After four years of Betsy DeVos and her antagonism toward public schools, civil rights protection, and students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges, the U.S. Department of Education needs a thorough makeover. A house-cleaning. A thorough disinfecting.
Larry Buhl of Capital &Main describes in this article what the Biden administration must do to de-DeVos the Department.
Is it possible to reverse the ways in which she attempted to destroy public schools, civil rights enforcement, and fair dealing with college students who have borrowed more than they can ever pay back?
That is the job facing the new Secretary of Education. Bring out the Lysol!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Lysol, hell …
Total misrepresentation stating that educators support ESSA.
Exactly. Arne Duncan, the testing & charter industries were ESSA’s biggest fans.
yes: misrepresentation of teacher views is one of the reformers’ most powerful tools
Ugh. A holistic approach to accountability means continuing the high stakes testing mandate and adding more misleading data points with more competency based, constant assessment and worthless customer satisfaction style surveys. It means more prescriptive federal meddling and an oil tanker-sized boatload of scripted tech standardization. It means more abuse of schools and teachers that serve students living with hunger and poverty. Race to the Top was the NCLB on steroids and this article predicts Race to the Top on steroids. The federal government must stop creating data-driven excuses to close and privatize public schools. Joe Biden promised to END standardized testing, not add to it.
Standardized testing is a vehicle of privatization. It is a catalyst in the scheme to remove students from public education and place them in separate unequal schools under private ownership. There remains zero evidence that moving students out of community schools and into privately operated schools is a benefit to the vast majority of students, particularly when those students have attended public schools that have long suffered from institutionalized under funding.
High stakes standardized tests are club that attempts to beat public education into submission. Testing and closing public schools is disruptive, wholly negative, anti-democratic process. Biden has promised to reduce the burden of harmful testing on public schools, and we must hold him to account.
Retired and Diane The testing debacle is a debacle because, at its root, it’s still based in POSITIVIST SCIENCE. Here is one philosopher’s take on that base (but not his endorsement of it):
“In English it happens that the word ‘science’ has come to be preempted by physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, and the like. Since possession is said to be nine points of the law, let us distinguish human studies and human science.
“Human studies have their basis in hermeneutics and history. Human sciences follow the POSITIVIST PRECEPT that one teaches a scientific understanding of humans only if the same understanding may be applied to a robot or at least to a rat.” (my emphases) (Bernard. Lonergan, in his Collection 17, Philosophical and Theological Papers: Horizons and Transpositions. Univ. of Toronto Press). CBK
. . . it also means the hidden intent of eliminating the essential place of the wise and professional teacher . . . . the ONLY connection who, with their wisdom in mediating in the details of the daily classroom, can make the necessary connections between (a) the theories they know and the professional training and experience they have and (b) the daily particulars of their particular students . . . the ones with names in the here-and-now of the classroom.
No test, no theory, no Gates-like rich person and their collaborators, no one off-site, can fill that spot–ON PRINCIPLE. CBK
A few details that Pres Biden need to REMOVE from ESSA:
All social impact bonds (SIBs) aka, Pay for Success for PreK and other financial gimmicks that pay bankers for higher test scores & reduced numbers of SPED students.
End block grants for Title 1 & IDEA funds to states. Block grants turn funding into Hunger Games for SPED and poorer districts.
No money for fast track teacher prep organizations (TFA) or higher ed scams like Relay Grad school of education.
Does anyone have anything else that needs to be removed from ESSA?
What we need to add to ESSA:
States must mandate class size caps.
Funding for more personnel & support personnel- teachers, teaching assistants, counselors, guidance counselors, etc.
A New Deal for aspiring teachers who want to prepare to become teachers.
Supplements for current teachers to pursue further education & certifications, including a masters degree & a PhD or EdD.
Guaranteed funding for public school in every community.
Anything else we expect from the Biden Administration?
Our students deserve the right to attend a well funded and resourced public school regardless of where they live. They deserve to attend schools with professional teachers, not schools staffed by amateur, minimally trained staff with programs designed by hedge funds and Silicon Valley that are imposed on their schools.
“Does anyone have anything else that needs to be removed from ESSA?”
1.Annual state-std testing
2. DofEd review/ approval of state “accountability systems” [i.e., state stds aligned to high-stakes annual assessments]
I have a bone to pick with your general approach. IMHO, the only valuable missions for fed Dept of Ed [besides lobbying Congress for funding Title I & IDEA] are OCR, & collecting periodic (not annual) stats—from representative samples (not all kids) enabling comparison of quality across regions.
How do we stop states from funding TFA’s or OK’g Relay Grad school certs? Only by unfunded mandates & micromgt, which is what we need to get them out of—too easy to establish norms that are picked up by opposite-minded future Rep admins & used harmfully. Same thing goes for mandating class size caps & funding for sufficient staff & their further ed/ certs. Fed DofEd funds an ave of less than 10% of school costs, so any ‘progressive’ mandates will be unfunded.
If alternatively you are suggesting the fed DofEd start picking up half or more of the bill for pubsch ed, I vehemently disagree. That means strings attached [micromanaging overreach]. The more remote the source of funding & its accountability strings, the less likely it is to accommodate the local situation.
We do not [yet] live in a country capable of establishing the sort of progressive stds framework & minimal testing that goes w/ allowing teaching profession to establish appropriate curriculum/ pedagogy tailored to their students, while still funding all equitably [e.g. Netherlands, Denmark, Finland]. Let alone establishing the kind of multiple paths toward vocational/ tech/ academic careers seen in best systems e.g. Poland & Slovakia. All of those have supportive Dem- Soc safety/health networks, community- [not school-] run sports, healthy unions, community-school-industrial links, etc.
My first reaction to this.
” ESSA rolls back emphasis on testing and focuses on the whole student, a holistic approach. States were to develop different assessment systems but they needed leadership and it wasn’t there.”
What?
Someone has not done a close reading of ESSA. ESSA is filled with lip-service to “whole child-ism” but in the end it is a federal attempt to micromanage the work of teachers.
The 117th Congress under Biden will have a thin margin for enacting anything much different from ESSA. Too many Republicans and Democrats who voted for ESSA in the 115th Congress are still around and they are not likely to change much of the law under a forthcoming reauthorization.
ESSA was overwhelmingly supported by House Republicans (178 yea) and Democrats (181 yea). In the Senate, of 77 votes recorded, 63 were yea with 14 Republicans not voting or voting nay.
Even if the Georgia runoff produces two Democrats, there are too many Democrats who have a vested interest in not making significant changes in ESSA and some few still around also voted for NCLB.
I am not optimistic about any shift in the testing mandate in ESSA or many other provisions. State departments of education and many governors are also unlikely to be budged from simplistic thinking that tests scores are great measures of accountability for teachers and schools.
Thanks you said everything I was thinking, but better.
Until the standards and testing malpractice regime is eliminated, the same ol s#!t will happen, i.e., the harming of all students and the destruction of the teaching and learning process that allows for each individual student develop to their own fullest potential.