Friday, November 1, 2019
Tags: comics , politics , Nats , baseball , Trump , MAGA , Claytoonz , Image
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
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When Obama came to office in 2009, he was faced with two possible approaches to improving K-12 education. One was to put the blame for poor test scores on individual schools and figure out ways to force them to up their game. The other was to look at the world outside schools for factors affecting students' successes and failures, then try to improve the quality of students' lives as a path toward improving their school achievement. This isn't a binary choice, of course. Most people understand that good schools and a better environment outside of school contribute to students' attitudes and achievement. It's a question of emphasis.
Obama's education advisor during his 2008 campaign was Linda Darling-Hammond, a college professor and author who put a great deal of emphasis on improving students' lives outside of school. Instead of elevating her to Education Secretary, Obama chose Arnie Duncan, one of the people he brought with him from Chicago. Duncan had been the CEO of Chicago Public Schools and focused on the role of schools, public and charter, in helping or harming student achievement. Putting Duncan at the education department helm meant continuing the policies of the Bush administration: emphasizing high stakes testing, heaping praise on "great schools" while shaming schools with low test scores, and increasing the number of charter schools.
Since 2009, faith in the value of high stakes testing has faded and charter schools have lost their "new kid on the block" luster. Democrats' education policy emphasis has moved away from the Obama years. You can see the change on the national, state and local levels, but the clearest way to put a spotlight on current K-12 policy proposals is to look at positions taken by the leading presidential candidates.
I went through the K-12 position papers of Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. I haven't read the positions of all the other candidates — too many candidates, too little time — but those I have read are less detailed than the three front runners but not different in overall emphasis.
Tags: K-12 education , Democratic party , Presidential candidates , Joe Biden , Elizabeth Warren , Bernie Sanders , Integration , Early Childhood Education , Free lunch programs , Community schools , Teacher salaries , Charter schools , Image
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
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Monday, October 28, 2019
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Friday, October 25, 2019
It's been a strange couple of days on the college loan front at Betsy DeVos's Department of Education. The department was held in contempt of court for screwing over students and parents who owe money on loans they are not required to repay. During the same week, a high ranking department official proposed student loan forgiveness on a massive scale.
The Ed Department has been held in contempt of court and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine. The reason: It continued to bill ex-students of the for-profit Corinthian College chain, even though it had been established that the colleges defrauded the students.
Obama's Ed Department created the process of forgiving the loans, and Trumpsters are duty-bound to trample on Obama's legacy. Combine contempt of Obama with the Trump administration's preference for the free-est of free market capitalism at the expense of the consumer, and you have two reasonable explanations for the decision to keep the loan payments flowing.
DeVos's department has a different explanation. It says it shouldn't be held in contempt, claiming billing those 16,000 students was simply a mistake. It seems they would rather be considered incompetent than ill intentioned, though I suspect a combination of the two. The department is in the process of refunding payments and, when necessary, fixing damaged credit ratings of students and their parents.
In another student loan-related story, a high level appointee in the Office of Federal Student Aid decided, after seeing the loan situation up close, we need to "stop the insanity" of burdening students with loans. Wayne Johnson proposes forgiving the first $50,000 in student debt. For people who have already repaid their loans, he proposes a tax credit of up to $50,000. For new students, he proposes a $50,000 government voucher which wouldn't need to be repaid.
Don't expect the proposals to be taken up by DeVos & Co. Johnson resigned from the Ed Department.
Tags: Betsy DeVos , U.S. Department of Education , Student loans , Corinthian College , Wayne Johnson , Elizabeth Warren , Image
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Thursday, October 24, 2019
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Wednesday, October 23, 2019
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The Koch Network — formerly known as the Koch Brothers until David Koch died in August — is looking for a new way to ease into K-12 education.
Let's not fight, the Koch Network says. Why can't we all just get along?
Welcome to the Network's new, conciliatory educational brand.
This kumbaya moment comes from an 800 ton gorilla which spends hundreds of millions of dollars so it can sit anywhere it wants. The Network has bought seats at the table in congress, state legislatures, universities and school boards across the nation. We have our own outpost at UA, The Freedom Center, purchased and overseen by some of the Network's high rolling contributors.
The Network has only made half-hearted attempts at moving into the world of K-12 education, so it hasn't had much of an impact thus far. Now it has begun to put more money and energy behind its efforts.
In June, the Koch Network created a new group, yes. every kid., whose purpose, according to one of its spokespeople, is to "move away from the 'us versus them' framing in K-12" and work together across political and educational lines.
It's strange to hear these folks claim they want to make friends with the same educators the Kochs have worked against from their earliest days as political activists. Back in 1980 when David Koch was the vice presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, the brothers weren't interested in getting along with the education community. The Libertarian Party's platform called for an end to free public education.
"We advocate the complete separation of education and State. . . . Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended."The Kochs haven't strayed far from their privatization goals in the decades since. It's still vouchers first and charter schools second. They believe publicly funded and governed schools will lose out in a head-to-head competition with free enterprise-based education. The traditional school system, they hope, will simply wither away.
So why is the Network saying it wants to play nice all of a sudden? It's because the political winds in education have begun to shift away from privatization.
Until recently, the privatization/"education reform" movement looked like it was winning the education wars. Charters have grown steadily, and an increasing number of states have adopted voucher programs. Even Democrats looked like they were coming on board. They seemed to agree with the "reformers" that our public schools are failing and we need something new — certainly more charter schools, and maybe private school vouchers as well — to offer children an alternative to their local schools. The privatization movement even had a Democratic champion in the White House. President Obama was acting like the Education-reformer-in-chief.
It looked like smooth sailing toward privatization. Then something went wrong.
Tags: Koch Network , "yes. every kid." , privatization , "education reform" , Image
