions, too), and bring PARENTS back in.
The keyword is enforced, which is what Obama tried to do. But parents need to be able to compare schools in order to have an informed choice.
Smoke much dope?
Great that she’s doing this now - so many supposed Trump supporters getting their panties all wadded up about so many new “concerns”. No wonder we have such a history of losing.
“She’s a RINO: has pushed Common Core...”
Saying this doesn’t make it true anymore than calling Trump a carnival barker in the primaries did.
Even in public school, use of common core curriculum often has to do with the district, the principal, or the teacher (jobs which could change hands at any time, and obviously year-to-year, so no guarantees). Do private schools not use common core curriculum? I honestly just don’t know. The school choice issue and the common core debacle are two separate issues. In my experience (although I haven’t graded them in two years or so) the warped common core “logic” is not demanded on “official” (state) exams, so many public school teachers ignore the idiotic extra “strategies” anyway, and modify in-house tests accordingly. Why some are militant about demanding it, I cannot fathom. We still can fulfill the reasonable standards (which are not really all that different from the standards that used to exist!) without using the worm-ridden, convoluted, over-priced curriculum! (It is understandable why people see the standards and the curriculum as only one thing, which only confuses everything further.) It has all become (or always has been) a moneymaking scam! But the math state exams I have seen (and graded) only ask for the correct answer using any strategy, not a dictated one.
Of course there are other huge problems with state exams, such as the instability of the rubrics used year to year, (easier tests with brutal rubrics, harder tests with forgiving rubrics, and everything in between, making year-to-year comparisons and statistics about student growth invalid, etc...), poorly worded questions with poor answer choices...comparisons between states with different tests...sigh, but I digress...
The picture of a graded paper that appears earlier in this thread is probably a case of being more grade-inappropriate than a common core issue. Common core curriculum is MUCH worse than what was shown!
I am way too happy about the election to be in any way spending time doubting even one of President-elect Trump’s appointments. He’ll take care of it! I’m so grateful for the election result, and just too busy saying THANK YOU and AMEN!!!
Happy Thanksgiving to you and to all!
She has done a lot of research and makes some good points. But school choice also means opting out of anything federally funded and she seems to miss this.
What her research reaffirms is there is too much federal money in too many things and that those with their hands in the money are enabled to ‘grow’ to think they can push ‘their way’ onto everyone else.
Contrast this waste of money and energy with the home schooling of Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, and even the Wright Brothers:
http://www.notablebiographies.com/We-Z/Wright-Brothers.html
If there is one common denominator driving such people, it is in having someone of influence in the background of disciplined religious pedagogy coupled with random opportunities to ‘educate oneself’. But both those things require things to be read.
The real stuff of education is the ability to decide whether what one is reading is worth reading and to have the sense that one must ‘add’ to the self-selected readings one’s own take on it in some fashion.
So I see she’s put together a lot of bits and pieces but the takeaway for me is her drawing attention to people coming ultimately from federally funded something or other, who should have no business sucking at the federal government teat, but who make it their business to do that better than others.
But she misses honing in in just what ‘School Choice’ means which is the ‘sujet du jour’ with the President-Elect choosing ‘School Choice’ advocate Betsy DeVos.
The federal government has an interest in education but not a constitutional mandate. The problem is the teacher’s unions which are national in scope. No matter how much money these unions suck in, the results are awful and damaging, hence enter the fed gov to make things worse.
I am thankful, for now, that I can bypass all the above for my child.
(2) Fahcryinoutloud, people, everyone knew that Trump was not a conventional movement conservative, did not pass all the conventional movement conservative litmus tests, and very likely would appoint cabinet members who did not pass all the conventional movement conservative litmus tests either. The vast majority of freepers supported him despite this (and in some cases I think because of this) Who could possibly be surprised by his picks????
Many of those chosen have now been converted from Trump critics to Trump servants...and likely to be replaced at the state level by governors and Senators who possess more alignment with the PE.
Hopefully he will pick McAin and Grahamnesty for some meaningless Presidential appointment, and they too will be replaced with more conservative Senators.
Sorry, wishful thinking. Both are too in love with their current podiums to want to leave.
Ambassadors to Libya and Yemen.
I don’t want top down education in any form. I want local control.
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