Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Devos Confirmation

It's not just you. I think she intends to return us to the Good Old Days of Plymouth Colony, where all the schools were private, and most taught just the one book.


Those of us who prefer secular education can have You Tube and Khan Academy for our kids, since PBS is about to get its funding gutted.


Does Mike know anything about federal education laws?

Not sure I entirely follow here. When I look outside-in Detroit has a history of miserable public schools which doomed generations of kids. My understanding of the concept Devos championed is of allowing parents to pull kids out and send them to private schools with vouchers. Seems like something is better than nothing. It especially allows gifted kids some alternative. Am I missing something fundamental?

I think Mike Rowe might be too much of a straight shooter for the incoming president.

A preferable alternative to me, given the importance of research based education to our country's future, is fixing public education so it works for all children, rather than allowing situations like Detroit to continue. She has advocated for all those alternative (i.e. charter schools) to be unregulated... so there are no oversights. I don't find that a preferable solution to our current system.

That's before heading into what happens when profits get involved at large scale. Our kids are the outliers, not the norm. Is a profit-based education system really going to serve their small segment of the market? If so, will it be at an affordable price, even with vouchers?

I'm not sure how factually accurate this video is (about DeVos) but still found it interesting. http://www.alternet.org/video/brave...g-betsy-devos-becoming-next-us-secretary

Quite possibly--

The basic math only works if you aren't low income-- and by low income, I mean that your income is not in the bottom half of incomes, likely--

average private school tuition is over 9K, and voucher programs at best come in at about 4K. So assuming that even with scholarships, you're still looking to PAY to send your child to a private school-- and for a family struggling to pay their utilities, that's just not happening. Even if you can scrape together the resources to pay tuition, if the school isn't in your neighborhood, there are massive logistical challenges involved.

Of course, the families that are already sending their children to private schools can use the extra cash to pay for things like club sports. But they probably aren't the ones needing the help.

Her record on charter schools is what I was referring to, however. My daughter, being a student with a disability, was decidedly unwelcome at local schools that COULD reject her. We know, because we looked into that. I can't tell you how painful that was to admit, even a decade later. If they didn't accept federal funds (and even a few who did-- they just BELIEVED that they didn't have to comply with federal mandates regarding access); they could and did just tell us to pound sand. Or refuse our calls and ignore our e-mails.

If we heard anything at all, it was--

"Upon reflection, we believe that our program is probably not well-suited to {my child's name}."

"After consideration, we have decided that {schoolname} can't provide {my child's name} with a safe learning environment..."

So it was public school (obligated under federal law to provide FAPE to my child) or no school at all. Even so, the charter school(s) often balked, threw up roadblocks-- it took years of wrangling, and believe me, I know what I'm doing as a parent advocate.

What of those parents who don't??



So yes, for children who are from desperately poor households, for those who have disabilities, this nomination is (in my opinion) an imminent disaster in every way.

All her policies do is leave kids who have no other options in schools that are then less financially capable of meeting their obligations to those remaining children.

There are problems on both sides.

In many ways, our public education system has created its own mess. The US funds schools at a higher level than most other countries, but much money is misspent. Around here, they come back for bond money for the same projects every few years, while little gets done. Then there are overly generous pension plans. I have a friend who only had to work for 10 years at a community college in order to qualify for a full pension including full paid health insurance for the rest of her life. That's just plain wrong. It used to be worse --- for a long time, you only needed to work for 5 years in San Francisco public schools to get those benefits. Public universities hire too many administrators and then "save" by hiring adjuncts.

If the public schools here were as good as public schools in other countries, people like me wouldn't pay for private schools/universities.

On the other side, the right wing appears to want to gut the system under the guise of fixing it. For example, they talk about "access," which sounds great. But IMO, this word means, if you have enough money, you're in. So vouchers provide access, but only if you can afford what the voucher doesn't cover. (They may increase enrollment in religious schools, because their fees are relatively low.) And of course, wealthy people will save money because of them. I suspect that vouchers will mostly benefit people who were already sending their kids to private schools, making access not really what the ad implied --- a few thousand bucks won't allow a middle class family to send Mary to Choate.

De Vos clearly isn't qualified for this job except as someone who can turn education into a profit center via charter schools. But at the same time, the public schools need to admit their failings and move past them to find constructive solutions, or the right will continue to have all kinds of reasons to howl about "reform."

Agree privatisation is the core of her competence. But given the state of some the public schools it might be the only real option left. Not sure anything else will fix the bad schools. But it is a brave new world. A lot of change ahead.

But coming back to the original point I hope someone gets through to her. If a poor parent wants to spend money on an AOPS class there needs to be a way to make it happen.

I have read that schools are required to provide an "appropriate" education, meanwhile parents may want "the best" education. I found this on an advocacy webpage provided by wrightslaw... here and here. From the US Department of Education, whether led by DeVos or others in the past, parents might receive something deemed "appropriate", not necessarily what is "best".

Clearly with a federal debt over $19 trillion (over $60K per person), the amount of taxes collected falls far short of government spending. Increasing the federal debt (which children will then be required to pay in future years) may not be sound or sustainable practice.

There is often a tradeoff between things being "free at point of service" and people being "free".

To live within personal family budgets, many families find cost-effective alternatives. To use AoPs as an example, rather than "Plan A" purchasing an AoPS online class... a family might develop "Plan B" purchasing a used AoPS book, or even finding a book through inter-library loan.

I can't help but wonder if it may be the only real option left, and I tend to think that most of the schools are bad. It's just that some are horrible.

I was talking about this general idea with a friend over lunch, and he felt the same way. My biggest concern is that De Vos et al. will just make things worse, and the next person to come along in 4 or 8 years will want to revert to the current status quo. I don't know.