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The Department of Mis-Education
The Government Accountability Office identified some serious problems within the department
At the end of each school year, children often recite the traditional American proverb, “no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks.” But how about no more Department of Education? Could there be a more deceptive euphemism than the name given to this gargantuan federal bureaucracy, which has done so little to help our kids and their teachers succeed?
At one time, there was hope. In 1980, Ronald Reagan campaigned on abolishing the Department of Education, though he didn’t succeed in doing so. Even in the 1990s, the Republican Party platform included strong and clear language stating that education decisions belong to schools, teachers, parents, and communities instead of Washington bureaucrats. But less than a decade later, George W. Bush embraced a federal government role in education when he pushed for, and successfully implemented, Ted Kennedy’s No Child Left Behind Act.
For conservatives, all hope seemed to be lost. But then Donald Trump became the first president since Reagan to assertively take on the behemoth DOE by promising to return more power to states and local jurisdictions. In 2017, President Trump signed the Education Federalism Executive Order designed to begin removing the federal government from K-12 education. Unfortunately, little has changed.
Notwithstanding the fact that there are some good people with good intentions at the DOE, even the Government Accountability Office recently identified some serious problems within the department. These include oversight and monitoring, data quality, capacity, and methodological limitations.
That’s an official way of saying that the very people charged with determining how and what your children learn in the classroom are making these decisions in a completely dysfunctional environment. How do they know what’s best for our kids if they can’t even manage their own affairs in Washington?
But don’t think the debate over federal funding of education is a Left-Right issue. Democrat and Republican administrations alike share blame for entangling schools across the country in a web of government mandates and policies. Sure, school districts can opt out of some of these schemes, but they’ll lose federal funding. And despite President Trump’s promises, the situation looks bleak.
Vicki E. Alger writes at The Federalist, “The Trump administration proposed merging the education and labor departments last June to streamline education programs and minimize bureaucracy. The plan was met with bipartisan criticism including by members of several conservative education organizations.”
The criticism from conservatives is well-founded. Merging the departments of Labor and Education may feel and sound efficient, but we’d still end up with a large, complex bureaucracy unable to function in a manner consistent with the vision and values of parents and educators at the state and local levels. And who wants Labor Department officials making decisions about education?
One of the organizations upset over the president’s failure to curtail federal involvement in education is U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE), which blamed President Trump for using “the hammer of the federal government to broaden its authority and disregard the rights of states and parents.”
Additionally, USPIE remains concerned that Trump has not worked more to tackle Common Core. In fact, since appointing Betsy DeVos, considered by many to be a top-down educator, Trump has abandoned his pledge to taken on Common Core. Additionally, USPIE is troubled over DeVos’s support of the United Nations education agenda and the fact that she threatened to withhold money from states if they didn’t comply with federal mandates.
Of the total education budget, the federal government only provides about 8% of the funding for K-12 schools and programs. But there’s a major string attached once that first federal dollar is accepted. In return for federal funding, schools have had to agree to a laundry list of policies made by Washington bureaucrats instead of local school boards, parents, and taxpayers.
It’s no wonder that school-choice programs and homeschooling options are becoming more popular all across the country. After all, the key decisions about how our children are educated should remain in the hands of those who know our kids best.
SOURCE
Scotland: Parents slam ‘cruel’ disaster drill in Inverness after children are left traumatised
Furious parents claim their children were left traumatised following a disaster exercise at an Inverness primary school.
The backlash has forced international charity Unicef – which organised the simulation project and chose Lochardil Primary as one of only two UK schools to take part – to review how it runs the scheme.
During the event, primarily for primary six and seven pupils, organisers told children a month’s worth of rainfall had struck the Highland capital overnight – but the emergency services couldn’t come straight away, so they had to look after themselves and each other.
Classroom furniture was overturned and cordons put in place around the school, with a police officer in attendance and a teacher role playing they had sustained a broken arm.
Parents have hit out after they say they were handed no prior warning in relation to last Friday’s event and questioned the motive, claiming it went to unnecessary lengths for little or no gain.
Annorah Macknocher, who has a child in primary six at the school, said: “There was no need for them not to tell the children that this was a drill.
“My daughter said to me that she knew the policeman was lying. That’s a bit of a shame. The police are there to help and you want your child to go to a person in a position of certainty in need. Having the police there made it feel more real.
“What did they really learn? Not a lot. “Drills are not just for staff to learn, they are for children to learn what to do.”
One parent, who has two children at the school but wished not to be named, said: “I am really annoyed about the whole thing. I was very confused as to how it could go ahead without parents being told something.
“I thought it was quite cruel and all it did was create a quite traumatic and negative experience. “It was totally out of order.”
Head teacher Audrey Kellacher said: “The focus was not on what to do in the event of a flood, but to experience the sense of not having our rights fully met and what this would mean for us during the role play and also for other children around the world for whom this is a reality.
“We continue to work closely with any parents and carers that expressed initial concerns to share this understanding of the entire learning experience and content, including our reasons for choosing not to share information on the work prior to the morning of the simulation.”
Anna Kettley, director of programmes for Unicef, said: “There is an option throughout the event for children to opt out if at any point they are not enjoying it. “Following feedback from the pilot schools, Unicef will review our guidance on delivering this emergency simulation and revise any areas required.”
SOURCE H/T Climate lessons
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