John...as you know, I generally support eliminating the US Dept of Education since we need way smaller "government" and it's the state's responsibility to do the educating. We need 50 simultaneous educating experiments to try to discover the best and most effective way to educate.
However, if the Department continues, I would add a 4th important recommendation and that is..."Revamp the goals and criteria for university certifications of K-12 teachers." As you know, universities are easily 90% liberal in their administration and professors. They can't help themselves in restricting their beliefs (largely socialistic/Marxist beliefs entering into the pedagogy of how things are taught. Although curriculum is central to fixing education, fixing pedagogy is a close second.
Don: TY. Nothing has prevented 50 states from doing educating experiments to date. How has that worked out?
Your suggestion for better teacher certrification standards is a major matter that absolutely needs proper attention. Few if any states would have the heft to change such standards, and none have seriously attempted to do so to date. The DOEd definitely would have the power and influence to make such changes.
There is no point in debating metaphors. If I read it correctly your point was that we should keep the US Department of Education. My point is that we should not. My primary reason for disbanding it was to reform the student loan programs which create virtual indentured servitude to unsuspecting 18 to 22 year olds and encourage an ever upward spiral of expenses at Universities. (It was C. Northcote Parkinson who postulated that expenses rise to meet income in bureaucracies.) I prefer the risks of the decisions of fifty different legislatures to that of the club wielding behemoth called the US Department of Education (its sole power derives from the money it doles out as grants and loans which have attached to them policy requirements). The US Dept of Ed is not responsive to any electorate, while a state legislature is.
I haven't the faintest idea what the fifty separate states require of their students. But I do know that it is their sovereign right to create their own standards. Americans often forget that each of the states is a sovereign state and that they have surrendered only the powers granted to the Federal government in the US Constitution. The Tenth Amendment re-enforces this by its reservation to the states and the people any rights and powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government. It is my opinion that, like the issue of gun rights, different states will take different stances. I have no doubt that it will be the same in the field of education. In my mind, we are more likely to have innovation in education by allowing the fifty different state legislatures to regulate it within their borders than allowing a single unaccountable national deep state bureaucracy to decree it from on high.
Chris: I was not spealing in metaphors. I asked you a simple question: show me ONE state that has competent K-12 Science standards. You defer, as if that is an irrelevant question. No the answer says that while 50 states have complete control over their Science standards, ZERO states have competent Science standards. That's just one of MANY such examples. Fixing these 50 states is a hundred times more difficult than fixing the DOEd. The bottom line is that your opinion about getting rid of DOEd is based on inaccurate assumptions — think creatively!
The subtle beauty of the American experiment of fifty states is that each may experiment with its own policies. We have fifty petri dishes. I believe that all learning is trial and error and that ultimately we are all autodidacts. Socrates famously said: "I cannot teach you anything, I can only make you think", or words to that effect. Better that our failures occur in small bunches (where we can readily adapt and learn from our failure) than all at once when imposed upon us by a single all powerful unchecked political elite whose idea of change is to spend more money on a failed policy.
Battles are won by squads and platoons and soldiers on the ground, not by the generals far behind the lines. Leaders of these small units are the seeds from which the generals are grown.
And Yes, I would have fifty state PT boats, quick and agile, where there is the real possibility of innovation and change, rather than one giant all powerful battleship that no one can turn around and which can crush all opposition with a single broadside.
As an old man I tend toward what I understand. The concept of rationality makes more sense than any of the alternatives including the romantic philosophers who were always in favour of divine right but for the minions rather than the royalty.
The Department of Education was taken over and is more The Department of Indoctrination providing information that has been destroying young minds. All connected to it, should be fired! The basics, which were taught for generations...Reading, Writing and Arithmetic was tkan out of the equation...and high school graduates can't read, write or balance checkbooks. In fact, many college graduates are in the same place..
Barbara: I agree that this happened, but careful investigation revels that 90% of the problem is the States. Contrary to what some people think the DOEd has relatively little to do with the curricula. That is almost exclusively the purview of State Boards of Education.
If one allows the Department of Education to survive, there is a risk (I believe substantial) that the next Democratic administration will simply resurrect it back into its current political nature. I believe that the Department should be disbanded and the enabling act repealed. All outstanding loans should be transferred to the Treasury Department.
I would propose that the decision makers consider passing the following legislation:
1. Make student loans fully and completely dischargable in Bankruptcy (currently they are not). There can be no compelling reason to allow sophisticated businesses to discharge loans but saddle 18 year olds with 20 to 30 years of nondischargable debt in a virtual debt's prison or indentured servitude to the loan holder. ( I formerly practiced in Bankruptcy Court).
2. When a student debtor defaults, require as a matter of law that the College or University which originated the loan and who reaps its benefits, become immediately obligated to pay the lender, and become the new holder of the note. Now when the University sues to collect the debt it has to sue an alumus or alumna, with all the bad relations that it will make with that student's classmates. Moreover, the school would now be held accountable for its education.
3. Require that all schools who benefit from students loan have a faculty to administration ratio no less that 5 to 1 to qualify for its students to be eligible for a student loan.
Just some thoughts of how one might return accountability to the system. The fact that the disgraced Harvard president was demoted to her old teaching job at a salary of $900,000.00 shocks the conscience. (Unless I have the figure wrong.)
John: I disagree. Each agency must stand on its own merits. In my experience as a former local school board member, a former adjunct instructor at two colleges, a parent who paid off a fortune of my offsprings' education loans, and a former practicing bankruptcy law attorney, I see no reason to have a National Board of Education made up of political appointees who advance an anti-western marxist agenda and a racially divisive mission.
Chris: So the answer is instead to have 50 State Boards of Education made up of political appointees who advance an anti-western marxist agenda and a racially divisive mission? That's the alternative.
"Regulating" what students are (and are not) taught is NO BUSINESS of the Federal Government. It is not within the scope of their Constitutional authority, and for anyone who has the audacity to say, "What HARM could it possibly do?", just LOOK! at the results - -
What curriculum is empathized may vary from community to community, and State to State. What is and is not taught is the province of local communities, as is the percentage of tax revenue devoted to education. That revenue does NOT have to be filtered through the Federal sieve before reaching school districts.
Personally, I do not WANT my children and grandchildren taught in what has been called "The California School of Charm". If that is what other people want for their children, they can place them under the wing of the California school system.
When Washington DC figures out how to balance a budget, they can come and talk to me. Until then, I will be pleased to see them get their nose OUT of public education.
MadChimp: You are confusing matters. By-and-large our current system is made up by 50 states calling almost all of the curriculum, etc shots. The end result is an unmitigated disaster.
The DOEd would not be in charge of curricula — after certain basics are met by States. For example, the DOEd ahould declare that Critical Thinking is a priority. Then DOEd would say that any State that does not properly teach Critical Thinking would be ineligible for certain federal funds.
I agree with your recommendations. I would like to add:
1. Abandon the implementation of DEI, CRT (critical race theory and culturally responsive teaching), and SEL.
2. Less focus on conceptual understanding and more focus on procedural learning in mathematics. The current focus on conceptional understanding spends more time on multiple methods to introduce a new concept, sometimes ridiculously roundabout method, than working on problems. There is no evidence that this works and makes students perform better in mathematics.
3. When implementing curriculum with data-driven or evidence-based decision, the decision makers should be required to research the data and evidence they referenced. For example, I read a metanalysis on the implementation of SEL. The conclusion is not even consistent with the data and result they show. But the conclusion is used in the arguments when SEL is adopted.
Whenever I think of the DOE, the song "Tobacco Road" pops into my head, the refrain of which goes like this..."Blow it up, start all over again." Correlation doesn't prove cause, but the decline of student achievement accelerated after the DOE was created by Saint Jimmy of the Legumes. It's nothing but a bastion of wokeness that we can do without today like we did without it before Saint Jimmy was overcome with his immaculate vision in Plains. Trump has a pen, don't he? Respectfully submitted, JOHNNY "TOO BAD" ROSEMOND
John...as you know, I generally support eliminating the US Dept of Education since we need way smaller "government" and it's the state's responsibility to do the educating. We need 50 simultaneous educating experiments to try to discover the best and most effective way to educate.
However, if the Department continues, I would add a 4th important recommendation and that is..."Revamp the goals and criteria for university certifications of K-12 teachers." As you know, universities are easily 90% liberal in their administration and professors. They can't help themselves in restricting their beliefs (largely socialistic/Marxist beliefs entering into the pedagogy of how things are taught. Although curriculum is central to fixing education, fixing pedagogy is a close second.
Don: TY. Nothing has prevented 50 states from doing educating experiments to date. How has that worked out?
Your suggestion for better teacher certrification standards is a major matter that absolutely needs proper attention. Few if any states would have the heft to change such standards, and none have seriously attempted to do so to date. The DOEd definitely would have the power and influence to make such changes.
There is no point in debating metaphors. If I read it correctly your point was that we should keep the US Department of Education. My point is that we should not. My primary reason for disbanding it was to reform the student loan programs which create virtual indentured servitude to unsuspecting 18 to 22 year olds and encourage an ever upward spiral of expenses at Universities. (It was C. Northcote Parkinson who postulated that expenses rise to meet income in bureaucracies.) I prefer the risks of the decisions of fifty different legislatures to that of the club wielding behemoth called the US Department of Education (its sole power derives from the money it doles out as grants and loans which have attached to them policy requirements). The US Dept of Ed is not responsive to any electorate, while a state legislature is.
I haven't the faintest idea what the fifty separate states require of their students. But I do know that it is their sovereign right to create their own standards. Americans often forget that each of the states is a sovereign state and that they have surrendered only the powers granted to the Federal government in the US Constitution. The Tenth Amendment re-enforces this by its reservation to the states and the people any rights and powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government. It is my opinion that, like the issue of gun rights, different states will take different stances. I have no doubt that it will be the same in the field of education. In my mind, we are more likely to have innovation in education by allowing the fifty different state legislatures to regulate it within their borders than allowing a single unaccountable national deep state bureaucracy to decree it from on high.
Chris: I was not spealing in metaphors. I asked you a simple question: show me ONE state that has competent K-12 Science standards. You defer, as if that is an irrelevant question. No the answer says that while 50 states have complete control over their Science standards, ZERO states have competent Science standards. That's just one of MANY such examples. Fixing these 50 states is a hundred times more difficult than fixing the DOEd. The bottom line is that your opinion about getting rid of DOEd is based on inaccurate assumptions — think creatively!
The subtle beauty of the American experiment of fifty states is that each may experiment with its own policies. We have fifty petri dishes. I believe that all learning is trial and error and that ultimately we are all autodidacts. Socrates famously said: "I cannot teach you anything, I can only make you think", or words to that effect. Better that our failures occur in small bunches (where we can readily adapt and learn from our failure) than all at once when imposed upon us by a single all powerful unchecked political elite whose idea of change is to spend more money on a failed policy.
Battles are won by squads and platoons and soldiers on the ground, not by the generals far behind the lines. Leaders of these small units are the seeds from which the generals are grown.
And Yes, I would have fifty state PT boats, quick and agile, where there is the real possibility of innovation and change, rather than one giant all powerful battleship that no one can turn around and which can crush all opposition with a single broadside.
Chris: My apology but what you are saying is pie-in-the-sky stuff. The facts belie your pollyanna assessment.
For example, show me a SINGLE state that has a competent set of K-12 Science Standards. Just one!
As an old man I tend toward what I understand. The concept of rationality makes more sense than any of the alternatives including the romantic philosophers who were always in favour of divine right but for the minions rather than the royalty.
The Department of Education was taken over and is more The Department of Indoctrination providing information that has been destroying young minds. All connected to it, should be fired! The basics, which were taught for generations...Reading, Writing and Arithmetic was tkan out of the equation...and high school graduates can't read, write or balance checkbooks. In fact, many college graduates are in the same place..
Barbara: I agree that this happened, but careful investigation revels that 90% of the problem is the States. Contrary to what some people think the DOEd has relatively little to do with the curricula. That is almost exclusively the purview of State Boards of Education.
If one allows the Department of Education to survive, there is a risk (I believe substantial) that the next Democratic administration will simply resurrect it back into its current political nature. I believe that the Department should be disbanded and the enabling act repealed. All outstanding loans should be transferred to the Treasury Department.
I would propose that the decision makers consider passing the following legislation:
1. Make student loans fully and completely dischargable in Bankruptcy (currently they are not). There can be no compelling reason to allow sophisticated businesses to discharge loans but saddle 18 year olds with 20 to 30 years of nondischargable debt in a virtual debt's prison or indentured servitude to the loan holder. ( I formerly practiced in Bankruptcy Court).
2. When a student debtor defaults, require as a matter of law that the College or University which originated the loan and who reaps its benefits, become immediately obligated to pay the lender, and become the new holder of the note. Now when the University sues to collect the debt it has to sue an alumus or alumna, with all the bad relations that it will make with that student's classmates. Moreover, the school would now be held accountable for its education.
3. Require that all schools who benefit from students loan have a faculty to administration ratio no less that 5 to 1 to qualify for its students to be eligible for a student loan.
Just some thoughts of how one might return accountability to the system. The fact that the disgraced Harvard president was demoted to her old teaching job at a salary of $900,000.00 shocks the conscience. (Unless I have the figure wrong.)
Chris: With that belief system, it follows that it makes no sense to do anything in the EPA, FDA, etc., etc.
John: I disagree. Each agency must stand on its own merits. In my experience as a former local school board member, a former adjunct instructor at two colleges, a parent who paid off a fortune of my offsprings' education loans, and a former practicing bankruptcy law attorney, I see no reason to have a National Board of Education made up of political appointees who advance an anti-western marxist agenda and a racially divisive mission.
Chris: So the answer is instead to have 50 State Boards of Education made up of political appointees who advance an anti-western marxist agenda and a racially divisive mission? That's the alternative.
Clerly it is better to fix the one than fifty!
Dept of Education
Get rid of it.
"Regulating" what students are (and are not) taught is NO BUSINESS of the Federal Government. It is not within the scope of their Constitutional authority, and for anyone who has the audacity to say, "What HARM could it possibly do?", just LOOK! at the results - -
What curriculum is empathized may vary from community to community, and State to State. What is and is not taught is the province of local communities, as is the percentage of tax revenue devoted to education. That revenue does NOT have to be filtered through the Federal sieve before reaching school districts.
Personally, I do not WANT my children and grandchildren taught in what has been called "The California School of Charm". If that is what other people want for their children, they can place them under the wing of the California school system.
When Washington DC figures out how to balance a budget, they can come and talk to me. Until then, I will be pleased to see them get their nose OUT of public education.
MadChimp: You are confusing matters. By-and-large our current system is made up by 50 states calling almost all of the curriculum, etc shots. The end result is an unmitigated disaster.
The DOEd would not be in charge of curricula — after certain basics are met by States. For example, the DOEd ahould declare that Critical Thinking is a priority. Then DOEd would say that any State that does not properly teach Critical Thinking would be ineligible for certain federal funds.
I agree with your recommendations. I would like to add:
1. Abandon the implementation of DEI, CRT (critical race theory and culturally responsive teaching), and SEL.
2. Less focus on conceptual understanding and more focus on procedural learning in mathematics. The current focus on conceptional understanding spends more time on multiple methods to introduce a new concept, sometimes ridiculously roundabout method, than working on problems. There is no evidence that this works and makes students perform better in mathematics.
3. When implementing curriculum with data-driven or evidence-based decision, the decision makers should be required to research the data and evidence they referenced. For example, I read a metanalysis on the implementation of SEL. The conclusion is not even consistent with the data and result they show. But the conclusion is used in the arguments when SEL is adopted.
The National science Teachers association have 4 of our published high schools textbooks for general and environmental science. Easy to understand for 10th grade. Every patriot should have one of these on their coffee table. https://rosedogbookstore.com/climate-crisis-changed-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-ipcc-reports-are-deliberate-science-fiction-1/ Also President Elect Trump is expected to order all high schools to teach it starting next fall. cctruth.org
Whenever I think of the DOE, the song "Tobacco Road" pops into my head, the refrain of which goes like this..."Blow it up, start all over again." Correlation doesn't prove cause, but the decline of student achievement accelerated after the DOE was created by Saint Jimmy of the Legumes. It's nothing but a bastion of wokeness that we can do without today like we did without it before Saint Jimmy was overcome with his immaculate vision in Plains. Trump has a pen, don't he? Respectfully submitted, JOHNNY "TOO BAD" ROSEMOND
These 3 recommendations are accurate.
Thank you.