A test is an evaluation of knowledge leveraged or gained. If the test is seeing a significant number of failures, then it is indicates that instruction is not aligning with the evaluation metric. Students should be measured and addressed according to each individual's aptitude; there is no reason for our goal to be 100% students going to college. 100% going to college means the colleges have lowered their standards.

The current situation is that the public school system (K-12) has one goal: College bound. There is no method while in this system to adapt a student to a trade. Germany does a good job of telling students that they are not college material and then having a non shamed option to pursue (trade or apprenticeships). In America, someone saying they are without a college degree is shamed or looked down upon; unless they are an entrepreneur who makes it big.

Betsy deVos can upset the status quo because in the last twenty years have you seen a change in the education system that would address the individuals who are not college material? Is there a program in place that can upend the crazy bureaucracy that currently exists maintaining the aforementioned binary outcome from K-12.

As an aside, the federal government's education programs create compliance structures that increase rent seeking systems that increase the bureaucratic overhead. An example of this is to look at the increase in administrative personnel at a university for the past twenty years. Most colleges have a tooth to tail ratio increase, high schools have seen administrative bloat significantly increase to take advantage of the grants available.

I support deep cuts in public education funding to fund vouchers for school choice. I'm a left-leaning nerd, and my own personal experiences with public schools as a student and then as a parent have lead me to the conclusion that public schools are dealing with the same issues that General Motors dealt with in the 80's and 90's when trying to reform into a Lean production model:

They unionized while engaging in a model that worked for their respective time periods, and the unions interests don't allow for massive structural changes. Public schools worked very well when intelligent, educated women had almost zero career options other than teaching. They established pay structures that reward length of tenure over any other measures.

An immediate red flag for any institution is a persecution of innovators. This is a common occurrence in public school systems.

I grew up in a poor, rural public school system. Co-workers of mine who are 10 years older learned to program in the public schools they attended in wealthy suburbs. My schools were too busy focusing on teaching the 90% of students who they knew weren't going to college how to work on cars to worry about paying for a computer lab.

Had we had vouchers available to us, we would have done what we had begged the school board to do: create a small computer lab for the handful of students who were decent at math, and then pay the fee for the satellite TV learning program used by other rural schools. But no, they were driven by political demands to instead fund bullshit like trips for the chorus class to competitions.

I finally lost patience with the public schools my son attended last year, and put him in private school. The public school system here had decided that teaching cursive writing was not important, and completely removed it from the curriculum. As a result, my son had to learn cursive in 6th grade at his private school. He learned it in a few weeks of practice at home and while doing his normal course work. Ask yourself what kind of institution decides that cursive is no longer necessary and ensures that the kids won't be able to write a signature when they graduate? I think they did it because choosing to no longer teach something is a quick win.

Additionally, my son's coursework is much, much harder than it was previously. He's actually challenged by his classes now. I was lucky enough to have money to choose his school. His classmates weren't.

I made a point to not assess her efforts. I was only addressing the statement that the current administration didn't care about the current state of education. They obviously do, by hiring her, but whether the changes will work remains to be seen.