By: Diane Benjamin
I get the feeling nobody at the Pantagraph wrote today’s editorial on the Education bill that passed the House and will be voted on in the Senate. It’s full of the talking points used to get support and none of the points hidden from Congress.
The bill is over 1000 pages and was not available to be read more than a day or two before the vote was taken. More “you have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it”.
64 House Republicans voted against the bill. Every Democrat voted for it. The bill does not lessen Federal control of public education or abolish Common Core. It expands control to Pre-K education, thus starting indoctrination earlier. Federal control is still data driven and it’s still much more than test results. Your kids are being profiled for future use.
Just the size of the bill and the lack of time to read it should have made reps vote NO. Every Illinois House representative in both parties voted YES. Instead of reading the bill, they read what was given to them. Paul Ryan promised to change the rules in the House so members control the agenda instead of leadership. Obviously it’s still business as usual.
Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education when he was President. Since the Federal Government got involved in education, our kids have fallen behind kids in other countries. The Every Student Succeeds Act does nothing to change the trajectory.
Below are two links with more information. The first one is a MUST READ, it’s a good summary of the problems with Federal involvement in education.
This bill can still be stopped in the Senate. Dick Durbin won’t change his mind on voting YES. Mark Kirk might since he is running for re-election. If he votes YES, it’ just another reason to support Jim Marter in the upcoming primary. Kirk’s DC phone: (202) 224-2854
http://media.campaigner.com/media/25/257620/Speaker%20Ryan%20ESSA%20Letter%20to%20Congress.pdf
“Since the federal government got involved in education, our kids have fallen behind kids in other countries”
Wait…..you mean like Finland? Or Canada? Who have socialist policies? Sounds like to me it is less a government issue and a more complex issue with lots of variables (big money on testing). If anything, those countries have more government and their kids are rocking it because they consider education an investment. Look up Finland. Teachers need more education than their U.S. counterparts. It is 100% state funded. All students are taught regardless of ability. They do it smart. Teachers are subsidized for their masters degrees. Easy to see why they have great education. They treat teachers like doctors and lawyers. They even have extra teachers for struggling students! They encourage learning other languages. Some students start learning a fourth language by age 13. They even have less teaching hours! They also have vocational schools. I haven’t really heard the Finnish refer to their education system as indoctrination. Maybe that’s part of the success. Maybe being supportive and not scornful of public education would result in real progress? The first link you have, the good senator clearly is against public education and is painting with too broad a brush for why it does not work. The line on early education is one of the most ill-informed statements I have ever seen. Would have liked to have heard his solution.
As far as the bill goes. I agree that not reading the bill is a mistake. It was waste because the bill was half-baked
Think how far ahead of them we would have been without government interference!
Look no further than Wisconsin to see what happens when the government doesn’t “interfere”. I know that teachers are retiring earlier and some rural districts are losing teachers to larger districts who can pay more due to the new pay formula. Walker tries to make it look like the schools were broken so he slashed over $300 in school funding, but somehow found enough to expand the voucher program. Teaching is not as desirable as I used to be. They are also losing college professors due to the recalibrating of tenure. Wisconsin’s education system was never broken. He reacted to the tripe of indoctrination and instead made the system worse off. Wisconsin will endure, but for the work of people trying to reverse Walker’s reforms. He is an operative of the conservative assault on public education.
You must not have been familiar with the insurance scheme the teacher’s unions were running. Funding was decreased because districts were no longer required to buy from the unions! Districts saved millions while unions were no longer able to feather their nests with taxpayer money! Yep, the unions hated the change.
Not sure that was a benefit. Walker still took taxpayer money and gave it to charters and private schools. Would have been great to allocate that money back to the public schools. Instead they gave it charter school operators and private school members who supported his election. It’s like a company cutting its workforce and then taking the savings and buying other companies. You cut the workforce in the first place because you said it was too expensive but now you are acquring other companies? What really is going on is Walker is following the Conservative playbook. He probably would gotten more support if he would not have expanded the voucher program. But he had promises to keep and weakening the Democratic support base on his agenda. If conservative also means selling out to corporate masters, then he fits the bill. Many people in Wisconsin see him as a puppet. Walker made it about favors and not saving money.
Government support is different than government interference. Public education in the US, by definition, is government funded. Much of the success of the kids in other countries has more to do with the attitude toward education, including respect for the teachers and parents. Not all students are “prepped” for college. Europeans have more respect for tradesmen.
The best way for a child to learn is to teach them to love learning both at home and at school–not to perform on a standardized test. Education in the US flourished during the 1960’s and 70’s because of the competition with Russia to develop a space program–a capitalist venture. Standardized testing in K-12 was not the norm–only college and graduate school entrance exams, bar exams and medical board exams.
Learning other languages in Finland, as in other smaller countries, is by necessity because English, Spanish, French and German are considered “International” languages, as was Latin, until recently.
We got Common Core…that puts us WAAAY ahead.
Common Core reduces teaching a concept to the lowest common denominator.
tried to help my grandson (2nd grader) the math made no sense but how do you answer this multiple choice: You want to measure a desk. What do you use. a. ruler b.yardstick c. tape measure ( I have used all)