The educated citizen is the enemy of the authoritarian state, and so the authoritarian state cannot tolerate the educated, and seeks to remove them from this generation, and the next.
The educated citizen is the enemy of the authoritarian state, and so the authoritarian state cannot tolerate the educated, and seeks to remove them from this generation, and the next.
I guess this is the straw that broke this camel's back. I am livid and lashing out HARD at my trumper parents. Very angry text exchanges this morning. Read this a few minutes before driving my...
I guess this is the straw that broke this camel's back. I am livid and lashing out HARD at my trumper parents. Very angry text exchanges this morning. Read this a few minutes before driving my kids to school and I'm just horrified. I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to just punch things...I really hate being this angry, but fuck we're there.
I take some solace in knowing I live in a Democrat state and can easily fallback to an even more Democrat state if that changes. But that doesn't exactly fix the broader problem. Generations of children in poorer, more conservative states are going to suffer immensely because of this. And that's fucking awful.
I believe there's an even more sinister goal of eliminating education for disabled kids in dismantling the Ed. Dept. Multiple states are suing over their "right" to not educate disabled kids...
I believe there's an even more sinister goal of eliminating education for disabled kids in dismantling the Ed. Dept. Multiple states are suing over their "right" to not educate disabled kids (trying to overturn section 504) and that also could threaten accessibility and accommodations in many other areas. Disabled folks, much like trans folks, are usually at the forefront of discrimination and dehumanization, and I find this no different.
The ED doesn't really do most of the other things that are right wing boogiemen and they're using it as a bludgeon against universities and schools to restrict funding now, so I don't see any other "good" reason to ditch it.
the conservative moms on social media who I guess didn't think that DEI applied to their kids who are literally in "inclusion" classes... I mean the intentional downfall of US education didn't...
the conservative moms on social media who I guess didn't think that DEI applied to their kids who are literally in "inclusion" classes... I mean the intentional downfall of US education didn't just start in 2025, but damn they hit the critical thinking first.
Yes, it's always about saving money, and the blood spilt doesn't matter to people without empathy. This is sadly on the people as well. They, often in states with worse education, complain so much...
Yes, it's always about saving money, and the blood spilt doesn't matter to people without empathy.
This is sadly on the people as well. They, often in states with worse education, complain so much about already poor funding but also love to cut educational funding (or not approve budget increases) to pay less taxes. It's a negative spiral and it only ends badly for public schooling.
Sad part is I will likely be better off compared to most states, and those people above are often in red states voting for this. I'm not sure what their mindset is for their kids here; many of them sure can't afford this supposed "voucher program", let alone private schooling. Do they think they can homeschool their kids (with what time?)? Do they want to repeal child labor laws and send them out to work instead of going to high school? Do the voter base just not care because the older ones got theirs, damned be the grandkids?
Trump and the GOP is playing the long game with this one. They've been wanting to have public schooling whither and die for decades, so they could promote and fund charter schools with right wing...
Trump and the GOP is playing the long game with this one. They've been wanting to have public schooling whither and die for decades, so they could promote and fund charter schools with right wing ideologically oriented curriculums. That's why they've be so gung ho on school vouchers.
Yep, and the voucher program already exists in Arizona. As you've probably guessed, it's really just expanding the divide between families of different economic classes, making public schools...
Yep, and the voucher program already exists in Arizona. As you've probably guessed, it's really just expanding the divide between families of different economic classes, making public schools worse (less funding), and helping private schools earn more (as many of them increased their tuition price as a result).
Indeed. What's even worse, at least in our state, is that when a student goes to a charter school, the public school has to dole out a portion of their funds to the charter school. The charter...
Indeed. What's even worse, at least in our state, is that when a student goes to a charter school, the public school has to dole out a portion of their funds to the charter school. The charter schools of course don't take any of the students with learning disabilities, behavioral health issues, etc. So the public schools' budgets are off-kilter because they're stuck with all the higher cost students, but the amount of money they have to give to the charter school per attending student is an average of all their costs, including all students. Additionally, costs like electricity, water, heating/cooling are averaged into this, but those costs don't go down no matter how many students leave the public facility for a charter school.
I'm pretty sure this always was the point of vouchers. Rich people thought it was unfair that they had to subsidize public schools that their kids didn't go to (entirely because of their own...
I'm pretty sure this always was the point of vouchers. Rich people thought it was unfair that they had to subsidize public schools that their kids didn't go to (entirely because of their own choice), and instead wanted to be able to save money by using public money to pay for their kids' private education. It's never been about anything except for the wealthy getting out of paying their share of a societal good.
For years I've been saying: pay teachers enough money, like an amount of money that would make a lot of people spit their coffee out, like engineer or software dev money, & by the time this year's...
For years I've been saying: pay teachers enough money, like an amount of money that would make a lot of people spit their coffee out, like engineer or software dev money, & by the time this year's freshmen graduate there won't be any problems with the education system left—and we could be doing this already but we're not, which means improving US education is not actually the desired outcome, at least not for the people deciding whether it gets improved. And people would respond by spitting their coffee out lol—"my wife taught for 37 years and she wouldn't have wanted any more money, it was about the kids," "my wife wouldn't go back in the classroom for a million dollars a year," actual quotes!—buuuut here we are, doing the opposite. Republicans (or anyone who voted for DJT, or anyone who just didn't vote), when your kids all bring their "AI-Ready" future-workforce-member report cards home from X-么亗ALPHA亗 Elementary Site (A Tesla™ Company), 90% funded by whatever crummy state DOE you've got and 10% funded by how many Amazon Prime subscribers live in your school district, please remember there were people who said this would happen before it was happening & you said it wouldn't.
I hate to be a party pooper, but I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by throwing money in the direction of teachers and classrooms. Will it help? Absolutely. It's the first and...
I hate to be a party pooper, but I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by throwing money in the direction of teachers and classrooms. Will it help? Absolutely. It's the first and easiest thing that should be done to - at the very least - improve the lives of the people trying to educate our children.
However, I think there is a much deeper societal issue that needs to be addressed as well. I work for a Head Start program that serves low-income families in Los Angeles. Many of of the students I've had over the years are unable to function in a learning environment due to the problems they have at home. It's ironic, because as our name states, the whole idea is to give them a "head start" for their k-12 education, but in reality, we are desperately trying to bring them up to the bare minimum levels where they are able to be a part of a classroom. Forget about letters and numbers, I've had kids leave my program after a full year who were unable to identify colors and shapes because they spend most of their time at school in a state of survival or heightened emotion.
It's not silver bullet, but guaranteed paid maternity/paternity leave and expanded financial benefits for children under 3 would be a total game changer. It would strengthen the parent-child bond and therefore the sense of security that a child needs before they come into a classroom. It would allow pre-k and early primary teachers the space we need to cultivate an environment where children can learn the skills they need in order to be successful in middle and high school. It needs to be part of the conversation when we talk about fixing our fucked up education system.
For sure, it wouldn't fix everything—I'd put maternal/paternal leave on employers elsewhere, but if all US parents get a year off with their kids & are then forced to send them to daycare/public...
For sure, it wouldn't fix everything—I'd put maternal/paternal leave on employers elsewhere, but if all US parents get a year off with their kids & are then forced to send them to daycare/public schools where everything sucks, I mean that's no good either. I'm not in favor of just "throwing money" at anything & just hoping for better results; in education that would just get you higher-paid administration & snazzy new buildings full of teachers still making $50k. If there was a line of people wanting to teach, if parents after a few years realized it would be a lucrative/"respected" career instead of a fallback or whatever it is now (I say that as a ten-year PS teacher who picked it on purpose lol), then that would begin to have serious effects in education, and sure eventually elsewhere; once those students had kids, then hopefully things would be better in places like where you are. But gosh you are deep in the trenches, and it's commendable work & god I know it's hard, so good job you, I am proud to even be talking to you right now haha. Seriously thank you.
Unfortunately the way our economy works now, the best, most talented, and most driven people in the country are economically incentivized to Make facial tracking algorithms for the new dog face...
Unfortunately the way our economy works now, the best, most talented, and most driven people in the country are economically incentivized to
Make facial tracking algorithms for the new dog face filters for some social media app
Use a ton of extremely complicated math to scam other people trying to do the same at algorithmic trading firms
And
Protect corporations that do obviously anti social things from losing money in litigation against them.
We're wasting the best and brightest young people we have because we reward them for at best wasting all of their time and effort, and more likely for making society actively worse.
Virtually the only competitive, well paid high end field that has a positive impact on our world are doctors, and even though they're paid extremely well, we still have a shortage because of how abusive and demanding the field is.
It's almost like we've somehow designed our economic and social system to reward making everything worse for everyone.
Whoa, hey, that's very nice. Thank you! I feel the same way about you public k-12 teachers. I've got two to three people helping out in my class of 15, I can't imagine being by myself with 25+...
Whoa, hey, that's very nice. Thank you! I feel the same way about you public k-12 teachers. I've got two to three people helping out in my class of 15, I can't imagine being by myself with 25+ kids.
I gotta change how I write because I am definitely in agreement with you. After rereading my comment, it doesn't come off that way. Really, I was trying to "yes, and" what you said but it came off more like an "actually," or "well, but."
Increasing the pay and raising the standards of the profession a la the highly-touted Finnish model would be a huge benefit. I absolutely agree that it's something we need to do as soon as possible. Having said that, as Americans we tend to gloss over the fact that the Finns also have a much better social safety net which I believe plays a significant role in the success of their education system.
Seconded. They should be paid so much money that we have too many teachers. Enough people trying to be teachers that schools can actually deal with the few that truely aren't actually good at...
Seconded. They should be paid so much money that we have too many teachers. Enough people trying to be teachers that schools can actually deal with the few that truely aren't actually good at their job, because there's plenty more people who want the position.
Take my taxes for this. Please. I don't even have kids, and don't want any, and I would 100% vote for this.
Where I am, the average teacher gets paid $92k which is not quite up to where u/thumbsupemoji wants it to be, but is a respectable amount given the average household income in my city is $75k. It...
Where I am, the average teacher gets paid $92k which is not quite up to where u/thumbsupemoji wants it to be, but is a respectable amount given the average household income in my city is $75k. It has not made teachers any easier to fire. The union protects bad employees as strongly regardless of how much each employee makes. Its mandate is to protect rank and file no matter what.
Maybe you'd vote for it, but to get to software engineer salary you'd have to increase by about 50-75% and right now I don't know many Chicagoans happy with that idea. CPS funding is tied strongly to property taxes and people here bitch over 5% increases so imagine what it would take to fund a 50% increase in salary. CPS already has to take out loans to bridge the gap between what the district can get through taxes and what the teachers' union demands.
I have this pipe dream of creating a system whereby schools/teachers get paid a tiny fraction of all of their student's future income (on top of a base salary). Which sounds a lot like just paying...
I have this pipe dream of creating a system whereby schools/teachers get paid a tiny fraction of all of their student's future income (on top of a base salary). Which sounds a lot like just paying taxes, but in my head this is more direct.
In my head it more closely aligns all the incentives. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Might be better though.
Except that would permanently entrench income disparity between school districts. It's already bad enough with them being funded on the local level, where rich counties have so much more money to...
Except that would permanently entrench income disparity between school districts. It's already bad enough with them being funded on the local level, where rich counties have so much more money to spend on education than poor counties.
Yeah it'd be a big Bernie Sanders-level ask, and I'm no economist but my thought process goes: well we are in fact paying devs/engineers that much, so it's doable—make education programs...
Yeah it'd be a big Bernie Sanders-level ask, and I'm no economist but my thought process goes: well we are in fact paying devs/engineers that much, so it's doable—make education programs harder/more selective if it needs to require suffering on the front end, raise the standards all around, & if raising taxes is an issue then just get it from somewhere else, idk maybe all these billionaires I keep hearing about can pitch in. Point being, we pay for what we actually value societally, but in industries like education/healthcare/etc we do not actually value the boots-on-the-ground workers because we want to pay them in Thank Yous & You're Making a Difference, and a software engineer doesn't have to choose.
The pay for software engineers doesn't come from taxes though. Otherwise we could say "we pay hedge fund managers $X, so why can't all public sector employees make $X?". And we don't pay for what...
The pay for software engineers doesn't come from taxes though. Otherwise we could say "we pay hedge fund managers $X, so why can't all public sector employees make $X?". And we don't pay for what we value societally; we pay for what we value societally and is in short supply. We all value janitors, but they're paid relatively little.
To your point about increasing minimum requirements for teaching in addition to increasing pay, I highly agree with this! It would be completely unpalatable to the teachers' union and most teachers though, since you'd be advocating for firing many of them, so good luck with that. Illinois teachers are now pushing to remove all student performance from teacher evaluations (currently about a third of their evaluation).
If you can point out that paying teachers more would increase student outcomes commensurately, maybe taxpayers would be okay with an increase in taxes. Maybe. But since teachers are just regular people who would gladly take a pay increase without increasing work without a requirement (who can blame them? We're all like this), this is a non-starter.
For what it's worth, this isn't a terrible idea. Pay-for-performance models have been tried and have ended up backfiring. They make teachers not want to work with populations that are harder to...
Illinois teachers are now pushing to remove all student performance from teacher evaluations (currently about a third of their evaluation).
For what it's worth, this isn't a terrible idea. Pay-for-performance models have been tried and have ended up backfiring. They make teachers not want to work with populations that are harder to educate (special education students, absentee kids, kids with behavior problems, etc.), and they can kill collaboration in what is usually a very cooperative environment.
Additionally, it is incredibly difficult to statistically isolate any one teacher's performance on account of their student outcomes. One of my favorite writeups about a failed attempt at this is now offline, but it's still available on archive.org.
For a long time there was a lot of emphasis on "teacher quality" with a lot of studies saying that it had the greatest impact on student learning. This feels true, sounds nice, and is reinforced by a lot of people's own personal educational experiences with teachers they liked or disliked. Unfortunately, the "teacher quality" emphasis was essentially a lie of omission. A lot of the studies it was based on said that it matters most after you controlled for other factors like poverty or funding or class size or support staff and so on. Essentially, what the teacher quality push was saying was "because we're not willing to address other structural matters that have far greater impacts on student outcomes, we should focus on teacher quality because that's something we have more control over."
@AnthonyB has a good example on how a lack of parental leave and poverty are already affecting kids as young as three years old, for example.
I spent a decade working in schools in poverty, I can say that I genuinely worked with some absolutely incredible teachers who were masters of their craft. I now work in a very wealthy district, and, not to knock my colleagues or anything, but many of them are genuinely worse at teaching. I myself have actually become a worse teacher in my time at this school if we're evaluating me against established standards of pedagogy.
By student outcome measures, however, the teachers at the low-income schools would be considered "bad" teachers while the ones at my current school would be considered "good," when in reality those measures aren't reflective of teacher quality but of much broader societal factors that are impacting those school populations at large.
What you've observed is absolutely the trend, because lower-SES schools are so much more demanding to work in, both implicitly and explicitly. 60% of baseline expectations in one district I worked...
What you've observed is absolutely the trend, because lower-SES schools are so much more demanding to work in, both implicitly and explicitly. 60% of baseline expectations in one district I worked in would have made me a rockstar in another, slightly more well-off district. But I think again it comes down to attracting people who are not necessarily the best educators, but the people who work the hardest & thrive the most when they are compensated non-monetarily, via throwing as many starfish back into the ocean as possible : )
Yep it would require a full reset, both of the educational-industrial complex that depends on low scores to justify paying giant publishing companies for crap test prep for crap tests lol—but I...
Yep it would require a full reset, both of the educational-industrial complex that depends on low scores to justify paying giant publishing companies for crap test prep for crap tests lol—but I don't think taxpayers in general are against it; it always comes out as this false dichotomy of "Well you don't want to pay 50% property taxes, so what is the gov't supposed to do??" idk don't blow up other countries ig.
It's only a non-starter because The United States of America has decided they don't want it—to be clear it would be revolutionary in the truest sense, the current US avg teacher salary per the NEA is about 70k, which is the starting salary for the highest-paid teachers globally in Luxembourg; they top out around 140-150k tho, so it's in the ballpark of what I'm describing, but we would literally be the only ones doing it that way.
But to your first point and really your final point as well: we need janitors, rely on them, but yeah you can teach someone to do their job quickly so we do not societally value the position more than we pay for it to be done. If every single custodial employee in the country didn't go to work tomorrow, we would probably value them a lot more by the next day, and if they took the weekend off collectively we would be having a very different conversation on Monday. So teaching currently requires a hell of a lot of school for a job that pays maybe $30/hr avg. starting pay—minimum 4 year degree, and it's not one you can easily take & do something else in a different field (at least they do not advertise that feature). In my state first-year teachers make about 75% of the federally-defined "living wage," so not great, and we're at about the halfway mark. Add on a masters (or two) for additional income, and you're looking at 6-7 years, probably some student loans, ok—yeah if we offered 3x the money for 1x the work & required education, that would not attract individuals who would be good candidates for educating children lol. Many teachers go back for the additional schooling already, so frontload it & require a GRE or MCAT or make the Praxis actually worthwhile, do an orals-style field experience, send them to Harlem on a Tuesday & have them teach a class to kids who are over their shit—sorry if I wasn't clear, I am definitely not advocating making teaching "cushy," I am advocating for it to be made a profession, and for teachers to subsequently be paid a professional wage: within five years of that initial change, we would def. lose a lot of dead-weight teachers to new hires who were more educated, more enthusiastic, etc, and parents would suddenly be very interested in getting their best & brightest into teacher ed programs, which would similarly be better-funded, more rigorous, etc. All leading to smarter kids—which, again, you're not wrong: it won't happen, because if we wanted it we'd already have it. The Space Race was the last time anyone was really worried about how smart our kids are; now we just need a few, and they'll be fine anyhow, & the rest need to be malleable enough to vote how they're told.
It's professions that involve caring for anyone, but also expand that to any female-dominated profession. Nurses, schoolteachers, office administration, customer service, sales (outside of...
It's professions that involve caring for anyone, but also expand that to any female-dominated profession. Nurses, schoolteachers, office administration, customer service, sales (outside of high-ticket or luxury items)...
It's only a big ask at the state level, federally the money would be easy to find. The problem is the system is heavily influenced by financial interests that aren't excited about funding...
It's only a big ask at the state level, federally the money would be easy to find. The problem is the system is heavily influenced by financial interests that aren't excited about funding education. They want defense and corporate subsidies and tax cuts for rich people and so on.
As with all the big problems, fix legislative capture and they become much easier to solve. That's the big ask.
I agree completely by the way, pay teachers six figures, make it a career that people work hard to get and keep.
Exactly! Imagine if university donors were trying to make college gifts to get their kids into... a middle school teacher training program. Competitive application process. Districts competing to...
Exactly! Imagine if university donors were trying to make college gifts to get their kids into... a middle school teacher training program. Competitive application process. Districts competing to get the best of the best, instead of starting insane programs to just let anyone get in there for a year, please.
Well, yeah. And then the people who are anti- come in & say "But doctors and engineers and people have to work so hard, medical school takes eight years or whatever"—which is really "don't pay children's teachers as much as me, and god please don't pay them more than that." It's not about applying an increased-income filter to US Ed as-is, it's about deciding that it's actually a priority. Until that happens I'm believing that it's a feature not a bug lol
A liveable wage would be a good start. Someone who takes an extra 2 years for a master and 3 or so years under oversight while interning should not have to consider Starbucks as a potentially...
A liveable wage would be a good start. Someone who takes an extra 2 years for a master and 3 or so years under oversight while interning should not have to consider Starbucks as a potentially higher paying alternative.
But investing in education is the ultimate long term investment of a country's populace. And many people these days in policy can't think past campaigning for next term in 2-6 years. There is also some inevitable sexism given the historical aspects of teaching as well.
Allocate military funding to education. Give teachers a six figure salary so the private sector is less attractive, stop wasting money on F35s and aircraft carriers, make the would-be military...
Allocate military funding to education. Give teachers a six figure salary so the private sector is less attractive, stop wasting money on F35s and aircraft carriers, make the would-be military enlistees work at Starbucks instead.
We will see states provide radically different histories of the US to their students. Instead of education that sometimes glosses over uglier parts of our history (because the public system has...
We will see states provide radically different histories of the US to their students. Instead of education that sometimes glosses over uglier parts of our history (because the public system has done this), we'll see the states decide which facts to share and which lies to promulgate.
By further diverging states, between mostly accurate and mostly propagandized histories, this move, perhaps more than any other so far, seems to lend itself to almost guaranteeing a second American civil war within a few generations.
Aside: I don't understand the point in the article about the filibuster. Can't the republicans change the Senate rules to end the filibuster?
The most damning thing I've seen so far: someone on the site formerly known as Twitter made one of those "Why isn't anyone doing anything??" posts, saying that Republicans should be ashamed—the...
The most damning thing I've seen so far: someone on the site formerly known as Twitter made one of those "Why isn't anyone doing anything??" posts, saying that Republicans should be ashamed—the reply was: "They're not even ashamed of the Confederacy yet."
It's the WWI -> WWII track all over, just took 160 years to cook.
They might be able to. But why would they take their most useful tool against democrats? The filibuster is a rep's most powerful tool against the tyranny of the majority, and I'm sure both sides...
I don't understand the point in the article about the filibuster. Can't the republicans change the Senate rules to end the filibuster?
They might be able to. But why would they take their most useful tool against democrats? The filibuster is a rep's most powerful tool against the tyranny of the majority, and I'm sure both sides know they won't always hold a majority.
Yet they are creating a precedent, with the civil service, where bureaucrats are replaced by political appointees. This will similarly not always work in their favor. Granted, if the GOP guts the...
Yet they are creating a precedent, with the civil service, where bureaucrats are replaced by political appointees. This will similarly not always work in their favor. Granted, if the GOP guts the civil service, rebuilding and replacing it is much harder.
Why would the dissolution of the Department of Education cause this if they don't provide curricula?
We will see states provide radically different histories of the US to their students. Instead of education that sometimes glosses over uglier parts of our history (because the public system has done this), we'll see the states decide which facts to share and which lies to promulgate.
Why would the dissolution of the Department of Education cause this if they don't provide curricula?
The absence of standardized testing (a different kind of problem itself), enforcement of civil rights within education, and centralized source of grants for education, due to privatization could...
The absence of standardized testing (a different kind of problem itself), enforcement of civil rights within education, and centralized source of grants for education, due to privatization could leave even more room for falsehoods by further decoupling education from the federal government.
That sounds like a far cry from the claim I responded to. I don't think it's unreasonable to think it could happen, I just don't see how this would cause it.
That sounds like a far cry from the claim I responded to.
I don't think it's unreasonable to think it could happen, I just don't see how this would cause it.
Five bucks says the red ones go to full public ("public") charter approach, so all of the rules but none of the guidelines, with the difference made up through officially-sanctioned christian...
Five bucks says the red ones go to full public ("public") charter approach, so all of the rules but none of the guidelines, with the difference made up through officially-sanctioned christian nationalist homeschool groups. Ugh I don't want to be right
Can someone explain to me the immediate and long-term implications of this, given I have a child just about to start going to a public elementary school?
Can someone explain to me the immediate and long-term implications of this, given I have a child just about to start going to a public elementary school?
Possible issues if your child needs a 504 or IEP and the school doesn't want to support them. Also depends on how much federal funding and grants your school gets - they go mostly to the poorest...
Possible issues if your child needs a 504 or IEP and the school doesn't want to support them.
Also depends on how much federal funding and grants your school gets - they go mostly to the poorest schools, but that looks different in different places. Your state will have greater immediate influence (and definitely look to your state board of education and local school boards for more info)
Long term could lead to more teacher shortages due to their higher ed and student loan policies and curriculum changes as grants for art teachers, after school programs, preK, etc are cut
“Joe Biden cannot cancel student loans held by the government when the secretary of education is given the power to do so via law because of a new “major questions” doctrine we just made up. But...
“Joe Biden cannot cancel student loans held by the government when the secretary of education is given the power to do so via law because of a new “major questions” doctrine we just made up. But if Donald Trump wants to delete the whole agency created in law by congress that’s fine “ - Supreme Court probably
The educated citizen is the enemy of the authoritarian state, and so the authoritarian state cannot tolerate the educated, and seeks to remove them from this generation, and the next.
I guess this is the straw that broke this camel's back. I am livid and lashing out HARD at my trumper parents. Very angry text exchanges this morning. Read this a few minutes before driving my kids to school and I'm just horrified. I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to just punch things...I really hate being this angry, but fuck we're there.
I take some solace in knowing I live in a Democrat state and can easily fallback to an even more Democrat state if that changes. But that doesn't exactly fix the broader problem. Generations of children in poorer, more conservative states are going to suffer immensely because of this. And that's fucking awful.
I believe there's an even more sinister goal of eliminating education for disabled kids in dismantling the Ed. Dept. Multiple states are suing over their "right" to not educate disabled kids (trying to overturn section 504) and that also could threaten accessibility and accommodations in many other areas. Disabled folks, much like trans folks, are usually at the forefront of discrimination and dehumanization, and I find this no different.
The ED doesn't really do most of the other things that are right wing boogiemen and they're using it as a bludgeon against universities and schools to restrict funding now, so I don't see any other "good" reason to ditch it.
Edited: fixed some stupid autocorrect typos.
the conservative moms on social media who I guess didn't think that DEI applied to their kids who are literally in "inclusion" classes... I mean the intentional downfall of US education didn't just start in 2025, but damn they hit the critical thinking first.
Yes, it's always about saving money, and the blood spilt doesn't matter to people without empathy.
This is sadly on the people as well. They, often in states with worse education, complain so much about already poor funding but also love to cut educational funding (or not approve budget increases) to pay less taxes. It's a negative spiral and it only ends badly for public schooling.
Sad part is I will likely be better off compared to most states, and those people above are often in red states voting for this. I'm not sure what their mindset is for their kids here; many of them sure can't afford this supposed "voucher program", let alone private schooling. Do they think they can homeschool their kids (with what time?)? Do they want to repeal child labor laws and send them out to work instead of going to high school? Do the voter base just not care because the older ones got theirs, damned be the grandkids?
The real learnin' happens on farms and at the sawmill.
There's a Robert Frost poem about that.
Out Out
Damn...
Trump and the GOP is playing the long game with this one. They've been wanting to have public schooling whither and die for decades, so they could promote and fund charter schools with right wing ideologically oriented curriculums. That's why they've be so gung ho on school vouchers.
Yep, and the voucher program already exists in Arizona. As you've probably guessed, it's really just expanding the divide between families of different economic classes, making public schools worse (less funding), and helping private schools earn more (as many of them increased their tuition price as a result).
Indeed. What's even worse, at least in our state, is that when a student goes to a charter school, the public school has to dole out a portion of their funds to the charter school. The charter schools of course don't take any of the students with learning disabilities, behavioral health issues, etc. So the public schools' budgets are off-kilter because they're stuck with all the higher cost students, but the amount of money they have to give to the charter school per attending student is an average of all their costs, including all students. Additionally, costs like electricity, water, heating/cooling are averaged into this, but those costs don't go down no matter how many students leave the public facility for a charter school.
Ruining the whole point of the vouchers, lovely. Huge white flight and "separate but equal" vibes as well after reading through the article.
I'm pretty sure this always was the point of vouchers. Rich people thought it was unfair that they had to subsidize public schools that their kids didn't go to (entirely because of their own choice), and instead wanted to be able to save money by using public money to pay for their kids' private education. It's never been about anything except for the wealthy getting out of paying their share of a societal good.
White flight was always the point of vouchers.
For years I've been saying: pay teachers enough money, like an amount of money that would make a lot of people spit their coffee out, like engineer or software dev money, & by the time this year's freshmen graduate there won't be any problems with the education system left—and we could be doing this already but we're not, which means improving US education is not actually the desired outcome, at least not for the people deciding whether it gets improved. And people would respond by spitting their coffee out lol—"my wife taught for 37 years and she wouldn't have wanted any more money, it was about the kids," "my wife wouldn't go back in the classroom for a million dollars a year," actual quotes!—buuuut here we are, doing the opposite. Republicans (or anyone who voted for DJT, or anyone who just didn't vote), when your kids all bring their "AI-Ready" future-workforce-member report cards home from X-么亗ALPHA亗 Elementary Site (A Tesla™ Company), 90% funded by whatever crummy state DOE you've got and 10% funded by how many Amazon Prime subscribers live in your school district, please remember there were people who said this would happen before it was happening & you said it wouldn't.
I hate to be a party pooper, but I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by throwing money in the direction of teachers and classrooms. Will it help? Absolutely. It's the first and easiest thing that should be done to - at the very least - improve the lives of the people trying to educate our children.
However, I think there is a much deeper societal issue that needs to be addressed as well. I work for a Head Start program that serves low-income families in Los Angeles. Many of of the students I've had over the years are unable to function in a learning environment due to the problems they have at home. It's ironic, because as our name states, the whole idea is to give them a "head start" for their k-12 education, but in reality, we are desperately trying to bring them up to the bare minimum levels where they are able to be a part of a classroom. Forget about letters and numbers, I've had kids leave my program after a full year who were unable to identify colors and shapes because they spend most of their time at school in a state of survival or heightened emotion.
It's not silver bullet, but guaranteed paid maternity/paternity leave and expanded financial benefits for children under 3 would be a total game changer. It would strengthen the parent-child bond and therefore the sense of security that a child needs before they come into a classroom. It would allow pre-k and early primary teachers the space we need to cultivate an environment where children can learn the skills they need in order to be successful in middle and high school. It needs to be part of the conversation when we talk about fixing our fucked up education system.
For sure, it wouldn't fix everything—I'd put maternal/paternal leave on employers elsewhere, but if all US parents get a year off with their kids & are then forced to send them to daycare/public schools where everything sucks, I mean that's no good either. I'm not in favor of just "throwing money" at anything & just hoping for better results; in education that would just get you higher-paid administration & snazzy new buildings full of teachers still making $50k. If there was a line of people wanting to teach, if parents after a few years realized it would be a lucrative/"respected" career instead of a fallback or whatever it is now (I say that as a ten-year PS teacher who picked it on purpose lol), then that would begin to have serious effects in education, and sure eventually elsewhere; once those students had kids, then hopefully things would be better in places like where you are. But gosh you are deep in the trenches, and it's commendable work & god I know it's hard, so good job you, I am proud to even be talking to you right now haha. Seriously thank you.
Unfortunately the way our economy works now, the best, most talented, and most driven people in the country are economically incentivized to
And
We're wasting the best and brightest young people we have because we reward them for at best wasting all of their time and effort, and more likely for making society actively worse.
Virtually the only competitive, well paid high end field that has a positive impact on our world are doctors, and even though they're paid extremely well, we still have a shortage because of how abusive and demanding the field is.
It's almost like we've somehow designed our economic and social system to reward making everything worse for everyone.
Don't forget:
Whoa, hey, that's very nice. Thank you! I feel the same way about you public k-12 teachers. I've got two to three people helping out in my class of 15, I can't imagine being by myself with 25+ kids.
I gotta change how I write because I am definitely in agreement with you. After rereading my comment, it doesn't come off that way. Really, I was trying to "yes, and" what you said but it came off more like an "actually," or "well, but."
Increasing the pay and raising the standards of the profession a la the highly-touted Finnish model would be a huge benefit. I absolutely agree that it's something we need to do as soon as possible. Having said that, as Americans we tend to gloss over the fact that the Finns also have a much better social safety net which I believe plays a significant role in the success of their education system.
Seconded. They should be paid so much money that we have too many teachers. Enough people trying to be teachers that schools can actually deal with the few that truely aren't actually good at their job, because there's plenty more people who want the position.
Take my taxes for this. Please. I don't even have kids, and don't want any, and I would 100% vote for this.
Where I am, the average teacher gets paid $92k which is not quite up to where u/thumbsupemoji wants it to be, but is a respectable amount given the average household income in my city is $75k. It has not made teachers any easier to fire. The union protects bad employees as strongly regardless of how much each employee makes. Its mandate is to protect rank and file no matter what.
Maybe you'd vote for it, but to get to software engineer salary you'd have to increase by about 50-75% and right now I don't know many Chicagoans happy with that idea. CPS funding is tied strongly to property taxes and people here bitch over 5% increases so imagine what it would take to fund a 50% increase in salary. CPS already has to take out loans to bridge the gap between what the district can get through taxes and what the teachers' union demands.
I have this pipe dream of creating a system whereby schools/teachers get paid a tiny fraction of all of their student's future income (on top of a base salary). Which sounds a lot like just paying taxes, but in my head this is more direct.
In my head it more closely aligns all the incentives. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Might be better though.
Except that would permanently entrench income disparity between school districts. It's already bad enough with them being funded on the local level, where rich counties have so much more money to spend on education than poor counties.
Yeah it'd be a big Bernie Sanders-level ask, and I'm no economist but my thought process goes: well we are in fact paying devs/engineers that much, so it's doable—make education programs harder/more selective if it needs to require suffering on the front end, raise the standards all around, & if raising taxes is an issue then just get it from somewhere else, idk maybe all these billionaires I keep hearing about can pitch in. Point being, we pay for what we actually value societally, but in industries like education/healthcare/etc we do not actually value the boots-on-the-ground workers because we want to pay them in Thank Yous & You're Making a Difference, and a software engineer doesn't have to choose.
The pay for software engineers doesn't come from taxes though. Otherwise we could say "we pay hedge fund managers $X, so why can't all public sector employees make $X?". And we don't pay for what we value societally; we pay for what we value societally and is in short supply. We all value janitors, but they're paid relatively little.
To your point about increasing minimum requirements for teaching in addition to increasing pay, I highly agree with this! It would be completely unpalatable to the teachers' union and most teachers though, since you'd be advocating for firing many of them, so good luck with that. Illinois teachers are now pushing to remove all student performance from teacher evaluations (currently about a third of their evaluation).
If you can point out that paying teachers more would increase student outcomes commensurately, maybe taxpayers would be okay with an increase in taxes. Maybe. But since teachers are just regular people who would gladly take a pay increase without increasing work without a requirement (who can blame them? We're all like this), this is a non-starter.
For what it's worth, this isn't a terrible idea. Pay-for-performance models have been tried and have ended up backfiring. They make teachers not want to work with populations that are harder to educate (special education students, absentee kids, kids with behavior problems, etc.), and they can kill collaboration in what is usually a very cooperative environment.
Additionally, it is incredibly difficult to statistically isolate any one teacher's performance on account of their student outcomes. One of my favorite writeups about a failed attempt at this is now offline, but it's still available on archive.org.
For a long time there was a lot of emphasis on "teacher quality" with a lot of studies saying that it had the greatest impact on student learning. This feels true, sounds nice, and is reinforced by a lot of people's own personal educational experiences with teachers they liked or disliked. Unfortunately, the "teacher quality" emphasis was essentially a lie of omission. A lot of the studies it was based on said that it matters most after you controlled for other factors like poverty or funding or class size or support staff and so on. Essentially, what the teacher quality push was saying was "because we're not willing to address other structural matters that have far greater impacts on student outcomes, we should focus on teacher quality because that's something we have more control over."
@AnthonyB has a good example on how a lack of parental leave and poverty are already affecting kids as young as three years old, for example.
I spent a decade working in schools in poverty, I can say that I genuinely worked with some absolutely incredible teachers who were masters of their craft. I now work in a very wealthy district, and, not to knock my colleagues or anything, but many of them are genuinely worse at teaching. I myself have actually become a worse teacher in my time at this school if we're evaluating me against established standards of pedagogy.
By student outcome measures, however, the teachers at the low-income schools would be considered "bad" teachers while the ones at my current school would be considered "good," when in reality those measures aren't reflective of teacher quality but of much broader societal factors that are impacting those school populations at large.
What you've observed is absolutely the trend, because lower-SES schools are so much more demanding to work in, both implicitly and explicitly. 60% of baseline expectations in one district I worked in would have made me a rockstar in another, slightly more well-off district. But I think again it comes down to attracting people who are not necessarily the best educators, but the people who work the hardest & thrive the most when they are compensated non-monetarily, via throwing as many starfish back into the ocean as possible : )
Yep it would require a full reset, both of the educational-industrial complex that depends on low scores to justify paying giant publishing companies for crap test prep for crap tests lol—but I don't think taxpayers in general are against it; it always comes out as this false dichotomy of "Well you don't want to pay 50% property taxes, so what is the gov't supposed to do??" idk don't blow up other countries ig.
It's only a non-starter because The United States of America has decided they don't want it—to be clear it would be revolutionary in the truest sense, the current US avg teacher salary per the NEA is about 70k, which is the starting salary for the highest-paid teachers globally in Luxembourg; they top out around 140-150k tho, so it's in the ballpark of what I'm describing, but we would literally be the only ones doing it that way.
But to your first point and really your final point as well: we need janitors, rely on them, but yeah you can teach someone to do their job quickly so we do not societally value the position more than we pay for it to be done. If every single custodial employee in the country didn't go to work tomorrow, we would probably value them a lot more by the next day, and if they took the weekend off collectively we would be having a very different conversation on Monday. So teaching currently requires a hell of a lot of school for a job that pays maybe $30/hr avg. starting pay—minimum 4 year degree, and it's not one you can easily take & do something else in a different field (at least they do not advertise that feature). In my state first-year teachers make about 75% of the federally-defined "living wage," so not great, and we're at about the halfway mark. Add on a masters (or two) for additional income, and you're looking at 6-7 years, probably some student loans, ok—yeah if we offered 3x the money for 1x the work & required education, that would not attract individuals who would be good candidates for educating children lol. Many teachers go back for the additional schooling already, so frontload it & require a GRE or MCAT or make the Praxis actually worthwhile, do an orals-style field experience, send them to Harlem on a Tuesday & have them teach a class to kids who are over their shit—sorry if I wasn't clear, I am definitely not advocating making teaching "cushy," I am advocating for it to be made a profession, and for teachers to subsequently be paid a professional wage: within five years of that initial change, we would def. lose a lot of dead-weight teachers to new hires who were more educated, more enthusiastic, etc, and parents would suddenly be very interested in getting their best & brightest into teacher ed programs, which would similarly be better-funded, more rigorous, etc. All leading to smarter kids—which, again, you're not wrong: it won't happen, because if we wanted it we'd already have it. The Space Race was the last time anyone was really worried about how smart our kids are; now we just need a few, and they'll be fine anyhow, & the rest need to be malleable enough to vote how they're told.
It's professions that involve caring for anyone, but also expand that to any female-dominated profession. Nurses, schoolteachers, office administration, customer service, sales (outside of high-ticket or luxury items)...
It's only a big ask at the state level, federally the money would be easy to find. The problem is the system is heavily influenced by financial interests that aren't excited about funding education. They want defense and corporate subsidies and tax cuts for rich people and so on.
As with all the big problems, fix legislative capture and they become much easier to solve. That's the big ask.
I agree completely by the way, pay teachers six figures, make it a career that people work hard to get and keep.
Exactly! Imagine if university donors were trying to make college gifts to get their kids into... a middle school teacher training program. Competitive application process. Districts competing to get the best of the best, instead of starting insane programs to just let anyone get in there for a year, please.
Well, yeah. And then the people who are anti- come in & say "But doctors and engineers and people have to work so hard, medical school takes eight years or whatever"—which is really "don't pay children's teachers as much as me, and god please don't pay them more than that." It's not about applying an increased-income filter to US Ed as-is, it's about deciding that it's actually a priority. Until that happens I'm believing that it's a feature not a bug lol
A liveable wage would be a good start. Someone who takes an extra 2 years for a master and 3 or so years under oversight while interning should not have to consider Starbucks as a potentially higher paying alternative.
But investing in education is the ultimate long term investment of a country's populace. And many people these days in policy can't think past campaigning for next term in 2-6 years. There is also some inevitable sexism given the historical aspects of teaching as well.
Allocate military funding to education. Give teachers a six figure salary so the private sector is less attractive, stop wasting money on F35s and aircraft carriers, make the would-be military enlistees work at Starbucks instead.
We will see states provide radically different histories of the US to their students. Instead of education that sometimes glosses over uglier parts of our history (because the public system has done this), we'll see the states decide which facts to share and which lies to promulgate.
By further diverging states, between mostly accurate and mostly propagandized histories, this move, perhaps more than any other so far, seems to lend itself to almost guaranteeing a second American civil war within a few generations.
Aside: I don't understand the point in the article about the filibuster. Can't the republicans change the Senate rules to end the filibuster?
If things keep up at this rate, it'll only take a year or two.
The most damning thing I've seen so far: someone on the site formerly known as Twitter made one of those "Why isn't anyone doing anything??" posts, saying that Republicans should be ashamed—the reply was: "They're not even ashamed of the Confederacy yet."
It's the WWI -> WWII track all over, just took 160 years to cook.
They might be able to. But why would they take their most useful tool against democrats? The filibuster is a rep's most powerful tool against the tyranny of the majority, and I'm sure both sides know they won't always hold a majority.
Yet they are creating a precedent, with the civil service, where bureaucrats are replaced by political appointees. This will similarly not always work in their favor. Granted, if the GOP guts the civil service, rebuilding and replacing it is much harder.
Why would the dissolution of the Department of Education cause this if they don't provide curricula?
The absence of standardized testing (a different kind of problem itself), enforcement of civil rights within education, and centralized source of grants for education, due to privatization could leave even more room for falsehoods by further decoupling education from the federal government.
That sounds like a far cry from the claim I responded to.
I don't think it's unreasonable to think it could happen, I just don't see how this would cause it.
Five bucks says the red ones go to full public ("public") charter approach, so all of the rules but none of the guidelines, with the difference made up through officially-sanctioned christian nationalist homeschool groups. Ugh I don't want to be right
This is another separation of powers issue; the executive is not supposed to be able to get rid of a department created by a bill signed into law.
Can someone explain to me the immediate and long-term implications of this, given I have a child just about to start going to a public elementary school?
Possible issues if your child needs a 504 or IEP and the school doesn't want to support them.
Also depends on how much federal funding and grants your school gets - they go mostly to the poorest schools, but that looks different in different places. Your state will have greater immediate influence (and definitely look to your state board of education and local school boards for more info)
Long term could lead to more teacher shortages due to their higher ed and student loan policies and curriculum changes as grants for art teachers, after school programs, preK, etc are cut
Arguably he doesn't have to do it since the people already voted him in so ya know check mate but I guess he thinks better safe than sorry.
pretty sure he's doing this because he wants to do it
Followup: NYT: Education Department fires 1,300 workers, gutting its staff
“Joe Biden cannot cancel student loans held by the government when the secretary of education is given the power to do so via law because of a new “major questions” doctrine we just made up. But if Donald Trump wants to delete the whole agency created in law by congress that’s fine “ - Supreme Court probably