Ruby Rai made headlines last year when she termed political science as prodigal science, and claimed the subject involved cooking. Rai had topped the higher secondary examination in Bihar in 2016. Students like Rai are just the tip of what is probably a giant iceberg comprising poorly educated school students ... Read More »
Human intelligence quite obviously has some genetic component. Genes do constrain our fate, as does luck, even if development matters more. The way that our capacities develop is profoundly influenced by the environment and by the social situation in which a child grows up. Genetic influence is not genetic ... Read More »
In a powerful and passionate speech, a Detroit student expressed why she doesn’t think Betsy DeVos should be Secretary of Education. In a video the American Federation of Teachers posted on Facebook, Dannah Wilson (whose name was spelled incorrectly in the video and later corrected in the comments) explained that 119 parents, ... Read More »
As chancellor of the state Board of Regents, Betty Rosa is as well informed as anyone on issues affecting education in New York. But when it comes to the shape of national policy under President Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, his nominee for secretary of education, she knows as little as anyone ... Read More »
Asked whether Christian schools should continue to rely on philanthropic dollars—rather than pushing for taxpayer money through vouchers—Betsy DeVos replied, “There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education … [versus] what is currently being spent every year on education in this ... Read More »
Democratic senators tried their best to rattle Betsy DeVos at her confirmation hearing to be Education Secretary on Tuesday, but she glided serenely through the process. “Nothing in life is truly free,” she sweetly said to Bernie Sanders (I-VT) when the former Democratic presidential candidate brought up his proposal to ... Read More »
WASHINGTON, D.C.—It was not a hearing. It was the mere burlesque of a hearing, rendered meaningless by a preposterously accelerated process that rendered all questioning perfunctory and that left all cheap evasions hanging in the air of the committee room the way cigarette smoke used to canopy the proceedings back ... Read More »
Democrats sliced holes in billionaire Betsy DeVos’ credentials to be the next U.S. Education Secretary at a confirmation hearing on Tuesday, raising doubts whether President-elect Donald Trump’s pick will win approval in the full Senate. The nomination of DeVos to head an agency that sets policy for younger children and ... Read More »
Senate Democrats hit Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, on all sides at her confirmation hearing Tuesday night. But the question that made her look worst required her to demonstrate a basic understanding of education policy — a test DeVos failed. Sen. Al Franken asked DeVos to explain ... Read More »
After Tom Casperson, a Republican state senator from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, began running for Congress in 2016, he assumed the family of Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee to be education secretary, would not oppose him. The DeVoses, a dominant force in Michigan politics for decades with a fortune ... Read More »
It’s shaping up to be a contentious year on the education beat, fueled in part by Donald Trump’s upset victory in the presidential election. For starters, in the weeks and months since his election, his campaign call for expanding school choice has sparked widespread discussion and debate. And while federal ... Read More »
The confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, the billionaire philanthropist who is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of education, has been delayed for almost a week. DeVos’ hearing was scheduled for Wednesday, but late on Monday night, the Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions announced it had been ... Read More »
