Discussion: DeVos: School Choice Opponents Are Akin To 'Flat-Earthers'

TPM Article Topics
42

DeVos: These flat-earthers are trying to stop us from funding schools where they teach the earth is flat.

2 Likes
43

I heard on NPR last week about Milwaukee’s School Choice program, the oldest in the country. They interviewed the director of one school who has been in the program for at least half that time and her school has not produced good outcomes for their students. Her contention is that students that she takes are so far behind their peers in math, reading and social studies that of course their test results are behind the other schools. My question would be that wouldn’t that be true if they first started in the program and why would it still be the same problem 15 years in?
Here is a link to the article that the piece was taken from. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/05/16/523612949/lessons-on-race-and-vouchers-from-milwaukee

3 Likes
44

“In order to succeed, education must commit to excellence and innovation to better meet the needs of individual students,” DeVos said. “Defenders of our current system have regularly been resistant to any meaningful change. In resisting, these ‘flat-earthers’ have chilled creativity and stopped American kids from competing at the highest levels.”

This is ‘ritch’ bich coming from you. $he who wants to do away with student loan help.

1 Like
45

Except the flat-earthers’ denied or ignored every bit of data and fact in the argument. In this case, Ms. DeVos, that’s the role you’re playing.

I do appreciate you’re fully in the swamp now, where you accuse your opponents of doing exactly what you do.

Well, she does have a relatively unique perspective of education, when it’s a 3-1 teacher-student ratio. Perhaps if her family just adopted the entire country we could all be as well educated and smart.

1 Like
46

No matter how much lipstick they slather on this pig “school choice” is just another end around segregation in schools, another method to short change schools and another method to make sure the “proper” school is fully funded.

47

Damn, DeVos is crazy stupid. All that money, and she never bothered to use any of it to get her head removed from her ass.

1 Like
48

Uhg, “school choice”? How many times are we going to use the right wing framing.
The title and the article should be using “school privatization opponents” instead of “school choice opponents”.

1 Like
49

As apposed to folks like her that are Ark-Earthers?

50

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/02/26/referring-to-economy-grant-county-ky-official-says-ark-encounter-has-not-done-us-good-at-all/

51

And school choice advocates are grifters and thieves.

1 Like
52

It’s always the rich with their hands out for taxpayer money, and they get it. Everyone else has to piss into a cup.

1 Like
53

If she really believed education shouldn’t be a partisan issue, she’d resign. Simple as that. Anything else is just projection and trolling.

1 Like
54

In related news, DeVos would personally profit over the gutting of public schools she is seeking to forcibly impose on America.

1 Like
55

Awesome!

@squirreltown: You should overlay Republicans on that graphic. Or maybe you already did.

2 Likes
56

Fully funded by taxpayers.

57

You’re right to oppose the framing. But I think just calling it “privitization” doesn’t illustrate that the goal is to take taxpayer money and give it to private for profit schools. I’m not sure what would be better framing though.

58

My wife’s step mother just took a trip to see that!

1 Like
59

“In order to succeed, education must commit to excellence and innovation to better meet the needs of individual students,” DeVos said. “Defenders of our current system have regularly been resistant to any meaningful change. In resisting, these ‘flat-earthers’ have chilled creativity and stopped American kids from competing at the highest levels.”

And we should place any value on what a known plagiarist has to say, why?

60

The dark huge secret is that the for-profit and sectarian schools will systematically exclude students that are expensive to educate.

Not a native English speaker? Too bad.

Physical disability? “Gee, we are sorry, but our building is old and our landlord [a company owned by one of the founders of the school] won’t allow the extensive modifications needed to reach the desired level of accessibility” [so go try one of the public schools that are required to provide such accommodations].

Special learning or emotional needs? “Our mission is to give every child the opportunity to reach their fullest potential, so we have a special classroom set up in the basement for your child and others like her.” Or, “gee, we are sorry, but we don’t have any staff with the necessary education or training.” Or, “gosh, our educational philosophy is that every child should be treated exactly the same.” Or, “our sincerely held belief is that such children bear demons and must be purified before enrollment, for the safety of the other children.”

2 Likes
61

Eventually Betsy DeVos will be the poster child for the value of public schools. Presumably she has had the finest education money can buy, did not grow up in poverty, was not homeless, from a singe parent household, English was the household language, etc.

I suspect if she had gone to public schools she’d be just as ignorant, but, likely the cost of her schooling would have been much less