The position of Secretary of Education is frequently filled with the secular equivalent of flim-flam artist televangelists. These individuals lack the training, experience, common sense or moral virtue to do the job. They do, however, possess a crucial skill. They are accomplished bullshitters. Tub thumping humbugs of the first magnitude.
The Reagan administration provides a sterling example. Ronald Reagan promised he would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, but dropped that when education unexpectedly gained national attention. He still slashed education spending in half. But Reagan staffers knew his administration had to look like they supported public education. They were in luck. Reagan had already appointed a know-nothing blowhard as Secretary of Education. William F. Bennett was a carnival barker in both style and substance. This gas-bag's unrestrained exaggerations and gross simplifications repeatedly made the news. And as they did, gullible Americans came to believe that: A. much was wrong with America's schools and B. the Reagan administration was working hard to fix them.
This is not the place to detail Bennett's demagoguery. Let's just recount an incident that captures the noxious essence of his humbug. Reagan's Secretary of Education wrote an article that appeared in the November 1988 Readers Digest. In it he praised a school principal's extraordinarily simple method of "reforming a troubled inner-city Washington, D. C. school." "On the very first day," wrote Bennett, this remarkable "educational leader," this "no-nonsense principal, assembled the student body and ... with practiced eye, chose 20 potential troublemakers" to enforce order and put an end to chaos." And, according to Bennett, putting the school's most likely miscreants in charge of the rest of the student body worked magic! Order was restored and education proceeded!
Can you imagine? The school is chaoticl and the principal's solution is to put the potential trouble-makers in charge! Even a Secretary of Education should recognize such a policy is just plain nuts. Of course Bennett was not interested in the multifaceted and highly complex nature of actual reform. He was shoveling bullshit for political purposes. Simple solutions for the simple minded. This is how he politicized his position with carnival-barker effectiveness. For example, he repeatedly beat up on the National Education Association — a relatively innocuous organization at the time. Charging that it was a major cause of what he alleged to be national school decline, he repeatedly pointed to it as the chief villain. But why did Bennett really attack the NEA? It was a union that favored the Democrats and, rather ineffectually, opposed the Reagan administration's education policies. Never mind facts! Bennett's job was to confirm the biases of Reagan voters and he did that well. What he failed to do was offer genuine leadership.
Enough about Bennett. Let's turn to Arnie Duncan, President Obama's Secretary of Education. Unlike Reagan, Obama increased Federal education funding by an extra $100 billion. But his selection of Mr. Duncan was similar to Reagan's choice of Bennett in that Arnie's chief skill was bullshitting. He actually lacked any knowledge of education policy, curriculum design, research on learning, human growth and development etc.. He had never even taught. Yet despite his utter lack of qualifications,, he had served as CEO of the Chicago public school system from 2001 - 2008. How come? Can you spell P O L I T I C S?
Yes, Arnie was utterly unqualified to be secretary of anything. But he did have that one qualification as Secretary of Education. He really could dish out the shit. He was skilled at looking like he knew what he was talking about. (He also provided the President with an excellent basketball buddy. An ex-professional hoopster, Arnie played a mean game of one on one.)
During the Bush administration "No Child Left Behind" had been signed into law. It stipulated that in the future only "highly qualified" teachers would be permitted to teach." In fact it specifically ordained that "to teach math, science, social studies, the arts, reading or languages, candidates must have obtained a long-term teaching certificate, and demonstrate subject matter knowledge by either obtaining a college major in the subject, by passing a test in the subject taught."
That's got real teeth, right? Ah, but wait! The lawmakers also inserted the following at the very end: "...or by some other means established by the state." This was nothing less than a last second castration! It allowed states to dodge all of the supposed rigor. States could substitute whatever feeble faldarall suited their situation. And, of course, that's exactly what happened in state after state. Were legislators surprised that this happened? Hardly! They wanted to look tough, while simultaneously allowing the same laxity that has characterized teacher education since its inception. Tougher entry standards means paying more to entering teachers. Otherwise no one will want to meet these stringent standards. But that means you have to pay more to attract the best. And raising taxes to pay teachers more is politically unpalatable
California initially failed to take advantage of the No Child Left Behind escape clause. Consequently, the state faced an immediate shortage of highly qualified teachers. But President Obama came to the rescue. He waived his executive order wand and declared that wanna-be teachers still in training were, in fact, "highly qualified?" At that time many such people were filling in as full-time teachers in California. Now, thanks to Obama, these rank amateurs were instantly transformed into masters of the art. California's shortage of "highly qualified" teachers was over.
Did Secretary Duncan complain when Obama transformed apprentices to master craftsmen with the stroke of a pen! Not a whimper came from Arnie. Apparently he had changed his mind.
Eventually a federal judge ruled that Obama's evasion violated the No Child Left Behind "highly qualified" requirement, Congress corrected that. They piously legislated that the classification "highly qualified" included those who weren't. Arnie went along with that too. By then his expressed concern about inadequate teacher preparation had evaporated.
Last, there is Betsy DeVoss, Secretary of Education under Donald Trump. How much training in education did she have? Zero. How much teaching experience? Zero. How much personal experience in public school where 90% of American send their children? Zero. How much has she and the rest of her family donated to Republican causes? Forbes reports about $200 million dollars in 2017.
That's 200 million reasons why, having always attended private conservative Christian schools, having long demanded deep cuts in federal education spending, having enthusiastically championed privatizing public schools through vouchers, and after boldly boosting the for-profit college industry despite their student loan default rate being 6 times higher, she still ended up U.S. Secretary of Education.
Was Ms. DeVoss a bullshitter similar to the two cited above? To be fair, that's not clear. Perhaps she was just a true believer trained in the fundamentalist tradition that renders one incapable of reasoning. A sort of free market fanatic who falsely linked materialistic capitalism with the decidedly anti-materialist teaching of Jesus Christ. In any case, she was clearly in over her head as Secretary of Education. In fact, to even get the job Vice President Pence had to cast the deciding vote, given the 50-50 tie in the Senate vote on DeWees.
There are competent, qualified people who have served, and now serve, as secretaries of education at the state and national level. But there are too many counter-examples. Should our political "leaders" want to get serious, not just solemn, about improving America's schooling it is way past time for them to appoint highly qualified experts. In the meantime, though there still will be lots of openings for untrained, unqualified, conscience-free bull shitters.
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