The Dig: Diane Ravitch on Trump, DeVos, and the Corporate Education Reform Agenda

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Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2017

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump has nominated Betsy DeVos, a free-market, far-right Christian billionaire dedicated to privatizing public schools, to be his Secretary of Education.

In her confirmation hearing, DeVos made it painfully clear that she has little understanding of public education aside from her dedication to destroying it. She is the heir to an auto parts fortune, and her husband, Dick, is the heir to a fortune derived from the direct sales company Amway, which the FTC at one point decided was not a pyramid scheme.

Interestingly, she is also the brother of Erik Prince, who founded the infamous mercenary army Blackwater has now, according to The Intercept, been quietly advising the Trump Administration. The couple, thanks to their money and relentless ideological drive, are heavy-duty power players in Michigan politics, where they have wreaked havoc on Detroit public schools.

In many ways, this oligarch’s nomination is the extreme and cartoonesque outcome of decades of bipartisan corporate-aligned policy that pushed charters and high stakes testing, and attacked the teachers unions that stood in their way.

Today, we’re joined by historian Diane Ravitch, one of the country’s leading scholars of education policy and a vocal critic of corporate reform efforts that promote privatization and high-stakes testing as the solution to problems largely created by segregation, poverty and funding inequity. Amongst many other books, Ravitch is the author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Micah Utrich, associate editor at Jacobin magazine.
0:08.0	Just wanted to say a quick word of welcome to Dan Denver and his podcast, The to Jackbinn. Dan is a fantastic journalist who I've
0:16.4	known for a long time who's covered everything from dirty cops in Philadelphia
0:20.7	to the failures of our immigration system to rank-and-file
0:24.3	teachers union reformers and we're extremely happy to have him and his
0:28.5	podcast as part of the Jacobin family. There's going to be much more audio visual content from
0:34.2	Jack-A-Bin in 2017, including a podcast hosted by me and
0:38.2	writer-organizer R.L. Stevens. You can find that, as well as audio from different events that we have done like
0:44.8	issue release parties or talks with authors on the jack of an iTunes channel so
0:49.6	please subscribe and rate and review us. If you want to support the dig you can find a
0:55.0	Patreon account in the show description or on the dig's Facebook and Twitter
0:58.4	pages and to support Jacobin, visit jack-mag.com slash subscribe.
1:05.0	Thanks.
1:05.6	Here's Dan.
1:06.6	Welcome to the Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and
1:16.8	I'm broadcasting from AS 220 in Providence, Rhode Island. Donald Trump has
1:21.9	nominated Betsy Devas, a free market far-right Christian
1:25.8	billionaire dedicated to privatizing public schools to be his education
1:30.2	secretary. In her confirmation hearing she made it painfully clear that she has little
1:35.2	understanding of public education aside from her dedication to destroying it.
1:40.1	So public, public charter, private K-12 schools, if they receive taxpayer funding, they should meet the same accountability standard.
1:46.7	Yes, they should be very transparent with the information and parents should have that information first and formal.
	...

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