education schools, trade associations, and government planners that an earlier secretary of education aptly called “The Blob.” The Blob’s great ambition, in the view of outsiders like DeVos, is to block school reform. This isn’t completely true, however. Every couple years, a new fad is incubated in the ed schools, passed through the unions, and imposed on teachers who scramble to catch up with hours of after-class training. They learn freshly minted techniques and jargon of dubious validity that will be replaced in a few years by the new techniques and new jargon of yet another fad. Meanwhile, as DeVos points out, the United States stagnates in international rankings: 23rd in reading, 25th in science, 40th in math. Two-thirds of American fourth-graders can’t read at their grade level. One of DeVos’s salutary achievements has been to repeat these sorry statistics at every opportunity. She has resisted all efforts to further centralize power in Washington, and adamantly refused to concede that The Blob’s preferred solution – spend more money – is necessary or wise. The U.S. already spends more money per pupil than most developed countries. If DeVos’ achievements were merely rhetorical, she might not have provoked the DeVos Hate. But she is still an activist and agitator. She has dismantled earlier fads The Blob has concocted – most recently, the infamous Common Core Standards imposed nationwide during the Obama years at bottomless expense.
She has rescinded more than 600 “guidance documents” the department routinely issues to bully schools into operating the way the feds want them to. She withdrew the Obama administration’s sinister “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities dictating standards for adjudicating claims of sexual assault. She asked Congress (unsuccessfully) to drastically cut the department’s budget even as she sought (successfully) large increases in school-choice funds. Any one of these would have been enough to draw the disapproving eye of Lesley Stahl and 60 Minutes. DeVos appeared desperately uneasy during her interview. She stuttered and stammered. In one sense it’s hard to blame her. With her wide-eyed insincerity and censorious stare, Lesley Stahl is one of the scariest looking newscasters in America. Her specialty is the not-really-a-question. “Why have you become, people say, the most hated Cabinet secretary?” Stahl asked. What’s the proper answer to such a question? “Because I’m a monster, Lesley. I’m easy to hate”? But DeVos rallied and her answer – “I think there are a lot of powerful forces allied against change” – was pretty good, and had the added benefit of being true. (The “people say” in Stahl’s question was a nice touch, by the way – the reporter’s equivalent of “I’m asking this question for a friend.”) It’s hard to know how to answer a not-really- a-question whose premise is nakedly untrue, as when Stahl flatly told DeVos that “things are getting better” in America’s schools. For
24 May 2018
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