DeVos Visits WA - State's A.G. Protests

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson speaks at the Tom Foley Dinner in Spokane earlier this year.

Here's a "pull quote" from the Washington Policy Center's article, "Why We Invited Betsy DeVos to Speak" about her recent visit to our state to share her views about Charter schools. The state's A.G., Bob Ferguson* (a.k.a. "Sideshow Bob") was among those who were outside protesting her presence in the state and her stance on Charter schools, despite the fact that it became law in 2016.

Naturally, the people most upset about Secretary DeVos’ visit are those who gain most under the current system.

The primary obstacle to improving public education in our state are executives at the WEA union.  They are fearful and angry.  They want to maintain their power, to keep mandatory dues money flowing to their bank accounts, and to keep children and families trapped in a monopoly system that is failing them.

They see Secretary DeVos as someone who is disruptive, asks too many questions, listens too much to parents, and poses a threat to their position of power.

As a retired public schools educator of 35 years, I am passionately keen on this issue; I support Charter schools because I believe competition is best for our future generations. As things are now, the entrenched interests - NEA, WEA, and AFT - are quaking in their boots that there's a rising resistance against them. The tax payers are finally seeing right through their empty promises of improving education. Common Core, the brainchild of state's governors who obviously don't understand what education is about, is now fading away only to be replaced by an ever increasing bureaucratic oriented set of curricula that is all the more nonsensical.

How do I know this even though I'm no longer teaching full-time? I have a close source who provides me input on a regular basis about what is going in the classroom and am appalled at what I'm told. The overarching theme in education today seems to be "change for the sake of change". Not that it's better, or more effective. In fact, much of it has totally ignored the basic psychological research of many well known education researchers; like Piage'. Much of the lessons involve having the students working on lessons which are way above their cognitive abilities to comprehend; all in the name of making education look like they're really buckling down on getting these students prepared for middle and high school.

The typical public school teacher today is overburdened with a mountain of data collection in order to show that their students are learning, while all the while, most 4th graders haven't even mastered simple math facts of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division! Yet they're given lessons which require them to formulate an algebraic equation after getting an answer to a word problem that they have difficulty deciphering because they're only at a 1st - 3rd grade reading level.

I've written in past posts here on my blog about the sociological reasons behind why we so many children in this situation in our public schools, so I won't go into those points here. Suffice it to say that, until and unless we get this country on a path of making a stable family environment for the nuclear family to thrive, rather than flounder, we're just spinning our wheels and getting nowhere, no matter how much money our state Supreme Court demands the state legislature should spend to meet is responsibility of "paramount duty".

* 
In addition to politically motivated lawsuits, AG Bob also spent last week protesting alongside the WEA… you know, instead of actually doing his job. Liv Finne with the Washington Policy Center was rightfully shocked that he would participate. “You should be shocked because the attorney general is required to defend the law of the State of Washington, and one of the laws of the State of Washington is the charter school law that was passed in 2016 … and that law has been challenged by the WEA union in court,” Finne said. “He’s calling into question his impartiality, which he is supposed to have.” (MyNorthwest)

AND...

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson is suing Secretary DeVos and the U.S. Department of Education. The lawsuit is aimed at protecting an Obama era rule related to assessing the quality of degrees. Readers wondering if this is nothing more than a stunt to advance Bob’s political career would be right in doing so. (The Seattle Times)