Leftists Are Too Uneducated To Understand Why Betsy DeVos Is Education Secretary

Originally Posted at Free Market Shooter

Yesterday, The Huffington Post (an outlet Free Market Shooter loves to hate) posted an article titled “How Betsy DeVos Became The Most Hated Cabinet Secretary”.  Predictably, the article was just as out of touch as its title implies:

“All the time,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “This is true in town halls, when I’m walking down the sidewalk in my neighborhood, when I go into the grocery store. People come up to me to talk about Betsy DeVos. There’s just no comparison. I’ve never had this happen with any other Cabinet secretary.”

“There is no one in America more unpopular than Betsy DeVos,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “To have somebody who scorns public education, who never went to a public school, her children never went to a public school… to be in charge of public education is an outrage.”

But HuffPo is hardly alone; if you do a Google news search for Betsy DeVos, nearly every result is a negative one:

The majority of the criticism surrounding DeVos is centered on her lack of experience, and tendency to cut funding and entire education programs.  Unsurprisingly, most of the criticism emanates from out-of-touch liberals who still can’t seem to figure out how President Trump won the 2016 election… and the same liberals can’t seem to figure out how DeVos got the job in the first place.

News flash, leftists: Betsy DeVos is the Secretary of Education because the Department of Education has been a disaster for decades.  Government spending on education is producing disturbingly poor returns; DeVos is in place solely to stop the department from wasting even more taxpayer dollars.

This author has covered the high expenditure of US education spending in the past…

This is not hyperbole – the US spends approximately $115,000 per student, which is fifth globally, behind only Austria, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland.

…and noted that money is not the cure to the problem:

But throwing money at the problem has not led to increased performance, as the Pew Research Center recently analyzed – our students score similar to the Slovak Republic, which spends less than half, at $53,000 per student:

What a surprise – a PISA report has noted the following:

…among OECD countries, “higher expenditure on education is not highly predictive of better mathematics scores in PISA.”

In the worst cases, public schools produce students graduating high school at elementary school education levels:

According to the IEP report, the 12th grader reads at a 5th grade level; does math at a 4th grade level.

“It’s not supposed to happen,” stated Able. “I don’t want him to fall out into the streets.”

Unsurprisingly, this occurs in the worst inner city schools, which are precisely the ones who are supposed to be helped by federal spending and guidelines:

Baltimore’s community is absolutely stunned after ‘Project Baltimore’, an investigative reporting initiative, which was launched in March 2017, by Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. asked this question:  How can a high school with zero students proficient in math, have one of the highest graduation rates in Baltimore City?

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Project Baltimore is investigating Northwood Appold Community Academy II, or NACA II, after teachers “contacted us saying grades are being changed so students can graduate”. The school is located in East Baltimore City, Maryland where nearly 1/3 of African Americans have zero net wealth.

In a stunning interview from one of the masked educators who uncovered this possible great theft of education.. They said, “grade changing. Giving out diplomas to students that did not earn them.”

Another teacher told Project Baltimore ,“if you are changing grades and you’re allowing people to walk, of course, that is what your numbers are going to look like.”

We found six seniors who failed a required foreign-language class, yet every one graduated. Another student graduated after being absent or late to school more than 100 days during the year, and had a first quarter GPA of 0.000. 

It should be pretty easy to figure out who is angriest at the DeVos-led education department’s cuts…

…you guessed it: the same unionized educators who have failed their students by allowing them to graduate far below their global peers, in spite of receiving more dollars than the average nation.

Of course, instead of figuring out a way to get more bang for education bucks, liberals have been focused on attacking the semantics of President Trump’s criticisms of excessive education spending.  Politifact, which liberals claim is “least biased” when it is really anything but, went after Trump just as his campaign started to get popular back in February of 2016:

“We spend more money than anyone else any other country in the world by a lot,” he went on to say. “And yet we’re number 28 on the list … So we’re 28 in terms of quality. So that means we have 27 countries ahead of us, and yet in terms of cost we’re No. 1 by far.”

Additionally, the United States was not the top spender. Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway each spent more per pupil than the United States. In the case of Luxembourg, about 66 percent more per secondary school student.

In fact, the United States would have to increase per student spending about $8,000 per year just to match Luxembourg at the high school level. To spend quadruple what Luxembourgers do would require a $70,000 per student boost.