You're welcome. I can't tell you how much force my molars have had to withstand in order to write anything remotely neutral regarding this particular cabinet nominee.
In light of my experiences as a parent with an HG+ child in a virtual charter school, and the daughter of a dedicated career educator, I find this nomination abhorrent in every way.
We have endured the kind of "choice" that she is apparently championing. It's what got my daughter 32 hours of scheduled instruction the year that she took second year German in high school. Oh-- and about 15 hours of instructional support of any kind the year that she took AP Statistics. Yes, I said "year."
We worked around it because we literally had no other realistic options if we wanted credentialing-- but I'll be the first to say that our solution space likely could not exist for most families in the first place, and it was one that was fast-closing even for us-- leading us to an additional acceleration in high school simply to get DD out sooner. Yes, it was that bad after the Pearson acquisition. {ahem}
I'd go so far as to say that typical online education via so-called virtual charter schools which are for-profit money making MACHINES is near-fraudulent. Most such entities promise the moon knowing full well that they can't deliver, have student-teacher ratios of at least 100 to 1, and also want state regulators off their backs so that they can do as they please without any oversight. Minimal to zero transparency is the rule rather than the exception, I'm sorry to say.
One only need look at Michigan's dismal record with school choice outcomes-- and Mrs. Devos' input into that situation-- to see how this particular road map is no way to educate children, at least not as national policy. Sure, in some narrow circumstances, it makes sense, but those situations surely require more oversight, not less?
It likely comes as no shock to learn that I am vehemently opposed to anyone that thinks that there is wiggle room to consider alternatives to enforcement of Title IX, either, and yes-- she said that too, in her confirmation hearing.
It may well just be a dog and pony show, the confirmation hearings-- it is certainly the case that the opposition party has no power to stop the confirmation since they lack a majority in either house-- but for the nominee to be so ill-prepared is a fairly ominous sign even so.
Nope. Not a fan of Mrs. DeVos for this cabinet post. At all.
