Does DeVos Matter?

 Does DeVos Matter?

 

For many of you who are reading this, your response might be DeVos who?  So maybe she doesn’t matter.  But truthfully, she can matter quite a bit.

DeVos is the outgoing Secretary of Education in the Trump administration.  By some counts she is the most disliked of all Trump’s cabinet members and she has had some tough competition.

Initially her selection was challenged by the fact that she has no experience at all in education.  Oddly, many people thought that the Secretary of Education should have some experience in the area.   Her strongest qualification was that she had donated heavily to the Trump campaign.  But the major reason for her detractors was that she strongly supports private education and does not support public education.  Although in fairness, she has had very little experience with public education because she is very wealthy, went to all private schools herself and so have her children.  Having never worked in any area of education she hasn’t worked in public education either.

So why has that mattered?   About 6% of all funding for public schools comes from the federal government.  People think it is more than that but it isn’t.  it is almost entirely directed toward special areas of interest, high poverty areas, leveling the playing field for girls in sports, or supporting HBCU’s.   Most of the money is determined by Congress, but the Secretary of Education gets to distribute it.   She has strongly advocated for schools opening totally in-person during the pandemic and threatened to take money away from public schools that didn’t open and give that money to private and parochial schools.  She has weakened the protections for students who are raped on college campuses.  She has reduced the civil rights protections of students in public schools and erased protections for students in predatory and for-profit higher education facilities.  She has intervened in cases where schools were accused of disproportionately putting children of color in special education so that the school districts could continue those practices.

Because other secretaries get more ink, DeVos frequently flies under the radar except with people in education or the children who are served.   All during her term, there has been no question but that she sought to move money from public schools to private and religious schools.  She sees no Constitutional issue with spending public funds on religious education.

There is heavy pressure on President-elect Biden to pick an experienced educator for that department.  All educator eyes will be on his pick and hopefully whoever that is will matter very positively to public educators and children with challenges.

Can we afford to improve education?

 Can We Afford to Improve Education?

 

Public education is in trouble right now.  Yes, the virus is awful, but things were bad before the pandemic and now they have gotten worse.  Public schools have multiple deficits and the virus has left them with fewer students, hence less money to meet those deficits.

If you were in charge, how would you spend the limited resources.  Here are a few options to consider.

First of all is teacher salaries.  The average teacher salary in Maryland is $60,000 after about five years on the job. They earn much less than other college educated workers.   It would take about 35.5 billion dollars To close that wage gap for all 3.5 million teachers nationwide.  That is a significant amount of money.   How would this expenditure improve education for kids?

Many children in lower socio-economic groups struggle after school.  They do not have good places to go.  What would it cost to provide high-quality after school programing for the 35.5 million kids preK through 8^th grade who could benefit from extended or enriched learning experiences?  Programs that would keep kids off the street and support their social-emotional development.  Of course, there is a price tag to that.  It is about 122 billion dollars.   Would that level of investment pay dividends in more kids staying in school and more children benefiting from school experiences rather than getting into criminal or gang activity down the road?

Many states do not require full-day kindergarten.   Yet most educators believe that children would benefit from the start with high quality kindergarten.  To provide that service, schools would need to hire about 56 thousand kindergarten teachers.  It is not clear where they would be found, but at current salary rates, the cost would be about 5 billion dollars.   Would the return on that investment of better prepared students to start school be worth it?

The pandemic has made it increasingly clear that school buildings in our country are aging.  Many are so old that the HVAC systems cannot be upgraded for better filtration.  There are about 70,000 school buildings in our country.  It is projected that it would cost 215.5 billion dollars to fully upgrade the buildings that need repair, renovation or modernization.   Our kids deserve to be educated in a decent facility.   Are we willing to pay the price to do that?

Perhaps the final item on the menu is the easiest.  We have learned during the pandemic that iPads and Chromebooks are great learning devices even after the crisis is over.  For a mere 14 billion dollars every student could have a device. 

If you were in charge, where would your values direct your money?  And as a taxpayer it IS your money.   How would you spend it?

 

 

Deserting public schools

 Deserting public schools

 

We are going to see some big changes in public schools in the next year or two.   During the great recession of 2008, private schools were losing students at serious rates.  Now the reverse is true.

Families with the economic resources are leaving public schools.  Private schools and community religious schools are the beneficiaries of the exodus from public schools.  Families get that virtual learning is an oxymoron.   Parents of young children cannot believe that there are expectations for little kids to sit in front of a screen for five hours a day.  Teachers’ unions are calling the shots about when kids can come back into buildings for school.   Meanwhile, private schools and community-based schools are opening for instruction for full days.   There have been no major outbreaks of illness among students or staff.  Families are going back to work; students are going back to school.  The big question for public schools is will these loses be permanent?

What will this exodus mean for public schools?   The assumption is that the loss of seniors in June will be made up by incoming kindergarten and first graders.  But that didn’t happen this year.  Public schools are given state aide based on a pupil count in mid-October.  Those counts were down dramatically this school year leading public school systems to lose millions and millions of dollars.

The loss of revenue isn’t the only loss to school systems. The people who are leaving are the people with the resources to afford private school.  In addition to their economic well-being they are also people who value education.  They are the people who testify at budget hearings and legislative meetings demanding more money for education and better facilities.  They are the “consumers” who do not have a vested financial interest in schools.   Who will public schools turn to for advocates when they are gone.  Teachers’ unions will argue for more money.  But they are arguing from a place of self-interest and essentially what they want is more salary money, not necessarily better schools.

There is another issue.   Fewer students means that fewer teachers will be needed and fewer teachers mean lower expenses for school districts.   Staff are the biggest expense of schools.  Those unions that have been resisting coming back to school may find this stance to come back and bite them in the spring when new contracts are let.

But most of all, will our public schools be re-configured so they are made up of the marginal in our society, the economically depressed, the homeless, the families for whom education is not a high value.  And then where will our society be?

Education is not about child care

 Education is not about child care

 

Schools need to open up.  The economy needs to be restarted.  Parents need to get back to work so schools need to reopen.

What are we thinking??!

Yes, schools do need to reopen but it is not because families need child care so they can get back to work.   Schools need to reopen because, quite frankly, online learning stinks.

Yes I have heard that some kids are thriving on it.  I am not sure what exactly that means.   From what I have seen online learning involves a lot of worksheets, memory responses of information, and very little higher order thinking.   Yes Zoom and Google classroom allow for group discussion.   They also allow for individual cop-out.   Kids leave to use the bathroom.  Other kids in the house are on other computers or tablets.  Parents are doing their own work or have the TV blasting in the background.  

Good education is all about higher order thinking.  Students learn to develop concepts; they learn to write about them.  They also learn to discuss them.  Teachers encourage hands on learning.  Kids build stuff in the classroom.  They make change using real money.  They share text books.  And yes, they do those damnable worksheets too, but those are not the bulk of the day.  

We are heading into a lost year of education for our kids.   Does anybody care?  Is anybody there?   The people who should care the most seem to be worrying more about their own well-being and physical health.   In a recent Maryland county 68% of the families said they thought it was not safe for kids to go back to school.   Teachers’ unions seem to have totally forgotten their mission is to serve kids.  Early in the pandemic we called out health care workers as heroes.  And they WERE.   But when those heroes were interviewed they responded by saying that they signed up for helping the sick.  And many of those front line health care workers were not the highly paid medical profession workers.  Many were the health aides, the cleaning people, the nursing assistants.  They are not well paid but they are well committed to the mission.   Well teachers signed up for educating kids and mostly they seem missing in action.   Many love teaching from home and tending to their home business.  We already know that families with the economic means are leaving public schools for private ones.  Those schools are opening.  Those teachers are coming to school.  Those kids are getting a good education.  The teachers’ unions are the front line on this effort to keep teachers at home.  Their message is that the teachers won’t be safe.  Well when I look around those teachers who are worried about their safety are in the grocery stores, in the restaurants and in the shopping areas.  

Education is not about child care.  It is about preparing and educating our kids for their futures and ours.   It is time we started taking seriously what our kids are losing this school year.