Desperate times often require desperate measures. Today is one of those times. Early tomorrow morning, the Senate will kick off their final effort to confirm Betsy DeVos as our next Secretary of Education. Two brave and principled souls, Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have indicated that they will vote no on the DeVos nomination. But that’s not enough.

By Senate rules, a 50/50 tie leads to a tie breaking vote by the Vice President which will certainly be a vote for confirmation.
What can we do at this late date? First, every teacher in America needs to call in sick this Monday. Every parent in America needs to keep their kids home on Monday. Shutting down our public schools on Monday and perhaps Tuesday is the only message that will convince our elected Senators that Mrs. Devos is not fit to serve as Secretary of Education.

Please post this to your Facebook wall, share on Twitter, plant a sign in your yard – whatever it takes to stop this nomination. The continuation of almost 400 years of public school education in America depends on your protest of this poor choice of a nominee.

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The only GOP senators against this nomination are those who fear the wrath of the teachers' unions. School vouchers put the power in the hands of the people not the bureaucrats who run our failing schools. With a little more power in the hands of parents, these inner city and other failing schools would have to either improve or be cast into the dust bin of history. I suspect the former would happen because of the threat of the latter.

Half the schools in the 27 Appalachian counties could be considered failing. What do you do about them? This is not just an intercity problem.

No it's not, but it is a union problem. The teachers' unions are in business to perpetuate their own existence. That means supporting teachers, regardless of their classroom effectiveness, and supporting the schools within which they teach. It's a strange irony that the teachers' unions are now in bed with the administration of schools to the determent of the clients of those schools (the students and their parents). It's the way of all human flesh, give a person or a group of people too much power over too long a period of time and they will abuse it. It's way past time for major reform of our public school system. Tweaking here and there is getting us nowhere.

I live in suburban N.J.
for the past 10-15 years,our school budgets,including teachers' salaries go up,but test scores go down.

With tenure,its the only profession where poor quality work is rewarded.

I'm curious,what constitutes "knowledge of the public education system".

Looking at her background it would seem she has accumulated a lot of knowledge
about the public education system,including its problems and failures,which is why she took the path she did.

Or,are you saying that only an "insider" in the public education system has knowledge of it ?

Admitting that I don't have facts to support this, putting money to charter schools seems sure to flight leave only the poorest and least able in the public school system.

I thought that we were one country, that we looked out for each other to some extent.


Wasn't widespread public education part of the genius and development that made America great?

While I oppose DeVos for other reasons, I don't disagree with this statement. However, I also feel the same dynamic is at play with cop unions, and their power also needs to be broken for the good of those who employ them.

Vouchers are one thing, and I know no teachers who are against that choice. However, the privatization is a problem and and a big one! The for profit education model is a simply corrupt and wrong! The lack of accountability and holding to the same standards is equally wrong.

If you want better education, we could probably start with better parents and home life.

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One need look no farther than the state of Ohio and Ecot, and the scam that has reaped millions of dollars in profit for its founder, while having the worst results in the nation, zero accountability, and uses public tax dollars to lobby the legislature and governor for more money and protections.

Let us not forget that DeVos and her group owe the state of Ohio $5.3 million dollars. Why is it all the sudden those people who spent 8 years screaming about accountability and fiscal austerity seem to no longer care?

I don't know about Ohio,but the issue of high school graduation has been a hot topic in New Jersey.

In N.J.,there are so many "alternate paths" for students to get a high school diploma when they don't pass what are,from what I've seen,relatively easy standardized tests,that saying there is a high graduation rate really doesn't mean anything.

For the life of me, I can't get how some liberals like Alan agree on how ridiculous the OU faculty has been acting and not see how ridiculous the powers that be in Washington have been treating kids, parents and educators for decades.

Why do we have so many poor parents, white, black, Hispanic in the inner city sending their kids to Catholic, Christian and private schools that accept vouchers? It isn't because the public school teachers are bad, it is because it is rotten from the top. Rich, white, liberal egg head theorists with no idea of how people live and think. Incessant testing and social engineering instituted by people whose only true goal is to control society and rid the traditional nature of the cultures that exist in those communities.

In fairness President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind was a bureaucratic disaster as well. I realize some charter schools are a money making scheme concocted by charlatans. However, these charlatans know the need is great in communities whose children and parents have been short changed by an elitist, leftist cabal in DC, whose only goal is to control people and not educate or help them. Education needs to be in the hands of local communities and away from the social engineering aspect of leftist cultural elites in Washington.

I would wholeheartedly recommend everyone read any work by the renown conservative, African-American Education expert Thomas Sowell Ph.D. Dr. Sowell points out that in 1900 in the earliest of tests ever given, African-American children scored higher on tests in Washington DC than did white children. Why, they had concerned parents and little bureaucratic nonsense to deal with unlike Athens High in the 1970s and early 1980s. The open classroom concept that left those students needing the most help aimless and and adrift, that is when they weren't in officially designated smoking rooms. What a travesty for those who needed the help the most.

The best Education prof I ever had at OU was a no nonsense African-American professor from the south who had little use for the egg headed liberal nonsense. He had actually taught in the schools whose later teachers he would influence. If only we had more of him in Education colleges today.

I have no idea how Betsy DeVos will do as Education Secretary, but it couldn't be worse than what has been shoved down our throats for 50+years.

You seem to be lost in the 1960s, or even earlier. The thought police today are clearly on the left. Look what just happened at UC-Beserkley. If you don't toe the liberal line you have no right to speak. The leftist thugs didn't want to attend his talk and then engage in questions and try to show intellectually the superiority of their arguments. They wanted to silence his speech. This on the campus that was once the birthplace of the free-speech movement. We are very much in danger of fascism of the left in this country. As you may recall from political science classes, the far-right and far-left have much in common and occupy close to the same space on the political spectrum.