January 29, 2017January 29, 2017 by EduShyster

That Old School Spirit

I talk to Calvin College alumna Sara Moslener about why her letter in opposition to Betsy DeVos has struck such a chord among Calvin Knights (and Calvinites…)

EduShyster: Your open letter to students and alumni of Calvin College, opposing the confirmation of fellow alumna Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, has now been signed by nearly 2,800 Calvin Knights. What prompted you to write the letter, and did you have any idea that it would provoke this kind of response?

Sara Moslener: Like a lot of people I’ve been feeling an urgency about becoming more directly involved in politics. To me that meant sending a letter to my two Senators here in Michigan about Betsy DeVos and her lack of concern with federal regulations, something she’s demonstrated in her previous work and at her confirmation hearing. Without those federal regulations, there’s no assurance that students with different kinds of learning needs will be served, which ends up reinforcing a social hierarchy. After I wrote the letter, I thought that maybe some other Calvin College graduates might like to sign it, and that if I could get 30, 40 or even 50 people to sign, well, that would really say something. By Monday night there were almost 1,000 signatures. Then the Calvin College newspaper got a hold of it and current students started signing on. Continue reading →

January 23, 2017January 25, 2017 by EduShyster

Betsy DeVos’ Alternative Facts

From Common Core to Neurocore, the right candidate for Trumpian times…

Image result for neurocore brain training After Betsy DeVos’ rocky confirmation hearing performance, she quickly became fodder for memes and late-night comic commentary. But what ya’ll are missing is that DeVos herself is in on the joke. As she prepares to take her spot in the *highest IQ cabinet ever assembled,* she’s the only cabinet member who has a real stake in raising your IQ—by 12 points. DeVos knows that in this, the age of alternative facts, no one gives a hoot about the difference between *proficiency* and *growth.* The testimonial is where it’s at. So Neurocore, the biofeedback company that she won’t be giving up on, has no research behind it. Who cares??? Neurocore changed Charles C’s brain and changed his life, and it helped football player Kirk Cousins take his game to the next level. If the plural of anecdote is data, then the plural of testimonial is franchises. To the brain rooms, reader, we’ve got qEEG data to collect and a national expansion to plan. Continue reading →

January 13, 2017January 14, 2017 by EduShyster

The Red Queen

Betsy DeVos
#TLDR, Betsy Devos, choice, Detroit, Great Lakes Education Project, long game, Michigan, Michistan, right-to-work, unfettering, unions
30 Comments

The ultimate target of Betsy DeVos’ agenda isn’t teachers unions, or even the *education establishment.* It’s the Democratic Party…

Image result for vintage playing cards red queen By the measures that are supposed to matter, Betsy DeVos’ experiment in disrupting public education in Michigan has been a colossal failure. In its 2016 report on the state of the state’s schools, Education Trust Midwest painted a picture of an education system in freefall. *Michigan is witnessing systematic decline across the K-12 spectrum…White, black, brown, higher-income, low-income—it doesn’t matter who they are or where they live.* But as I heard repeatedly during the week I recently spent crisscrossing the state, speaking with dozens of Michiganders, including state and local officials, the radical experiment that’s playing out here has little to do with education, and even less to do with kids. The real goal of the DeVos family is to crush the state’s teachers unions as a means of undermining the Democratic party, weakening Michigan’s democratic structures along the way. And on this front, our likely next Secretary of Education has enjoyed measurable, even dazzling success.

This story goes back a long ways, so settle in. We could start in the 1840’s, when the first Dutch settlers began to arrive in Western Michigan, or in 1970, when the DeVoses made their first attempt to amend the state constitution so as to allow for public funding for private, religious schools. Another obvious starting point is 1993, when then Governor John Engler called the public schools in Michigan an *educational gulag* and a *monopoly of mediocrity,* lobbing the first fusillade in a war against the state’s teachers that has never ceased. For the sake of brevity, though, I’ll fast forward to the mid-oughts, when Betsy’s husband Dick DeVos ran for governor. It was the fourth time that the DeVoses had brought their crusade to give the market and the Maker more sway over the state’s schools to the voters, and each time Mitten staters had delivered a resounding *no thanks* in response. And so the DeVoses pivoted. If they couldn’t convince voters to enact their favored policies, they’d purchase the legislature instead. Continue reading →

December 17, 2016December 17, 2016 by EduShyster

Michigan, Here I Come!

Wow—a huge thanks to everyone who chipped in and made my *send EduShyster to the Mitten State* fundraising campaign such a success. In seven days, I raised $5,000 from 100 donors. Make that $5,025 from 101 donors. And while I did get a few three figure gifts (thanks Dad!), most of my contributions were small—$10 here, $18 there—from readers who want to know more about a would-be Secretary of Education and what the hell is going on in Michigan. So in just over three weeks, I’ll be hitting the road. Here’s where I’m headed, who I’ll be talking to and what I’m up to… Continue reading →

December 10, 2016January 18, 2017 by EduShyster

Culture Warrior Princess

Betsy DeVos’ support for anti-gay groups goes far beyond what she admitted in her confirmation hearing.

Image result for family research council Is there anything left to say about the awfulness of Betsy DeVos, President-Elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education? Alas, there is… Not nearly enough has been made of DeVos’ extreme closeness to the extreme fringes of the Christian right. She and her family have spent decades and millions upon millions to help further the reach of organizations like the Family Research Council, known for its *research* into homosexuality, which, by the way, is not a civil right. While media reports have referred in passing to DeVos’s support for Christian causes, they’ve largely glossed over what these causes are and how deeply enmeshed she is in a world that views homosexuality as immoral and abhorrent. Since her position comes with some responsibilities of the civil rights variety, should we maybe be concerned about this? Continue reading →