Open letter from Patrick Kearney of the Johnston Community School District goes viral/national (live, law)

[thenewtexan]

Originally Posted by capitalcityguy

It is not rocket science and what we've been doing hasn't been working well for ALL students.

...and you think a billionaire with absolutely no experience in educating students will help ALL students. Fair enough. We'll see.

[capitalcityguy]

Originally Posted by thenewtexan

...and you think a billionaire with absolutely no experience in educating students will help ALL students. Fair enough. We'll see.

Can we leave off the fact that she is a billionaire? This keeps getting mentioned and it comes off as simple class envy and doesn't either prove or disprove anything.

She is not going to in the classroom educating students. That isn't the skill set needed.

You're correct. We'll eventually see.

[thenewtexan]

Originally Posted by capitalcityguy

Can we leave off the fact that she is a billionaire? This keeps getting mentioned and it comes off as simple class envy and doesn't either prove or disprove anything.

She is not going to in the classroom educating students. That isn't the skill set needed.

You're correct. We'll eventually see.

If she wasn't a billionaire, she wouldn't have been appointed. Everyone with a single digit IQ knows it. She's just a business woman with absolutely NO EXPERIENCE in education or public service. That is a fact. Sound familiar?

I'm just glad someone has publicly called her out on it.

[capitalcityguy]

Submitted for consideration as seems relevant to conversation:

Democrats opposed to school choice often claim that charter schools and vouchers siphon taxpayer money from traditional public schools. That’s rarely true because choice schools typically spend less per child. And now a study shows that Milwaukee’s landmark voucher program will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

School Choice Saves Money - WSJ

[thenewtexan]

Originally Posted by capitalcityguy

Submitted for consideration as seems relevant to conversation:



School Choice Saves Money - WSJ

School vouchers are unconstitutional. My tax dollars should not be funding schools owner by churches, and she is a proponent of that. She's also a proponent of charter schools, which have a record of failing in her home state of Michigan. The funniest thing about it is, even the far right conservatives acknowledge it.

Politico: Betsy DeVos

[atler8]

I still have not heard one iota of how anything that Ms. Devos champions would be of general or specific benefit to school systems in Iowa & I have asked for such feedback here more than once.
Furthermore, I want to know how the delivery of what she wants could be practically applied in a state such as Iowa.
Addressing another aspect of her selection, I believe that the fact that her status as a billionaire is germaine given that the overall selections for Trump's cabinet & brain trust (?) have been dubbed the "billionaire cabinet". How, exactly are the most super-rich selections among Trump's choices poised to help working class Americans given their own personal histories?
Forbes Welcome

Among the nuggets in the link below, find a quote from New York hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson of Kase Capital Management who said of working class Americans, "I think Donald Trump conned them." And, "I can take glee in that."
Hedge fund managers admit it: They’re delighted that Donald Trump “conned America” - Salon.com

Is this what you Trump supporters & defenders here expected and is it realistically a part of the much talked about "draining the swamp"?

[capitalcityguy]

I didn't vote for him and I'm not here to defend him. My whole argument during election season was that I thought Clinton was a crook and Trump was a con man.

Election is over now though.

I'm in wait and see mode.

[capitalcityguy]

...I'll add this too. I'm not motivated to expend a lot of mental or emotional energy on a cabinet position pick for a department that has no business being a part of the Federal government. The Dept of Ed didn't exist prior to the mid 1970's. We need to get away from this top-down mentality where power and money and thus influence, is too heavily weighted towards bureaucrats in DC affecting and controlling our lives.

I think one sliver lining if anything of the Trump election is that it may finally wake some people up. i.e....yeah, executive orders, more regulations, more Fed Government depts, etc are great when your guy is controlling things...but no so much when the other guy in the chair. The Democrats created the Dept of Education...now they must live with the consequences of it.

The Founders never intended for the Federal government to have this type of grip on our everyday lives. It is time to divest in DC and send the power back to the states and cities and ultimately closer to the citizenry of the US!

[atler8]

Originally Posted by capitalcityguy

...I'll add this too. I'm not motivated to expend a lot of mental or emotional energy on a cabinet position pick for a department that has no business being a part of the Federal government. The Dept of Ed didn't exist prior to the mid 1970's. We need to get away from this top-down mentality where power and money and thus influence, is too heavily weighted towards bureaucrats in DC affecting and controlling our lives.

I think one sliver lining if anything of the Trump election is that it may finally wake some people up. i.e....yeah, executive orders, more regulations, more Fed Government depts, etc are great when your guy is controlling things...but no so much when the other guy in the chair. The Democrats created the Dept of Education...now they must live with the consequences of it.

The Founders never intended for the Federal government to have this type of grip on our everyday lives. It is time to divest in DC and send the power back to the states and cities and ultimately closer to the citizenry of the US!

The first Department of Education was created in 1867 by Republican President Andrew Johnson & it functioned at that time as a non-cabinet department which was assigned with the collecting of "...information on schools and teaching to help states establish effective school systems."
Over time the department morphed in title but generally retained it's initial purpose & in 1953 under Republican President Eisenhower, it became a part of the new cabinet level Department of Health, Education & Welfare.
Under President Carter in 1979, it became separate unto itself as the Department of Education and it's current size marks it as the far smallest of the cabinet level departments.
At the basic U.S. Department of Education page at Wikipedia under the "Functions" heading, find this material:

Unlike the systems of most other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized, and the federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curricula or educational standards (with the recent exceptions of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Common Core State Standards Initiative). This has been left to state and local school districts. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control.

Reforms certainly should be made to the department but I disagree that de-establishing it is the right thing to do.
One thing I'd change is how readily input or influence on that department can come in from the outside, such as in the form of "lobbying" by textbook companies to curry favor for their own offerings.
Another is the test-obsession methods of current Department head Arne Duncan. To be fair to him, he's just the latest in a series of heads who have grown more attached to the more testing is better proposition & George Bush's department head choices were no better. Witness the now maligned "No Child Left behind" legislation.
As for state or local control, it all sounds good but citizens must be vigilant. As for example, I advocated recently for the defeat here in Georgia of a state-led, clearly top/down educational power grab amendment put on the ballot by our conservative Republican state legislature. Happily, the amendment was soundly defeated.

MA, GA residents choose students, public schools over charter schools - Education Votes

The perils of too much state influence in education can be problematic in other ways as is confirmed by the years of embarrassing controversy over control of textbook material in Texas which have been well-documented. The inference is that a state cannot necessarily be counted upon as being a better instrument for establishing educational policy.

Texas: We don't need academics to fact-check our textbooks (+video) - CSMonitor.com

[atler8]

Under questioning from Minnesota Senator Al Franken during her hearing on Capitol Hill, things did not go particularly well for Ms. Devos.

Betsy Devos Embarrassed by Sen. Al Franken

Senator Elizabeth Warren also had her turn for questions to Ms Devos.
At one point Senator Warren said to Ms. Devos: "If confirmed, you will be the cop on the beat."
In view of the Trump University law suit & it's settlement against Trump's interests, the round of questioning on the point was of vital importance & the answer given did little to inspire confidence.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BcocZTtdzM