This is what we deserve as a country, elections have consequences. These people put in Trump as president knowing he is going to do things like that. FT is a teacher if I recall, and if Devos does a good job of dismantling the education system as we know it, he should know he had a small part in the process.
Thanks for linking the article (too many times people refer to articles but don't cite or link them). Here is another comparison of charter to urban public schools, this time in Dayton, that seems very similar to the results in MI... only comparable results, http://www.mydaytondailynews.com/ne...-urban-public-schools/seOrfCUpKQEY6aC2O1qtQM/
It's just more of the same Randian philosophy that government is bad at everything so privatize everything. Have non-public schools, in this case, receive government support, and see if they can't "do betterer" than public schools. If they happen to be Christian, or have books about Jesus on dinosaurs, who really would mind that? This appointment, and this day in particular, pain me a bit more than all the other last 20 or so days. This one really will probably hurt a lot of kids and their developing minds. Very sad. EDIT: It's less that I mind having the public/private/charter/voucher debates and much more that DeVos is just an ideologue with no competency for her new important job. That's what is sad and what will be destructive. Bannon (no, not "Gannon" ****ing auto-correct, WTF?) must be very pleased that his dismantling of our union is happening more quickly than his critics could have imagined.
B-Bob, There is serious problem in public schooling today when you have bureaucratic layers upon layers of management combined with any sort of true incentive system for teachers in America. Having a system in which teachers are financially rewarded through success and not through tenure could really change much of the adverse outcomes especially relative to the significant financial cost per student. I am fearful though that public/private mixed bags that there will be significant government manipulation by private players. Private business billing of medicare and the investment banks bending over of Fannie/Freddie are examples of creating opportunities for the private sector to milk the government.
A sobering look at what Betsy DeVos did to education in Michigan — and what she might do as secretary of education https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...f-education/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.73b47b088f88
And it this point, it might be best to avoid any cabinet nominee that has hired a nanny... http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...atest-cabinet-nominee-nanny-problem/97599662/
Don't you know once all dem illegals are gone and done taking our jerbs, they can hire good honest god fearing Christian Americans at non-depressed wages because there won't be none of those damn brown people crossing our borders! Gawd bless America! Yeehaw! Instead of Consuela working at minimum wage you can now hire Pious Penny. She can't make tortillas but the store bought stuff is just as good right?
I like to think regulatory capture/crony capitalism is abhorred by both sides. With this pick, their main goal will likely be to weaken or cripple teachers unions. The system definitely needs reform though as they're as powerful as the nra or aarp and are too big to acknowledge change needing to happen. Throwing a grenade with a pick as inexperienced and vocal as this is the most riskiest move, which sounds strangely weird to a businessman who needs to understand and assess risk. Ncbl can be considered a disaster by both sides, so keep that in mind when these violent changes start rippling to your children or your neighbor who happens to be a teacher. Maybe we do need a fire to burn down the rot. It just feels better when we know what's going on in the mind of the person lighting it
Interesting that Bobby Jindal was praising Devos and used charter schools in New Orleans as a proofpoint that charter schools work. He bragged that in New Orleans, there are no traditional public (what he calls "government" schools) and instead they are all charter schools. So instead of poor people having to send their kids to poor performing public schools, poor parents now have "choice" to send their kids to charter schools. So lets see how the charter schools in New Orleans are doing? The basic takeaway... some schools did better. Some did worse. The best schools improved. The worse schools continued to be bad. Overall test scores improved slightly. But overall the city dropped two wrungs compared to other districts. http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2016/11/nola_report_cards_2016.html
They were forced to go this route in New Orleans after Katrina destroyed so many of the schools there.
OK, and even noticed some of the schools that were reconstructed showed improvement. But if charter schools are supposed to provided significant improvement for all schools, including and especially schools where poorer kids go to, shouldn't that be shown in these test scores? Instead, the best schools seem to have gotten better and the worse schools seemed to perform worse.
So, in the end, there isn't much improvement overall. I also go back to my original point of accessibility. Outside of major cities that have public transportation, how do poor students get to schools that don't typically offer transportation?
While improvement of all schools is a nice long term goal, the real benefit of school choice is that children and families that really value education can get out of bad schools that they were unfortunate enough to live close to, and into better schools. There are simply never going to be 100% good schools, because one of the key determinants is the students and their parents, and there are not 100% good students and parents.
But so far, this hasn't been proven out by any any metric. The same low scores happened at the same schools in the areas that the poorer families went to, while the good scores happened where the wealthier families went to. So unless you are somehow teleporting all the poorer kids to where the wealthier kids live and go... well, all you have done is benefited the kids with families that can afford to transport their kids.
