After a false start, she finally got in. After her visit, she sung praises of the teachers but then changed her tune in a few days:
Newly minted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had a hard time getting inside the District’s Jefferson Middle School Academy last week when protesters briefly blocked her from entering. But at the end of her visit — her first to a public school since taking office — she stood on Jefferson’s front steps and pronounced it “awesome.”
A few days later, she seemed less enamored. The teachers at Jefferson were sincere, genuine and dedicated, she said, they seemed to be in “receive mode.”
“They’re waiting to be told what they have to do, and that’s not going to bring success to an individual child,” DeVos told a columnist for the conservative online publication Townhall. “You have to have teachers who are empowered to facilitate great teaching.”
This is, of course, utter bullshit but it's standard code words for anyone who wants to put the kids and their futures on the auctioning block for school privatization vultures to feast upon.
Well, the teachers weren't about to put up with it:
“I find it very interesting that the chancellor saw teachers that were pushing rigorous learning, students asking each other high-level questions and cultivating high-level responses, and teachers who take initiative and give their lives to the education of these children,” said Jefferson teacher Caroline Hunt. “DeVos saw something so different. … Maybe if DeVos knew more about education she would realize just how amazing the students, teachers and staff are.”
The school wasn't going to put up with it and launched an eleven-tweet response to the dunce's comments, starting with how they were "about to take her to school..."
This is what Sec. DeVos said about our teachers after her visit. Needless to say, we're about to take her to school... @dcpublicschools pic.twitter.com/Wcx1YyqDHL
— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017
After praising several of their teachers, the school ended with this knockout punch:
JA teachers are not in a "receive mode." Unless you mean we "receive" students at a 2nd grade level and move them to an 8th grade level.
— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017
Ah, but as the gentle reader might have already guessed, there's more. There's always more.
Another one of DeVos' early blunders was to take down the Department of Education's website providing resources for parents of children with disabilities. After catching a lot of fire from both Congressional Democrats and the public in general (trust me, one does not dare try to dome something like that near a parent of a disabled child), DeVos restored the site.
But even then, she couldn't do it without making a bigger fool out of herself by blaming President Obama, the country's last American president:
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on Friday announced that her department is restoring and "updating" a resource website for parents and teachers of students with disabilities, which has been down almost three weeks.
"IDEA.ed.gov has been repaired and moved to a new server to ensure it's available to parents and educators who rely on it," DeVos said in one of a series of tweets.
The education secretary had come under pressure from Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. The senators sent DeVos a letter last week asking that the site be restored fully and immediately, and for an explanation of why it was down.DeVos struck a partisan note, in what has seemed to be a Trump administration strategy: Blame Obama.
She said the federal Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA) website was "neglected for nearly four years." This, she said, is "unacceptable" and "an example of complacency I won't accept, and I will remain committed to improving the department and its services."
Oh, and if you don't think direct actions like the ones taken against DeVos don't work:
In the Washington Post, on Friday, DeVos was quoted as saying critics "want to make my life a living hell."
Awww, poor ol' Betsy got her fee-fees hurt by people holding her accountable. Poor little baby.
It's time that we put a dunce cap on this unqualified moron. And it should fit real nice on her pointy head.
