EppsNet Archive: Betsy DeVos

Why Are Black Americans Against School Choice?

 

Most or all of the people booing Betsy DeVos know little or nothing about her except that they’re expected to dislike her for reasons that they may know are related to her views on public schools and school choice. But why are black Americans against school choice? I don’t want to overgeneralize — my son went to public schools and got a good education — but it’s all on the kids and their families to make it happen. Again, not to overgeneralize, but most public schools in black neighborhoods suck big time . Without school choice, public schools don’t have the right incentives. People running public schools aren’t paid by customers who voluntarily send their kids to those schools and who could choose to send their kids to another school if they wanted to. Public schools are paid for by taxing citizens who may or may not have kids in… Read more →

Strong Opinions on Betsy DeVos

 

I’m seeing on Facebook that a lot of people have strong (negative) opinions today about Betsy DeVos, who has been nominated as Secretary of Education, despite the fact that 99.9 percent of them had never heard of Betsy DeVos until about five minutes ago. Why do people suddenly have a strong opinion about someone they’ve never heard of? How is this possible? Because they’ve been instructed to have a strong opinion about Betsy DeVos in order to be consistent with the image that they have of themselves and the groups they want to fit in with. BTW I have no opinion about Betsy DeVos at the moment because I had never heard of her until about five minutes ago . . . Read more →