New Orleans    Doing a little research and realizing that Betsy DeVos, the Michigan-based Republican fundraiser, who is now in line to head the Department of Education, had never attended a public school but only religiously oriented institutions straight through college, made me raise my eyebrows a bit. Reading that in her push towards the disastrous charter-izing of the public school system in recent years in Detroit that she had never actually bothered to meet with any of the stakeholders in education there or visit a public school and interact with teachers, parents, or students, was even more disconcerting. She is not an educational advocate and activist, as she has been billed, but a stone cold ideologue without an iota of concern or compassion for the consequences of her ideology.

I guess the good news is that the federal budget only contributes 8% of the total education budget with 92% coming from local and state sources, so there is at least some limit to the damage she can do. Sadly, that’s small comfort.

I’m not a fan of charter schools and the privatization of public schools. I see enough of it in New Orleans, which now leads the country in the percentage of charter operated schools and is approaching 100% saturation. No small amount of my alienation has been based on their lack of accountability and transparency. In New Orleans we are gradually moving the schools back under the local control of a school board, though elite interests are attempting to extend their sway by dominating the contributions for candidates friendly to their interests, we at least now have a fighting chance at drawing the line and holding feet to the fire.

All reports indicate that DeVos would have none of that in Detroit, and strong armed the state legislature, controlled by Republicans, to prevent any bill from passage that would create any mechanism that hold charter schools accountable even on basic standards of education and fiscal integrity. She adamantly wanted absolutely no controls on the charters. The commission she opposed was even stacked with equal representation from charter and non-charter school leaders, moderated by an education expert, and backed by the twenty largest and best charter operations in Detroit. Not good enough for her. She wanted nothing. Period. The situation is so bad that most of the big charter operators have avoided opening in Detroit and even the Walton Foundation, the biggest moneybag supporter of school charters and privatization, has withdrawn from Detroit because the situation is indefensible. Her view seems to have been little more than laissez-faire, let the buyer beware, and unhappy parents can walk their children out of the schools with their feet.

New national studies, that were possible only because Common Core required at least some standard, national tests, seem to have established that for lower income schools and children the single thing making the most difference is increasing school expenditures. How does a DeVos, who wants to implement expensive vouchers to allow her favored private and parochial schools to flourish while draining taxpayer support for public schools, implement a program that applies that finding? In fact, for an ideologue whose main program is a free-market education, will she allow any standards for our education system at all in the United States?

Everyone understands that we need better schools. The rich ideologues like DeVos seem more committed to chaos, charters, church schools, and a separate but unequal system rather than education at all. The coming years seem destined to teach hard and tragic lessons to the country while committing countless crimes against the nation’s children.