When I introduced Senator Sanders (virtually) at the UTLA Leadership Conference, I said that his K-12 education plan was the best one that any candidate had put forward.
Here is his Thurgood Marshall Plan.
Senator Sanders focuses on federal action to:
1. Reduce segregation.
2. Dramatically improve federal funding for the schools that enroll the neediest students.
3. Endorsed the NAACP call to ban for-profit charters and to implement a moratorium on public funding of private charter schools until charters become fully accountable and do no fiscal harm to public schools.
I have not endorsed any candidate. However, I would like to see every candidate spell out their K-12 education plan, as Senator Sanders has done.
To my knowledge, neither Senator Warren nor Senator Harris has released a plan for K-12 education. I will review them when and if they do.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Maybe if the candidates had a clue as to what makes LEARNING happen, they might know what needs to be done, and actually talk about it— and not just about ‘segregation’ but the actual ways in which we MUST reach all our kid — what must be in place for ANY and ALL learning to occur.
Everyone talks about education as if they know what works.
No one would opine endlessly bout the practice of medicine, what doctors must do, as if they knew more than a doctor. BUT, when it comes to what MUST BE PRESENT for a child’s brain to absorb knowledge and apply it to skills everyone has an opinion and adds chatter to the conversation, even as the power elite laugh and demolish the funding that makes it possible to have smaller classes, great teachers — and the materials necessary.
Schools need to return to the genuine PRACTICE of teaching (pedagogy) which has as its premise that classroom practitioners ENABLE AND FACILITATE THE LEARNING OF SKILLS & INFORMATION (both) with BEST PRACTICE, which they have learned through education and experience.
NO one talks to the public about what actual learning looks like, and what is required!
All of this was the purpose of the Pew research in the nineties, on The Principles of Learning, It resulted in the volumes of real Performance Standards… and it DISAPPEARED so Gates ,Pearson and the power elite could spread their Orwellian doctrine of ‘choice”(I.e Charter schools.)
Hey Bernie…talk to Susan Lee Schwartz… she knows what she needs to get a kid to do the work, and what is needed for her professional practice to flourish.
Hey Diane…why not put up that photo of Bernie and me in the Madison Year book..and add it to this comment.
strong intro, key to why the legislators and presidents and so many other leadership positions keep hurting education rather than helping it: maybe if they had a CLUE as to what makes learning happen…
Bernie also calls for free tuition at public universities. I am not sure why he wishes to make the relatively wealthy even wealthier. At the University of Michigan, a great public university, here is the breakdown of students by family income:
9.3% of the students come from the top 1% of income earning families
49% of the the students come from the top 10% of income earning families
66% of the students come from the top 20% of income hearing families
and
3.6% come from the bottom 20% of income earning families.
Why should the bottom 80% of income earning families pay to educate the children of the top 20%?
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/university-of-michigan-ann-arbor
Did you ever consider that more students from the middle are likely to choose U. of Michigan if it is tuition free.
You just explained that only 1/3 of the students are from families who are not in the top 20% of income. You talked about the students in the bottom 20%, but that is just a small number of students as you point out.
But there are lots of students whose families are neither in the top 20% or the bottom 20% — solidly middle class who find the cost of the U. of Michigan tuition to be very high for their income. That is 60% of all families — including all of those with middle class incomes. How many of those students from that 60% would attend U. of Michigan instead of a lower cost community college or a different state university that has offered an incentive in scholarship money that an affluent family could easily turn down, but is much harder for a middle class family to turn down?
The statistics you point out demonstrate that high priced state universities tend to have wealthier students but that could simply be the effect of the higher cost of attendance for many middle class/lower middle class students.
Social Security and Medicare are for all Americans rich or poor, that way everyone has a stake in these essential programs. If you exclude the rich then the program becomes a welfare project which will be chipped away at by the right wing legislators. Thus tuition free public universities should be open to all regardless of income. The rich can always opt for the prestige universities.
Joe,
This is a giant gift to the upper middle class. They send their children to college. They will stop opting for prestigious private universities and opt for prestigious public universities. Free tuition at the University of Michigan is the most valuable to a family that would be paying $250,000 at Wash U. They save $250,000. The poorest students at the University of Michigan will see little or no savings from this plan because they already pay little or no tuition.
The problem can be solved as it was during the French Revolution and with the fate of Czar Nicholas’ family.
The alternative is to reduce income inequality by enacting higher taxes on the wealthy.
TE, NYCPSP, Joe Jersey,
TE, a feat like free UM could not be accomplished by raising taxes on mid/ wkg classes to “support” free tuition for the wealthy. Any moves along these lines can only come from raising taxes on wealthy individuals & corporations, which as a Social Dem type is what Sanders is all about.
But, NYCPSP, your viewpoint is complicated by the fact that UM is not only expensive, but rather selective at 29% [in same company as Grinnell, Colby, U of VA, Bucknell, Baruch et al]. There’s no getting around the stats connecting higher academic achievement w/ higher income/ privilege. There are no doubt more mid/wkg class students w/the acad strength to survive at a sink-or-swim place like UM– if free tuition– but not enough to revolutionize the stats TE cites.
Joe Jersey, Soc Sec & Medicare are not a direct parallel for the same reason. Everybody gets old, everybody gets sick, but only some need or are capable of completing a UM degree. However, education of some sort beyond high school probably does qualify as a universal need/ public good today. This already recognized in the social democracies of Europe & Scandinavia, virtually all of which provide tertiary ed– including every step from vocational training thru advanced degrees– as part of public ed.
I’m not sure I see Sanders’ “free state universities” as workable; what’s needed is public tertiary ed, period. Don’t know if we can get there step by step– & if we could, tuition-free state ed might work differently than we imagine it– if poorly managed, might even be a chaotic free-for-all, w/selective schs jumping ship & privatizing. OTOH, if ALL tertiary ed were public, there would be room for a wide range of selectivity. Hey, the Sorbonne is public! It hasn’t really existed as La Sorbonne since ’68, but the University of Paris contains all the old pieces. You can do a straight 1-subject bachelors’– not selective– or go for an interdisciplinary double major– very selective.
Bethree5,
What you describe is something similar to what universities do now, though I admit the privates do a better job than the publics. Universities set a high tuition sticker price that the wealthiest pay, and lower the price for students from lower income families. The public universities could behave more like the privates, increasing the tuition that high income households pay, perhaps even eliminating the tuition that low income households pay.
Diane,
We are finished with being Finnish. Finland is a bunch of socialist commies who live well and with dignity. It would never fly in the rigged – I meant “rugged” – individualism so pervasive in the United States Slaughterhouses of America-sheeple.
People must vote against their interests or else the ruling class don’t get to acquire more. And people need to believe what makes sense to them, given their limited everything.
We’re not Finland. God, we’re not even New Jersey!
We already have tuition free (tax funded) K-12 education open to all, rich, poor, the middle class, or whatever class. Of course the wealthy are paying more in property taxes because, you know, they are richer.
NYC Public,
I did consider that more students from the middle might choose Michigan, but I don’t think that will have a large impact because more students who might have attended the University of Chicago or Wash U and pay $250,000 in tuition might instead choose Michigan and pay $0 in tuition.
If you want to help the middle income people, help the middle income people and don’t help the rich. Expand Pell Grant eligibility, expand the amount of the Pell grant. Free college tuition rivals the Republican tax cut in being a gift to the relatively wealthy.
All higher education in Finland is tuition-free
“Community Civics and Rural Life” published in 1920.”Education is the largest single item of expense in a government (except in time of war)”. “Many of the states support higher educational institutions such as state universities at which attendance is free for citizens.”
In the past 60 years the nation’s wealthy got richer, more selfish, short-sighted and greedy. And, the people creating GDP got poorer and had the door of opportunity shut on them. In the past 30 years, those responsible have been the GOP and Neo-liberals.
Bernie in 2020.
Perhaps the Finish people don’t care that they are making the wealthy wealthier.
“Perhaps” te shouldn’t be teaching. No, he definitely shouldn’t be. His students are being cheated out of an education by an ideologue.
The ratio of the average income of the richest 10% to the poorest 10% is 5.6 in Finland. It’s 18.5 in the U.S.
Linda,
The richest 10% of the population make up 50% of the student body at the University of Michigan. Letting society pay for the education of the richest studentsbis socialism for the wealthy. Do you think that Bernie does not understand this? Of course he does.
The concrete box with no abstraction is your mental prison, te.
Bernie’s policies create a middle class out of the poor and rich.
I love Bernie’s position and it is far better than the position of any other candidate running in the primary when it comes to K-12 education (except de Blasio who isn’t a viable candidate although he did straight out say he would eliminate charters period.)
However, I would feel a lot more confident if we got some clarification about #3. It is fantastic that Bernie supports the NAACP’s moratorium, but I wish I better understood who Bernie believes demonstrates the type of “accountability” he wants. Because the SUNY Charter Institute is often pointed out by pro-charter progressives as the ideal oversight organization to provide “accountability” with some of its “good non-profit” charters supposedly performing near miracles helping all students in failing schools become high performing scholars. The establishment of private charters run by CEOs who compete to teach only the easiest to teach of the at-risk students needs to stop, or at the very least it needs to be recognized as allowing private entities to cherry pick the highest performing at-risk students while refusing to teach the rest.
When it comes to health care, Bernie and his team brilliantly recognize that if you allow private health insurance companies to cover the healthiest patients and dump them when they are no longer profitable to cover, then it causes all sorts of problems for any Medicare for all plan. Bernie and his team do not want a system that privatizes the profits of offering health insurance only to the healthiest Americans — and that includes even the supposed “non-profit” private insurance companies — while socializing the costs of insuring those patients if they get too sick, along with all the patients who the insurance companies won’t cover in the first place.
I would love to hear straight out whether or not Bernie Sanders and his team understands that the same thing is true of charters. Do they understand what is wrong with Success Academy and KIPP continuing to cherry pick the students they want to teach, or does Bernie continue to believe those are the types of “good public charters” that meet the definition of “accountability” in his plan.
Bernie’s plan is still the best plan of any of the candidates. But it is too vague in the areas where the entire justification for a separate privatized charter system should be questioned or at least very closely examined.
^^In other words:
I do not believe there is any advantage offered by any privately operated non-profit charter that is overseen by a private board appointed by people interested in promoting the privatization of public education that could not also be achieved by turning it into a lottery magnet choice school that is overseen by the public school system. And that is why I wish Bernie would run on a policy of “choice not privatization”.
I agree that there is no “advantage offered by any privately operated non-profit charter that is overseen by a private board appointed by people interested in promoting the privatization of public education that could not also be achieved by turning it into a lottery magnet choice school that is overseen by the public school system.” But how similar is the former to the latter?
There is obviously some advantage to the public w/a district magnet: it’s transparent & its value can be assessed. Provided there’s an elected sch bd responsive to public druthers, it won’t even be opened unless all agree there’s a need, & should be able to be closed if things turn out badly [academically, or for district finances]. But it could be a slippery slope. Magnets have to be acknowledged as “school choice,” & they bring some of the same problems. In fact, if you open too many of them, aren’t you essentially re-creating the same issues of selective [“cherry-picking”] options draining away the talented, gifted, non-LD, non-ESL from the zoned schools?
NYCPSP I agree completely on the parallel between cherry-picking/ pushing out students [charters], & cherry-picking/ pushing out customers [priv ins]. The whole concept of “insurance” is destroyed as soon as you stop spreading costs across the whole population spectrum.
Auto insurance: this craap started when ins cos were allowed to raise rates on anybody who got in an accident. The ludicrous unfairness of that resulted in “no-fault” accidents (w/max damages regularly raised). Then they started having to establish special hi-risk pools. Meanwhile, premiums keep going up. All that, because govt (a)allowed auto ins to get big & clout-y, then (b)couldn’t stand up to their clout, so (c)let it devolve into a bunch of little fiefdoms nickling&diming everybody to death. Public good disappeared. “Insurance” concept destroyed.
Health insurance: exact same scenario. Raising rates on or excluding anybody getting “too sick” [= making claims that cut into their profits], meanwhile premiums keep going up. Public good disappeared. “Insurance” concept destroyed.
Charter schools [&, obviously, voucher schools] are precisely the same phenomenon. School taxes are supposed to serve the entire population. But now, state govts are allowed to [incentivized by fed govt to!] exclude those who don’t “perform well enough” by shutting down their schools, meanwhile opening little privatized fiefdoms feeding from the same trough but costing taxpayers more in kickbacks [excuse me, campaign donations] to legislators, advertising budgets, admin salaries, & those priceless benefits to corp funders, pub sector union-busting, & free consumer-data-mining of multiple stdzd tests. JQ Public gets in return cheapo unqualified teachers at privatized schs, concentration of hardest-to-teach at pubschs [high-risk pools will be next!], canned/ computerized/ diminished curriculum everywhere. Public good disappeared. “Public Education” concept destroyed.
I think Sanders understands that he needs to consult with and listen to experts not just on education but on every issue because he says quite explicitly that he does not have all the answers on what are often complex issues.
See his interview with Joe Rogan
I think this is THE most important quality that a President can have: the ability to hire experts and actually listen to what they say.
“I think this is THE most important quality that a President can have: the ability to hire experts and actually listen to what they say.”
I agree with that in principle but in practice I also believe (or at least hope) that a candidate should have some basic understanding of the overall issues beyond listening to the people he hires.
Unfortunately, the “experts” that Obama hired on education were not very good and sadly, he listened to what they said so much that he seemed to shut out the voices of the “non-experts” — i.e. parents and teachers who were actually experiencing what his policies were doing. Because “the experts” told him what to believe.
And I also fear that when it comes to K-12 public education, Sen. Elizabeth Warren also believes in her heart that she is hiring experts and listening to what they are saying. I truly believe that Sen. Warren is absolutely trying to do what is best, but her “experts” are not actually expert and she needs to really take more of a complete dive into understanding what the problems are with those “good public charters” that so many DFER Dems support.
I actually think it is possible for a candidate to understand the issues and still take the position he or she takes to support charters, but the justification and framing would be different. If it was clear that charters were set up to teach the most motivated students and only the most motivated students — and even those students could be drummed out if a charter decided they were not interested in teaching them — the conversation about how to address the problems in public education would be very, very different.
I know de Blasio is the progressives’ favorite punching bag, but the reason I like him is that he gets that. He had limited success in stopping the expansion of charters, but one thing that de Blasio did was run the NYC DOE as a person who understood that charters cherry picked kids who are easiest to teach and they have absolutely no useful or positive effect on the REAL problems of public education — which is teaching the students “stuck” in failing public schools who need a lot more than “no excuses” and a newly minted college grad to succeed. And de Blasio’s policies — even when they didn’t work — were in service to that reality and that is why I supported him so strongly. Because I saw almost no politicians who acknowledged that reality because they were all giving lots of praise to “good public charters” as if those charters were working miracles!
Contrast de Blasio’s position with Mayor Bloomberg, who pushed the false narrative that these charters were doing something special that public schools could not, and his entire education agenda was in service to that false narrative.
I hope that this primary season puts an end to the false narrative that charters do anything that could not be done by any magnet public school that selects only the students who they want to teach.
^^^I wanted to add that I am watching the link you posted and Bernie is excellent. Still haven’t heard anything about education yet, but he is making intelligent and reasonable points. Thank you for posting the link.
Senator Sanders understands the importance of public works and services, and understands that market forces have detrimental effects on public services. He likely won’t appoint people with business related conflicts of interest to positions of public service. He’s right, capitalism is for food trucks, not public schools. He doesn’t expect any billionaires to give him rides on their yachts after holding office, so he doesn’t intend to keep the revolving door the rich installed decades ago between the White House, and foundations and corporations. That’s significant.
And hopefully without putting too much faith into polls, they all have Sanders or Biden beating Trump by equally wide margins. The other candidates do not poll at all well against the toddler president.
Democrats try to avoid discussing public education, and the “softball” questions from the media enable them to skirt the issue. This was clear even at the NEA meeting. O’Rourke was the only one asked about public schools and charter support, and it seemed to me that O’Rourke was the one that wanted to clarify his position. Democrats have gotten away with their “Don’t ask; don’t tell” game that allows them to avoid details on their education policies for far too long. They would much rather tantalize teachers with promises of higher salaries than clearly explain their position on public education and private charter schools as Bernie has done.
The DFERS need to GO AWAY.
And…CAP too!
By the way my son just told me about a podcast on which Bernie Sanders is a guest. The podcast is from Joe Rogan, and apparently it is a popular podcast. I just looked it on YouTube. Bernie is candidly responding to questions. This is a great vehicle for him. He comes across as very intelligent, thoughtful and informed. He may be older, but his mind is agile. If you want to see a calmer more thoughtful Bernie, listen to him on this podcast. You can listen to his responses to various questions without being a member.
retired teacher,
That podcast sounds like the podcast SomeDAM poet linked to above.
It’s really good! Nice to see a long and thoughtful conversation about ideas.
Go Bernie.
Feeling the Bern, here!
He wrote the damn bill!
YES!!!
Ahead in the polls!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/12/bernie-sanders-acing-electability-test-another-poll-shows-senator-crushing-trump%3famp
I wish there was a way to ignore all these meaningless polls about a far away general election and how the nominee would fare against Trump before they are actually the nominee and subject to real attacks. We should all support the primary candidate we want based on what positions they hold and whether the ones in which we are in agreement with are most important to us and whether we are willing to compromise on the issues that are not. Not on how they would do against Trump.
I saw a CNN article 4 years ago from the summer of 2015 looking at polling, too.
“Looking ahead to the general election, Clinton continues to hold significant leads over Bush (54% Clinton to 41% Bush) and Christie (56% Clinton to 37% Christie). She has also opened up wide leads over Rubio (56% Clinton to 39% Rubio) and Walker (57% Clinton to 38% Walker), as those two have slipped among independents. Clinton’s clearest advantage, however, is over Donald Trump, 59% say they would vote for Clinton if the 2016 match-up were between her and Trump, 34% say they would back Trump.”
I wish everyone recognized that the right wing propaganda machine does not go into full swing until it has a nominee to destroy. At that point that machine — as it did in 2016 with help from Russia and the Facebook data that Peter Thiel’s (then on the board of Facebook) employees at Palantir helped Cambridge Analytica illegally use — will work to destroy the nominee whether that nominee is Bernie, Biden, Harris, or anyone else. And those polls will change. No one running against a right wing Republican is immune from an attempt by the right wing to smear their character.
The only time that hasn’t worked is the election after a reckoning where the media’s work to help promoting the right wing lies against the Democrat that directly led to that Democrat being defeated were widely attacked and the media was so embarrassed by the strong criticism that they did better.
In other words, after Michael Dukakis — with a huge lead over Bush 1 — was destroyed during the fall campaign by right wing propaganda campaign led by Lee Atwater — the media was embarrassed and when Bill Clinton ran in the next election, the media refused to give credibility to the right wing propaganda against Clinton. (There was a ton of anti-Clinton propaganda, but it was correctly characterized as right wing propaganda instead of given any credibility at all.)
But when Al Gore ran, the media was back up to its old tricks. Just like they did to Dukakis in 1988, the media treated the attacks on Gore as if it was all true — emphasizing Gore’s “penchant for lying and exaggerating” in every article. And they didn’t learn their lesson when they did the same with the “cowardly, lying” John Kerry propaganda that they also repeated as if it had any credibility instead of calling it out as the far right propaganda it was.
But they learned their lesson with Obama and like they did in 1992, the media refused to jump in and amplify and give credibility to the right wing attacks that occurred after he was the designated candidate. The American public did not hear nonstop: “Obama, who so many Democrats worry is a terrorist sympathizer and hates America, is campaigning in Florida today” or “Obama, who mainstream Democrats worry hates people who “cling to religion”, is making a speech about the economy today in Ohio.”
But it was back to normal in the 2016 general election, with every right wing character attack on the Democrat treated as a serious problem by the mainstream media, instead of calling out those dishonest mischaracterizations as the right wing propaganda it was.
I have no idea if the winner of the 2020 primary will get the Bill Clinton/Obama treatment — where right wing lying propaganda is called out for what it is and ignored — or if the winner will get the Dukakis/Gore/Kerry/HRC treatment, where the right wing propaganda is emphasized nonstop and given credibility by a media trying to prove it is “unbiased” so that the public “knows” that the Democrat running is dishonest and greedy and they shouldn’t believe a word of the fake promises made.
But whoever wins the nomination will get that treatment. The question is whether the disaffected supporters of the other primary candidates will help amplify those lies or if they will support a nominee who has the imperfections that every human has but is in no way the mischaracterized corrupt and untrustworthy person that the right wing wants voters to believe.
Polls have Sanders beating Trump. In. North. Carolina.
“Looking ahead to the general election, Clinton continues to hold significant leads over Bush (54% Clinton to 41% Bush) and Christie (56% Clinton to 37% Christie). She has also opened up wide leads over Rubio (56% Clinton to 39% Rubio) and Walker (57% Clinton to 38% Walker), as those two have slipped among independents. Clinton’s clearest advantage, however, is over Donald Trump, 59% say they would vote for Clinton if the 2016 match-up were between her and Trump, 34% say they would back Trump.”
That is from a CNN article from summer 2015.
I wrote a long post that disappeared, but the main point was that a poll taken before candidates have been subject to the right wing propaganda machine — which happens once the candidate is actually chosen and it targets that candidate with whatever attack the right wing propaganda machine believes will get Democratic voters to stay home or vote 3rd party — are not very useful.
Amazing how much the media can turn a well-liked candidate into someone despised by voters who should be voting for the Democrat. That happened in 1988. It happened in 2000 and 2004 and 2016. And not one of those candidates — Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, Clinton — deserved the massive sliming that they got.
That will happen again and whoever the nominee is will have to withstand the massive onslaught of negativity that will change voters’ perception of them.
Good to hear!
Meanwhile, Deranged Donald just gutted both the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Why? I don’t know. The man is criminally insane–an immediate threat to the health and safety of our nation. Evidently, he wants to leave a nastier, more dangerous, dying planet to our children and grandchildren.
Just when I thought I could not loathe him more.
Probably he plans to create a habitat on a different planet for his grandchildren, with clean water and air.
Maybe that’s why he is so anxious or us to go to Mars–Ivankalandia!
Why?
Because Trump is a right wing Republican and he does what the right wing Republicans tell him to do and they have been trying to gut the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act forever.
The difference between Trump and the entire Republican Party — which is now to the right of the John Birch Society — and the Democrats is stark these days. Those who refuse to acknowledge this are simply helping the John Birch Society promote the idea that all of this is just what America has always been and the Democrats are just as evil.
These moves are very, very dangerous. If you want the whole country to be like Flint, Michigan, then by all means, Trump is your guy. But then, the Don, Cheeto “Little Fingers” Trumpbalone is a New York/New Jersey real estate developer/mobster/racketeer, and real estate developers have always named their projects after whatever it was they ripped out in order to build–the Whispering Pines, the Belle Creeks.
I remember those John Birchers from when I was a kid, NYC. The They seem tame compared to the vile Trumpeteers.
And as always for Trumplestiltskinhead, it’s open season on the most vulnerable. They get to choose between support and green cards!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/457077-trump-administration-releases-final-public-charge-rule%3famp
Sick. I hope his whole family ends up in prison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7o4oMKbStE
This latest, another product of the diseased spleen of Propaganda Minister Stephen Miller, is perhaps the lowest yet from a misadministration that daily attempts to plumb new depths of depravity. I hope these two, Trump and Miller, end up in prison. I really do. Rarely have a felt this way about another human.
Trump 2020/2020 (twenty for collusion, 20 for money laundering for Russian mobsters, 20 for sexual assault, and 20 for conspiracy to commit kidnapping)
Stephen Miller, Propaganda Minister for the nascent Trump Reich, is at it again. Stealing food from the mouths of babies and demonizing their parents. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jews-against-ice-protests-tisha-bav-trump-immigrants_n_5d50f693e4b0fd2733f25625?fbclid=IwAR0AWWpaSQ4yzBKqunL28Tvf9bhRY8jceoJ-GA26D0pBzfIbZ7VojW8iwbE
Bernie, for all his self-labelling as a socialist, is actually a national-patriot, and not the best flavor of one. He laments that “our nation used to lead the world … We were number one. Today, we are number 11 … and that is not acceptable.” Seriously? Of about 200 countries in the world we are number 11 and this is not acceptable? A classic case of American exceptionalism.
As for his plan, there is nothing new in it: more funding, more equity, I was waiting for him to re-introduce busing. American schools receive more funding than schools in most other countries, where all this money goes to? Every district, nay, almost every teacher create their own curricula, this is madness. Chicago just authorized half a million to create a new curricula suited to “unique” Chicago students, because EngageNY is not good enough (probably because it is free, and there is no way to steal the money in the process). At the same time one third of Chicago HS have no physics or chemistry. Public school system is a bottomless money pit.
Where is a proper Ministry of Education, overseeing a proper national curriculum? Where are thoroughly reworked and linked together courses in algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry? The “science” and “social studies” are two useless, toothless, pitiful subjects that just touch the surface of real science, real history, real philosophy, real geography. Where is shorter school day for elementary kids? Where are the federally-approved building and furniture codes with enough natural light, with larger desks, with chairs that don’ t break your back. Where are 10-minute breaks (in my local schools breaks are 4-minute long).
I am thoroughly disappointed in Bernie. He is not the shining torch of the American politics I thought he was.
BA, you should love Common Core. It is Arne Duncan and Bill Gates’ effort to create a national curriculum, national standards, etc. How’s that working out?
Common Core is not a curriculum. And it is not a federally-mandated program. And it is crappy. And the NCTM standards and NCTE guides it is built upon are beyond shameful. All this does not reduce the need for a nation-wide curriculum. When I read the first edition of The Death and Life of American Education, I found quite a lot of sensible ideas there, but since then you rejected the national curriculum idea. You keep repeating the line, attributed to Keynes (although there is no proof he said it), “when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do?” But facts did not change. This country have never had a Ministry of Education because it has never had ministries, period. And the main function of the Department of Education, which was established in 1979, is to collect statistics, it has no say in what and how to teach, which is why I am amazed by the constantly attention Betsy DeVos gets. This country has a patchy system of public schools with patchy programs and graduation requirements different from state to state. Each state and each district and each school used to decide what to teach and how to grade it before Common Core tried to fix it. Why have not you instead chose to abide by “if it did not work for the first time, try again”?
Make no mistake, I hate high-stake tests, I hate tests that are not produced by the teachers themselves, that neither the teachers, nor the parents can look at and compare questions with answers, this whole copyrighted industry makes me sick. And the results are half a year late, these tests are for the bureaucrats, not the students. But at the same time, I am not at ease with the idea that each and every district and teacher creates their own curriculum. I want to know what kids will be learning today, tomorrow and in ten years. I want to see it all, right now, in form of properly organized textbooks and guidebooks. Even widely used terms like Algebra 1 or Algebra 2 are not formally defined, this is crazy. There is no rhyme or reason. The existing system is made for kickbacks not for learning.
Even the best schools only touch what kids in other countries learn at school. School physics and chemistry is a joke, in this country you need to go to a college to learn something that in other countries is taught at 7th or 8th grade. School math is barely adequate if you take AP calc BC, but geometry still is lacking. Other subjects just do not exist at all.
No additional funding, no desegregation will fix the simple fact that what is being taught in public schools is inadequate, incomparable (from state to state), and sometimes completely wrong.
BA,
You would like to see a national Ministry of Education run by Betsy DeVos and her fellow rightwing zealots?
You know what do they call a country where one person decides for everyone — kingdom, caliphate, dictatorship. The U.S. is supposedly a democracy, where one person should not decide for everyone. On the other hand I believe that it should be a federal task to figure out what the youngsters are taught and how they are indoctrinated.
You missed all my other points, which are more important than what do you call a governing agency.
The governing agency is crucial.
Who in your federal Ministry of Education would decide what all children in America should learn?
You do know that most people who work in the U.S. Department of Education are not educators, right?
Would you let the Council of Chief State School Officers decide what everyone should learn?
Who should do it?
Which state chief is the wisest of them all?
Which is why a real reform in education is not about charters vs public, but about a coherent curricula, coherent indoctrination, about an agency that has the authority and the knowledge to take important decisions regarding pedagogy, ideology and the right mixture of civics and “exact” sciences, and the depth of the knowledge inculcated into students. Yes, it requires an overhaul. The Department of Education should become the driving force. Obviously, the correct people should be installed there, in other countries Ministry of Education has close ties to other ministries — to forecast what skills and knowledge will be needed for the workforce in 5, 10, 20 years — and with the Academy of Sciences. No need to look back at the Soviet Union, look at France. Or Japan. Yes, this would be a big change, but someone, calling himself a socialist, striving to become a President of this country should think appropriately. The existing federal departments are flooded with corporate shills, while they should be staffed with specialists in their respective fields, who should care about the society at large, not about a particular industry.
BA,
The US Department of Education employs thousands of mid-level career employees. They are not educators.
Dream on.
“Where is a proper Ministry of Education, overseeing a proper national curriculum?”
Haven’t we learned our lessons about this yet?
What exactly have “we” learned about this?
Where is a proper Ministry of Education?
Probably in the same place and time as the Ministry of Truth.
1984.
I shudder to think of what a National Ministry of Education might do under the long line of people who have been Secretary of Education. Usually governors, an occasional ideologue, like Bill Bennett or Betsy D. And then there’s Arne Duncan, thoroughly political and not the sharpest.
There is good reason that Congress passed a law many years ago forbidding any agent of the federal government from attempting to influence curriculum.
Education policy is driven by states, for example, school funding, and, segregation, which is driven by housing policies. The Obama/Duncan policies were disastrous… Picking the “right” USDOE Secretary is crucial … Linda Darling Hammond would be my choice .. coupled with a commitment to public schools and true transparency for charters and the elimination of tax breaks for charter supporters- and even playing field. And BTW, I’m supporting the candidate, whomever, who is polling the best against 45
Trumptydumpsterfire continues to impeach himself.
“I thought Chris was Fredo also. The truth hurts. Totally lost it! Low ratings @CNN”
I understand being unable to control himself as Scaramucci finally took a step toward the light, but attacking Chris Cuomo in this way . . . in such a low and sick way . . . I mean, even Hannity defended Cuomo. And Don jr jumped in to tweet sheer idiocy as well. Bob is right, the whole family should go to prison.
Trumptydumpsterfire continues to impeach himself.
“I thought Chris was Fredo also. The truth hurts. Totally lost it! Low ratings @CNN”
I understand being unable to control himself as Scaramucci finally took a step toward the light, but attacking Chris Cuomo in this way . . . in such a low and sick way . . . I mean, even Hannity defended Cuomo. And Don jr jumped in to tweet sheer idiocy as well. Bob is right, the whole family should go to prison.
This guy, Trumplestiltskinhead, is not just racist like Wallace or Johnson, he’s totally unhinged like a Doctor Strangelove character!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/08/13/politics/central-casting-trump-is-talking-more-than-ever-about-mens-looks/index.html
Watch out for Purity of Essence at his next degeneracy rally.