Townhall.com
John Stossel
May 8, 2018

People hate Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

When she spoke at the Kennedy School of Government, students held up signs calling her a "white supremacist."

When she tried to visit a school, activists physically blocked her way.

The haters claim DeVos knows little about education, only got her job because she gave money to Republican politicians and hates free public education.

Of course, education isn't really "free."

Taxpayers spend $634 billion a year on it. It's laughable that activists claim conservatives "cut" education spending. Funds per student tripled over the past several decades, while test scores stayed flat.

Some of that failure is because of what DeVos really opposes: government's education bureaucracy.

The department she inherited is a good example of that. K-12 schools are controlled and funded locally, but taxpayers are forced to ship education money to Washington, D.C., where bureaucrats there grab some, and then ship the rest back -- with strings attached.

President Reagan tried to get rid of the Department of Education. He failed. Since then, it's only grown. It now spends $193.1 billion a year.

DeVos proposed a mere $9 billion in cuts.

But nothing goes away in Washington, no matter how wasteful. The Republican Congress ignored her proposed cuts and increased her budget by $2 billion.

DeVos, like some other agency heads appointed by President Trump, resists expanding the federal bureaucracy.

People hate her for that, too.

When activists blocked her school visit, she told me for my latest online video, "We drove away, and (the security guard) said, 'Ma'am, I don't think we should go back' and I said ... 'They are not going to win. I am determined to meet those kids and those teachers.'"

She did.

The protesters seemed less interested in her views on education than on the fact that she's rich.

One yelled: "Keep giving money to senators."

DeVos is rich. Her father built a company that became worth more than a billion dollars. Then she married into to the Amway marketing fortune.

Walter Shaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics, told CNN, "DeVos's primary expertise seems to be in being a rich person."

I asked DeVos about the charge that she "bought her position."

"Yes, I have been a contributor," she said. "I've also been an activist. I think it's important for people to engage in things that they believe in. But that's not the point. The point is for 30 years I have been working on behalf of families that have not had opportunity."

She benefited from the free market. Now she wants to bring those benefits to students who've been badly treated by government-run schools.

She donated to charter and private schools and served on the boards of groups that promote education choice.

None of that counts as expertise, says the education establishment.

"What she has done is actually made schooling worse in Michigan," ranted teachers union boss Randi Weingarten on MSNBC. "Eighty percent of the charter schools in Detroit are failing."

Some Detroit schools are doing badly, acknowledges DeVos, but charter students do "demonstrably better than the students in traditional public schools."

She's right. A Stanford study found that kids at Detroit charter schools get months of additional learning every year compared to their public school peers. Choice did help.

Charter and private schools are often better because they are freer to innovate. They can do things like set different hours, be open during summer and pay good teachers more.

Parents in the rest of the country deserve that opportunity, too.

"If there were real choice, good teachers would make much more money," I suggested to DeVos.

"Absolutely," she replied. "By the same token, teachers who aren't good and really shouldn't be in the classroom probably wouldn't be... (N)obody would choose their classroom! People are not stupid. They know where their kid is going to do best."

Unions and education bureaucrats don't want parents making those decisions. They say, "Teachers should be retrained, not fired" and "Competition is not for kids!"

"We need to do something different," says DeVos. "This country is on a trajectory to failure, ultimately, if we do not turn around how we educate kids."

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Her family may have money, but they got it the old fashion way, they worked for it. What I have heard of her notions about education fit with Trump’s conservative views. Personally the hatred for her is probably just more anything Trump must be hated of the left.

Her brother is an ex Navy Seal, Eric Prince, head of Blackwater.

Dick and Betsy are practically neighbors. I sometimes hear Dick's helicopter on approach/take off. I've seen him at the grocery store.
I don't envy Betsy's job. The teacher's union needs to die. She's a nice lady, classy, but I hope she can get over that and do what needs to be done. She actually cares for the students first and that's why she receives all this flak. She cares for all the kids, private or public.

Thread pull:
I think I had a brush w/ greatness one day back late summer of 2016. I had jumped on my CBR1000RR to take a casual ride and was passing Dick and Betsy's driveway. As I approached a large touring bus w/ a couple black vehicles behind it were signaling to turn into the driveway.
It didn't hit me until later that Trump was in town and had stopped at the Gerald R. Ford Museum during our Art Prize Festival. I think I know where he had dinner and conversation after that. I wish had read into it and given a "thumb up" as we passed each other.

I think Betsy DeVos is great.
But... I think education is too important to turn over to government-run schools.

So, DeVos is horrible and un-qualified because she's rich. OK....but why was Kerry so great again?

He was the most traitor-ly? Best negotiator? Best bike rider? Medal throwing distance holder? Best ketchup heiress marry-er?

I spent last weekend briefing a family on their loved one who didn't come home from Vietnam, whos remains we finally recovered. I presented them his medals and explained what they were, what they meant. Kerry being in the news again this week makes my blood boil.

Here from the thread title, I thought someone was talking about “Whip it, whip it good” Devo. ;(

DeVos was a superb choice. But her efforts to improve the US education system are greatly constrained by the swamp.

“DeVos proposed a mere $9 billion in cuts.

But nothing goes away in Washington, no matter how wasteful. The Republican Congress ignored her proposed cuts and increased her budget by $2 billion.”

The Education/Industrial Complex fights change harder than most any other entrenched public bureaucracy. They resist anything they think will change the system and reduce their influence - and it is a big bureaucracy.

DeVos threatens them.

If they have issues with her wealth, why don't they have issues with practically everyone in Congress?

quote:

Originally posted by zoom6zoom:
If they have issues with her wealth, why don't they have issues with practically everyone in Congress?

Because she might actually do something. Congress is most unlikely to do anything effective. They have them house broken.

Good OpEd, Jallen