The Department of Education changes size and focus
Here’s the story from Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:
That political change includes plans to scale-down the U.S. Department of Education. Not truly to “eliminate” it, which would require an act of Congress, but to eliminate the leftist-NGO funding and woke education mandates, and to send most of its functions back to the states. I wondered aloud in recent posts what would become of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) through which we [Legal Insurrection’s Equal Protection Project] have filed so many complaints.
Although Trump’s executive order regarding the Department of Education does refer to closing it, it actually – according to Professor Jacobson – is “more like putting the [DoEd] on a crash diet.”
So DoEd will retain some spending and assistance program funding, as much of its current burden cannot be fully eliminated or offloaded Significantly, the remaining spending must be monitored to make sure that “any program or activity receiving Federal assistance” elimiates DEI discrimination and simlar agendas.
Will this hold up? Once again, time will tell.
NO. An activist Dem judge will try to stop it. Some say this will go on until the SC weighs in. But I don’t trust Roberts. If Trump is overruled, the US is Dead, Done and Dusted.
In the case of the Department of Education, as well as every other move Donald Trump has made using his power under Article 2, people would do well to read “The Art of the Deal.” It’s 38 years old and it only covers his rise from helping his father build low-income housing in the outer boroughs to building skyscrapers in Manhattan, but many of the facets of Trump’s personality now are in the book where he tells stories that are 40 to 50 years old.
What stands out the most is his lack of fear when it comes to lawsuits. He always hired good lawyers to defend him or to attack when necessary. One thing he says that stands out is, “I never felt it was necessary to back down, especially when I thought I was right.”
The President understands that court cases and appeals take time, and that he is still free to act on other things as it does. And he is relentless. If he is blocked in one way, he will try to find another way to do what he wants. He is always using the law and its processes; he’s not being used by it.
I’m not concerned. These cases will get to the Supreme Court sooner or later and his powers under Article 2 will be confirmed.
I am concerned about what the left will do when that happens. That’s probably when the violence will begin in earnest.
The survey research the Department of Education does could be done just as well by the Department of Labor. Any consumer protection function performed by the Department could be transferred to the Federal Trade Commission. Almost nothing else the Department does is salutary. If the Department has to continue to exist by statute, just leave it with the survey research function.
I agree with Michael Strand.
In the case of the Education Department, he is using executive authority to transfer and reduce things not specifically mandated by Congress. Most of this should stand up.
Unless the Dept of Ed is completely abolished by Trump, it will
re-emerge, bigger than ever, when the demonkrats are once again in charge.
Shrinking the size of the bureaucratic state will only be a temporary solution unless the many useless agencies are abolished.
Would Amy Conney Barrett just go with whatever Roberts decides? Not just with this case, but more broadly regarding all the Lefty Judges?
Even temporarily shutting down some of the Department of Education is worthwhile, because all the leeches sucking money from it have to find something else to pay the bills while it’s down. The next time Democrats get elected, if they bring it back up, that ecosystem has to re-establish itself over time.
In addition, laying off most of them would break the institutional culture that exists there. A new one would have to grow up and that takes time.
But all Trump has done is establish a breathing space; expecting him to fix everything is pointless. We need to expect more of the people in Congress who claim to be on his side, and ours, among many other things we need to do if we want real and lasting change.
“These cases will get to the Supreme Court sooner or later and his powers under Article 2 will be confirmed. ”
“Would Amy Conney Barrett just go with whatever Roberts decides? Not just with this case, but more broadly regarding all the Lefty Judges?”
I have lost confidence in SCOTUS in the last few months. That conservative majority seems to be flipping around. Roberts is never a sure bet, and something happened with Barrett. Having Art 2 powers confirmed by the court is no longer a sure thing.
Well having a psycho around her house and others threatening her sister might have some impact
I’m the rare non-lib/regressive social worker who works in SPED. Basically I’m one of the service providers within SPED. Personally, I’m all for making the DoE lean and more efficient. but I am worried about how states will use the spending on SPED positions, be it service providers or Title 1 positions, paraprofessionals, and ELL positions.
If Trump’s cutting affects state SPED negatively then that will leave a very bitter taste in my mouth. In general we aren’t paid enough for the work we do. Cut out the dumb Woke curriculum and material; cut out the dumb Diversity positions, but don’t touch SPED because that’s one thing that actually makes US education truly progressive in comparison to the rest of the world. If Trump is going to touch SPED then he should advocate for a budget that increases salary for people like me, more resources for those with severe learning disabilities and whatnot, and in general just make the already existing framework stronger and better.
I think I heard Trump say the special education needs will be supervised/funded by HHS. Didn’t say anything about eliminating it.
@GRA:If Trump is going to touch SPED then he should advocate for a budget that increases salary for people like me, more resources for those with severe learning disabilities and whatnot, and in general just make the already existing framework stronger and better.
Tax money comes from the people, not from the Federal government. Your state’s taxpayers can pay for their own SPED if they choose to make that a priority. There is no reason why SPED or anything else education-related needs to be a Federal issue.
The funding is just a dance: the Federal government collects money from everyone in the country, does a dance, and doles it back out a year later. Why not let the money stay where it came from? There’s not a magic pot of Federal money.
I heard Trump say the special education needs will be supervised/funded by HHS.
==
You know, state governments can make revenue sharing grants to local school districts, with the share of the global distribution due each school district determined by a formula – directly correlated with district population and the ratio of school age youth to the remainder of the population, inversely correlated with district per capita income. To the grant, which might account for a quarter of a district’s expenses on average would be local property tax revenue &c. The districts can provide common-and-garden schooling and be assembled into consortia to provide English immersion programs, high-overhead schooling for youths with severe deficits, secondary vocational-technical schooling, and operate community and technical colleges. Behavioral incorrigibles can be remanded to day detention centers run by local sheriff’s departments. The consortial programs would be run by boards made up of delegates from member district boards and proceed by weighted voting. Their fixed costs can be financed by a per capita assessment on each member district and the variable costs by capitations assessed on each district for each student therefrom who enrolls (FTE). Quality control could be maintained by state regents’ examinations administered by proctors employed by the board, not local schools.
==
Please note that state and territorial governments could be partially financed by a revenue sharing grant from the federal government accounting for about 15% of state and local expenditure on average, with each state’s share positively correlated with resident population and inversely associated with per capita income. You don’t need a Department of Education to administer that. Just have the Treasury cut 56 checks.
==
The utility of federal involvement in such matters is nil for all but some niche clients. The niche clients would be the children of civilian government employees posted abroad, military dependents, residents of the low census insular dependencies, reservation Indians, and the dependents of those in itinerant occupations.
Well, yes, states could more easily fund special education if they’d drop all the
DEI and SEL stuff and focus on teaching basics well.
I get the impression that Team Trump has gamed out a lot of the legal Democrat counters to the Trump agenda.
Such as not eliminating DOE but scaling it back severely.
>states could more easily fund special education if they’d drop all the
DEI and SEL stuff and focus on teaching basics well.
DEI, yes, drop that. SEL is what I teach. Not sure what you mean by “focusing on the basics” as if you have a clue on what is actually being taught. Primary? High school? SEL isn’t the boogeyman many non-progs
think it is.
I honestly don’t think when non-progs talk about SEL in a critical way, as you did Kate (are you a non-prog? I don’t know) they have the faintest clue on what they’re talking about.
Here are two SEL curriculums that have been used in my school: https://www.secondstep.org/
I’m currently teaching this to 1st graders: https://zonesofregulation.com/
I honestly don’t think when non-progs talk about SEL in a critical way, as you did Kate (are you a non-prog? I don’t know) they have the faintest clue on what they’re talking about.
==
No, but if they follow your links, they’ll get the impression that the remit of the schools has now expanded to include psychotherapy delivered by the issue of teachers’ colleges. Which is rather disturbing.
Teaching “the basics” is no mystery, and many other countries do so very effectively for far less per student than we put into it…. we have the best universities in the world and the worst K-12 of any OECD nation, and the mismatch in expectations is large, but narrowing: Harvard is offering remedial math this year.
New York is ditching the Regents exam too.
But other countries fail students low-performing students out and track them in a way that if done here, would be a civil rights violation.
@ Art Deco: Then their impression would be wrong given the curriculums shown in the links posted aren’t a form of psychotherapy.
“Which is rather disturbing.”
Yes, it is disturbing when people talk about things they aren’t familiar with with confidence simply because like minded people don’t like X and Y so therefore X and Y must be bad and need to go. You see, even non-progs have their biases, misconceptions and blind spots.
My district received extra funding. These funds will be used towards math programs in the form of morning tutoring and, you guessed it, SEL. This has allowed me and another social worker to teach the curriculum I linked. It will also fund the training of our 1st and 4th grade teachers so they too can teach the curriculum in their classroom in specific blocks.
Yes, it is disturbing when people talk about things they aren’t familiar with with confidence simply because like minded people don’t like X and Y so therefore X and Y must be bad and need to go. You see, even non-progs have their biases, misconceptions and blind spots.
==
Or, you’re on the payroll and you think pulling rank is an effective rhetorical strategy.
==
The links (and others) are to people in your stable making the case for what they do all day. They’re not getting the job done, unless they wish to persuade people that they’re purveyors of mission creep, the appropriation of parental roles, and / or the latest fad out of the teachers’ colleges.
For the state DOE experiments to work as a laboratory of the states, there also needs to be reliable metrics captured and documented by somebody independent of the “suppliers”. Is that done in the private sector now? [I don’t know.] Can the results from the current processes be trusted as valid for comparison purposes? Given the major impact of the “teachers” unions looking out for themselves, is there any other education related NGO that can be trusted to promote better/ best practices to other states once the data is in?
The core argument against the federal/national DOE is that after spending X $T over 50 years the student performance has not improved, but declined substantially, per those assessment metrics. That should be justification enough to remove that department. But can those former employees also be trusted to then join state level DOE’s in some capacity and not corrupt them further at that level? Increased local attention should reduce bad behavior but not all states are doing well [I believe at one time both MA and CA had top reputations but might now be nearer the middle or bottom?]
>Or, you’re on the payroll and you think pulling rank is an effective rhetorical strategy.
I do have experience in what I talk about. I don’t think you do – you talk from a distance thinking you know because you have it against teachers’ colleges. If I’m pulling rank then you’re just talking to hear yourself talk. But I’ll give you credit – you may bring up a decent point every now and then when you rant against education, but for the most part, especially here, you’re way out of your depth.
>The links (and others) are to people in your stable making the case for what they do all day.
That’s what everyone does with their job – or whatever they care about – regardless of what they do or what they care for. You don’t have much of an argument.
There’s an argument for every job that has existed or currently exists, whether that job is privately or state funded.
>They’re not getting the job done,
How do you know that? You don’t know what’s happening in the classrooms, so your view is just based you speculating on ignorance and a sort of vengeance.
>unless they wish to persuade people that they’re purveyors of mission creep, the appropriation of parental roles, and / or the latest fad out of the teachers’ colleges.
Unfortunately many parents fail these days at being sound, though flawed, individuals. You’re thinking of the ideal world. We do not live in an ideal world. What I do when I enter the 1st grade classrooms, and what SEL tries to aim for in general, can also be done even in a community where a parent, or parents, provide a safe home and food on the table for their kid. And where I live teachers’ colleges don’t do whatever you think they do, at least not a good chunk of the program.
Well we know students are less educated despite greater and greater expense, we know subject knowledge has been replaced by emotional criteria
We know where these programs arose,
@GRA:You’re thinking of the ideal world. We do not live in an ideal world. What I do when I enter the 1st grade classrooms, and what SEL tries to aim for in general, can also be done even in a community where a parent, or parents, provide a safe home and food on the table for their kid.
I am not thinking of the “ideal world”. I am thinking of the world as recently as 40 years ago, when education standards were higher and outcomes were better, but were even then known to be slipping, and we’re spending far more on it per pupil on it as we did then, and more per pupil than in First World nations that are getting better outcomes, and SEL has not fixed any of those things even if SEL is not to blame.
If you get an old MacGuffey Reader you will see how far standards have fallen, just from what middle-schoolers and high-schoolers were expected to able to read. In those days, of course not all middle-schoolers and high-schoolers met those expectations, but they didn’t get promoted through to graduation.
My own teaching days were over a decade ago, but even then I had college seniors who could not read their textbooks and could not cope with fractions. Whatever it was the K-12 system had done for them, they came out of it with a stamp showing they’d met requirements, but without actually knowing what the taxpayers had paid for them to know.
Question for GRA and others who may know-
How robust is the objective evidence for what you do? I have read that Head Start results in improvements in academic performance that are transitory- after a few years there is no difference in academic performance that can be traced to participation in HS.
What about SEL and SPED in general? IEPs are resource intensive, but are worth the investment if students approach normal achievement by the end of high school and maintain it through life. Has this been followed out long enough to provide definitive answers, or is this just another program that, like Head Start, has at best transient benefit to students but permanent benefits to its industry?
I don’t expect honest answers from DOGE or SPED teachers. Has anyone else looked at this?
The core argument against the federal/national DOE is that after spending X $T over 50 years the student performance has not improved, but declined substantially, per those assessment metrics. That should be justification enough to remove that department. But can those former employees also be trusted to then join state level DOE’s in some capacity and not corrupt them further at that level?
==
IMO, the core argument is that there are not economies of scale which would justify federal provision or financing except for niche clientele. You could point out that performance had not improved, but you could also point out that there was never much reason to believe it would. It might if (in places like Mississippi) you had large differences in provision among population segments, but in that case you could address matters by establishing a perishable trusteeship and leaving other states alone.
==
What are state education departments doing, and what should they be doing? What skills do those idled employees have which could be of use to a rightly-ordered state education department? If they’re not competent tests-and-measurements psychologists, what would you hire them to do?
==
In regard to the state and territorial governments, you might have state level provision for youths who were resident in state institutions (e.g. prisons or group homes). In the less populous states, you might have statewide boarding schools for voTech or for special education or for English immersion. IMO, what the board of regents and its staff need to be doing is composing examinations – civil service, occupational, and school – administering examinations, assembling league tables, and conducting performance audits. Other segments of the state government can supply mediators and arbitrators for parents who want to contest disciplinary decisions.
WTX:
“What about SEL and SPED in general?”
I don’t have an answer to that, but another factor to consider is that a not-insignificant percentage of children in SEL / SPED programs have behavior issues along with learning disability.
There may not be a quantifiable benefit to the SPED child, but there is arguably a benefit of keeping them from disrupting the education of other children.
Unfortunately many parents fail these days at being sound, though flawed, individuals. You’re thinking of the ideal world.
==
No, I’m thinking of the world I actually live in, in which slatternly parents are anything but a novelty and in which expecting public employees to step in and remedy things is setting yourself up for disappointment. (You have a foster care system, of course; in my home state, fewer than 1% of all juveniles are enrolled in it).
==
How do you know that?
==
Your lot are trying to sell me something, and your sales pitch is failing. What they look to be selling is Fred Rogers. I’m not in the Fred Rogers market segment.
==
you talk from a distance thinking you know because you have it against teachers’ colleges.
==
Teachers colleges recruit ordinary human beings, who are, as are the rest of us, susceptible to failure. One way to reduce the quantum of failure is to assign people discrete tasks to master and do the best you can to compose operational measures of competence.
==
They may recruit ordinary human beings, but they’re not run by ordinary human beings. The curricula of teacher’s colleges is commonly corrupted by fads (and see E.D. Hirsch on the systematic problems with education research) or corrupted by rancid social ideologies. These are not the people who should be screening prospective teachers.
==
You keep referring to your experience and skills. Which does not impress anyone who wants you to stay in your lane.
GRA, you know more about it than I do, most especially as applied to special ed students. There may very well be different needs in that population. However, in many places, according to what I read and hear, “SEL” and similar programs have been used to promote the leftists’ sexual and gender ideologies, and also racialist ideologies. Properly defined, it should be courtesy and respect for others, respect for teachers, and the value of hard work and setting and meeting goals. When it expands beyond that, it’s in territory which is destructive, not constructive.
Properly defined, it should be courtesy and respect for others, respect for teachers, and the value of hard work and setting and meeting goals. When it expands beyond that, it’s in territory which is destructive, not constructive.
==
That’s what ordinary teachers do in the course of getting their job done. It would help if the incorrigibles were sequestered and sent elsewhere, but that seldom happens.
==
(In my neck of the woods, what you would hear from teachers was two fold: (a) the behavior of the young gets worse every year and (b) the franchise of teachers to physical constrain and punish students is more and more restricted).
My daughter’s kindergarten and first grade classes have had a curriculum like this which teaches children how to behave in class and to treat their classmates with courtesy and respect. It doesn’t dwell on religious or racial/ethnic differences but simply teaches individual respect for all.
>Well we know students are less educated despite greater and greater expense, we know subject knowledge has been replaced by emotional criteria
We know where these programs arose,
This isn’t true. Unless you can find me a full day schedule of one school within one district where core subjects have been replaced with emotional criteria (whatever that entails in your eyes and however long the block is) then you’re just talking just to talk like Art.
>It doesn’t dwell on religious or racial/ethnic differences but simply teaches individual respect for all.
That’s my point. Many here are critical of SEL when they don’t know what it even entails because they heard The Left likes it so it must be bad. Ironically, that’s the same thinking The Left does when anything the right likes. Guns? Bad. Lower taxes? Bad. Homeshooling? Weirdos. It’s when people think an AR-15 is an automatic gun or when people think AR means “assault rifle.” How non-progs talk about SEL within the school setting is equal to how The Left talks about guns: absolute cringe.
Grunt:
Your post is sane, so thank you. Besides dealing with parents, class behavior management is basically the bane of a teacher’s existent. No one likes a an uppity or non-involved parent. It’ll show in their kids and how they behave in class. People then expect kids to know how to read, write, verbally express themselves and become astronauts? Yea right.
Kids eloping, kids walking around the class and getting into the faces of other kids, kids being non-complaint, kids just sitting there and not doing anything, kids being emotional yet not being able to explain why then later throwing a fit. Do you wanna right that ship? You have 15+ students to teach from 8 till 2:30. Best of luck. You also have to lesson plan and to call home multiple parents throughout the day.
Good thing my district can afford the amount of paraprofessionals at my school (we need more), couple of full-time social workers, a speech pathologist, a contracted OT and school nurse/ Good thing we have a few SPED/resource teachers. But even then that’s not enough to address what’s happening in the class. Not enough SPED teachers. Too many students. Not enough resources, space or time.
So, again, you think you know what you’re talking about people (and by people I mean people here on this site)? Not saying you aren’t able to, just that you speak from ignorance (and that’s okay – to an extent).
“How robust is the objective evidence for what you do?”
As a school social worker, at least in my state and my district and my school, I do many things. Are you talking about SEL?
>I have read that Head Start results in improvements in academic performance that are transitory- after a few years there is no difference in academic performance that can be traced to participation in HS.
Head Start is early childhood education (or ECE). From the age range of 2 – 13/14 that’s a lot of brain (and physical) development going on, so even the results plateued or peaked at a certain age it still wouldn’t be a good argument to reduce or dismiss it.
>What about SEL and SPED in general? IEPs are resource intensive, but are worth the investment if students approach normal achievement by the end of high school and maintain it through life.
Who are you to say what an IEP is worth? Given your questions SPED is a new world to you. Who are you to properly gauge progress and deem “this is worth it”? If found not “worth it” what then? What’s your alternative?
There are various levels of SPED with various domains (primarily academics and then there’s SEL/behavior – which I do; communication which belongs to the SLP; occupational therapy and physical therapy; and then there’s health). There are kids who are in the general education system who receive pull-out services. There are kids who are in smaller, self-contained class who also receive pull-out or push-in services. There are kids who need to be in a separate program in a separate building due the severity of multitude needs.
>Has this been followed out long enough to provide definitive answers, or is this just another program that, like Head Start, has at best transient benefit to students but permanent benefits to its industry?
Let me ask you this – what’s your alternative to SPED? If you don’t know what SPED entails then you’re trying to prove something you don’t understand. I’m pretty sure you don’t have a clue and you’re just using the “well what did you do today?” (pulling a Musk). But to answer your question, yes, in my own professional experience SPED does work, but you’re gauging “does this work” without the proper lenses given the innate deficiencies students have.
SPED isn’t a product line where X quota needs to be met or else you’re deemed irrelevant. If you do, well, you don’t know what SPED is.
>I don’t expect honest answers from DOGE or SPED teachers. Has anyone else looked at this?
LOL. Okay. Who do expect honest answers from then? Art Deco? You’re literally asking strangers who don’t have a clue about SPED to “look at this” as you refuse to go to the source. You don’t even know what SPED entails so from my point of view you thinking you can’t trust SPED teachers (as if you have any experience with SPED teachers) is laughable.
Go talk to SPED teachers and service providers. There are plenty of online forums and sites about it.
Raising kids is time, money, and emotionally intensive. A vast majority achieve nothing great. By your logic the world should proctor and say who can and should have babies – where only the “great” babies should live.
In California we gave a centralized curriculum, along with centralized funding. Thank you Priest vs Serrano. The centralized funding actually hurts larger school districts that need more money, since they are dealing with kids with more issues.
Teacher colleges, in my experience, in California were useless and full of Dei crap. One for my required readings was a racist book. Oh, I forgot, you can’t be racist against whites due to power issues. And even if you had massive experience you still had to get credentialed. Lots of burnout the first couple of years.
Discipline is a huge issue, since I left. It’s gotten much worse. Lots of attacks against teachers. And due to an ideology popularized under Obama, no meaningful punishment. A friends daughter subbing mentioned a desk being thrown at her, and a student with a gun. If you are male, you are a target of fake sexual accusations. A story was a teacher was falsely accused, life ruined, till the girls finally admitted they made it up.
Special Ed I enjoyed, lower teacher / student ratio. And the kids were not deliberately trying to ruin teachers.
All of the above varies depending on the school district with the discipline issues.
GRA, the Dept. of Ed executive order specifically says that special ed funding will be unchanged, just moved to another department. No worries for you.
@GRA:Kids eloping, kids walking around the class and getting into the faces of other kids, kids being non-complaint, kids just sitting there and not doing anything, kids being emotional yet not being able to explain why then later throwing a fit. Do you wanna right that ship? You have 15+ students to teach from 8 till 2:30. Best of luck.
These are real problems, but plenty of countries do not have these problems, and they teach 30+ students, and they get better outcomes for less money. And within living memory, we did not have problems like this at this scale.
These problems spread and worsened the entire time more and more money was being dumped into K-12 education. The money did not solve the problems; since 1960 it’s been a cycle of more money, more problems, more demand for money to solve the problems.
GRA’s response is classic question-begging. Who am I to question the value of anything such as IEP? His answer is that I have to accept the value of IEP (and other SPED activity) because it’s valuable.
As to my query re the value of SPED in general, his response is to ask what is the alternative?
GRA, like the Democratic Party at large, is not winning any converts to his or her side by this type of response. The people who are paying huge bills for American education are not willing to continue absent evidence that their money is making a positive difference. The alternative to spending a lot of money on activity that does no good is to stop doing it and save the money, or spend it on things that do do good. It’s hard to believe that GRA et al. have to be told this, but that is the state of America today.
Kids eloping, kids walking around the class and getting into the faces of other kids, kids being non-complaint, kids just sitting there and not doing anything, kids being emotional yet not being able to explain why then later throwing a fit. Do you wanna right that ship?
==
Yep. Transfer the incorrigibles to day detention centers run by the sheriff’s department and give them some months to cool off in a jail-like setting run by rude men with nightsticks. As for the persuadables, persuade them with verbal rebukes, shoving, and swats. Does your school security officer or your dean of students have a paddle board? Why not?
==
Another thing you can do is to assign family courts the function of making determinations on child support, child custody, adoptions, and guardianships (acting as a subcontractor for civil courts in divorce cases). Leave assessment of criminal cases to municipal courts and superior penal courts. Juveniles get tried in ordinary courts and are given corporal punishment or sent to prisons for those under 25 divided into walled compounds for each of a half dozen age segments (21-25, 17-21, 14-17,.11-14, and 9-11). Eliminate probation for those over 25 and have a mix of probation and imprisonment for those under 25, with the ratio of the former to the latter inversely correlated with the age of the offender.
==
As for the kids sitting there not doing anything, sort your grade level into four tracks wherein instruction is given at different paces. Send those who want to stare into space to the classes for the slowest track. Grade them accordingly for what they accomplish in class. When they sit for state regents examinations, the proctor will grade them accordingly.
Good thing my district can afford the amount of paraprofessionals at my school (we need more), couple of full-time social workers, a speech pathologist, a contracted OT and school nurse/ Good thing we have a few SPED/resource teachers. But even then that’s not enough to address what’s happening in the class. Not enough SPED teachers. Too many students. Not enough resources, space or time.
==
The ratio to gross output of public spending on primary and secondary schooling doubled between 1939 and 1969. It reached a plateau in 1969. NB, the ratio of school age youths to the rest of the population has declined by 40%. And your response is MOAR manpower.
==
Send the students with severe deficits to consortial programs off-site. Ditto the students who are not proficient in English. Have some itinerant faculty employed by the superintendent’s office for students with minor problems like dyslexia, maintaining in-house faculty if your clientele passes a certain threshold.
==
Why would you employ an occupational therapist?
==
Suggest social work be dismantled as an independent profession. Programs in counseling, public administration, child protective services (recruiting counselors, police officers, and nurses for cross-training), and on-the-job training can replace them.
Art Deco’s proposed solutions could work if improving education outcomes were the real goal, such things are done in Europe.
Unfortunately, due to the demographics of who’d be overrepresented in detention centers and who’d be overrepresented in the “fast tracks” vs the “slow tracks”, those proposals are impossible under current civil rights law.
Education in this country long ago devolved into an enormous jobs program.
Unfortunately, due to the demographics of who’d be overrepresented in detention centers and who’d be overrepresented in the “fast tracks” vs the “slow tracks”, those proposals are impossible under current civil rights law.
==
No, they’re not impossible under ‘civil rights law’, though political operatives in robes would seek to prevent them. Even if they were, statutory law can be amended and the judiciary can be stripped of jurisdiction over state regents’ examinations and school discipline. They run counter to the social ideology of the educational apparat, which is embedded in the legal profession as well. Have a gander at this exchange:
==
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2025/03/you-cant-do-things-like-that-when-youre.html
==
The Althouse commentariat is almost unanimous in condemning the coach.
==
In regard to these matters, our collective problem is learned helplessness.
@Art Deco: Even if they were, statutory law can be amended and the judiciary can be stripped of jurisdiction over state regents’ examinations and school discipline. They run counter to the social ideology of the educational apparat, which is embedded in the legal profession as well.
Oh is that all? How simple to fix! Just change out the social ideology of the educational apparat and legal profession, why has no one done this before?
For things I know something about, a lot of your proposals seem workable. But they never seem to take into account the vested interests of people who make their livelihood from the system as it exists and that’s why no one ever makes changes like that. It’s not as though people haven’t thought of these things you propose. It’s not “learned helplessness”. It’s that what people in charge of these systems really want and what they say they want are different things. The primary purpose of the education system as it exists now is to employ people using taxpayer money, and every state’s educational system is its largest employer.
In some states, such as the one I live in, it is actually unconstitutional to “underfund” education. Guess who makes that call. It is also illegal for teachers to strike, but they do whenever they wish to and there are never any legal consequences.
If there were such things as “social engineers”, not the progressive euphemism but people actually designing social institutions that did what they were supposed to do, we could do things like you propose. But those decisions are in the hands of politicians, not in a caste of “social engineers”. No politician wants to needlessly offend entrenched institutions which command large amounts of money and lawyers.
That’s why what Trump is doing is so unusual.
The Althouse commentariat is almost unanimous in condemning the coach.
I read that. They condemn the coach for what they consider an inappropriate method of disciplining a minor. This is not a principle that any of us disagrees with, we only disagree on exactly where to draw the line and for some people pulling a ponytail is on the “acceptable” side, but not very many.
I know some of us here are old enough to remember corporal punishment in schools but that ship sailed long ago, as did the idea that we can track students by ability or subject them to meaningful discipline and not violate their civil rights.
its not education, but indoctrination, how else do you end up with a shrew like randi weingarten or our former nea union and lt governor wannabe, karla hernandez
the certification is not geared to subject knowledge but a very subjective methodology of how you teach a subject
as did the idea that we can track students by ability or subject them to meaningful discipline and not violate their civil rights.
==
I think you’d have to scrounge to find a piece of case law which made that assertion.
>The ratio to gross output of public spending on primary and secondary schooling doubled between 1939 and 1969. It reached a plateau in 1969. NB, the ratio of school age youths to the rest of the population has declined by 40%. And your response is MOAR manpower. …. Send the students with severe deficits to consortial programs off-site. <<
We’ve been doing this for years in terms of severe behavior and/or low cognitive ability. I just referred a student to specialized program in a co-op for severe behavior. You aren't ahead of anything here, Art.
>Suggest social work be dismantled as an independent profession. Programs in counseling, public administration, child protective services (recruiting counselors, police officers, and nurses for cross-training), and on-the-job training can replace them.<
Lol now you’e just running your mouth. I mean, an utterly dumb thing to say. I would guess you’re hot air is out of bitterness. You know how I know? Because you spared counseling even though I remember you in a past post, a couple of years ago, talking smack about talk therapy despite counseling being one of the major disciplines (besides social work) to offer talk therapy. Or maybe you don’ want to get on Neo's bad side given she has a counseling degree.
CPS has been the domain of social workers since its conception so you wanting to "dismantle" social work as a profession is an emotional response.
Social workers are also vital service providers in SPED, and because of your bitterness (for whatever reason you are against teachers … and social workers, oh, it's me going against you — which you don't like, that's why) you practically offer asinine proposals.
Grow up, Art.
>Have some itinerant faculty employed by the superintendent’s office for students with minor problems like dyslexia, maintaining in-house faculty if your clientele passes a certain threshold.
Dyslexia isn’t a minor issue. It’s a specific learning disorder that has its own spectrum from mild to severe. Some students don’t need class accommodations while others do in the form of a 504 or an IEP. If they student is found to need accommodations or modifications, then usually an IEP is needed. In that case they will have SPED/resource teacher to help them with reading, writing and spelling – working towards specific goals in said realms. No need for an “itinerant faculty employed by the superintendent’s office” because, well, that’s what the SPED teacher is for.
I don’t know what you mean by your last part.
>Ditto the students who are not proficient in English
I prefer the students be taught in a bilingual class where their native language is spoken alongside English, but then I would rather them learn English at home to prepare them for the classroom.
>Why would you employ an occupational therapist?
Wrong question. The right question is when would an OT be needed to service a student. Answer is the following:
Fine and gross motor issues (handwriting vs balance/walking/standing). Oral sensory issues. Visual processing issues (letter spacing, copying from board issues). Student with mild to severe autism (especially if they’re in a self-contained classroom). Students who have developmental delays (especially if they are in preschool or kindergarten).
>GRA’s response is classic question-begging.
Crude my responses to your post is me being amused of your ignorant questions as you cross your arms and think you’re asking good questions.
>Who am I to question the value of anything such as IEP? His answer is that I have to accept the value of IEP (and other SPED activity) because it’s valuable.
You don’t even know what an IEP is so you questioning the value of it absurd in the first place. I asked you for an alternative to SPED and therefore an IEP, which you did not offer an alternative. I am left to believe you questioning an IEP is just questioning for the sake of questioning because that’s the trend on the right right now on something they either don’t understand or something that’s trending to not like (i.e. federal workers).
>As to my query re the value of SPED in general, his response is to ask what is the alternative?
Yes, what is the alternative. I then asked you what you know about SPED. So I’ll it again, Crude, if I haven’t already (I typed a lot): What do you know about SPED?
>GRA, like the Democratic Party at large, is not winning any converts to his or her side by this type of response.
This isn’t about the Dems. This is about SPED. You and Art are coming at this foolishly.
>The people who are paying huge bills for American education are not willing to continue absent evidence that their money is making a positive difference. The alternative to spending a lot of money on activity that does no good is to stop doing it and save the money, or spend it on things that do do good.
What’s your alternative besides “don’t spend money”? SPED works. Look it up.
And most of Art’s proposals are mostly half-baked. Students with disabilities will suffer, I’d bet money on it. But I do agree with academic tracks, just that, again, there isn’t enough space and not enough manpower.
>The ratio to gross output of public spending on primary and secondary schooling doubled between 1939 and 1969. It reached a plateau in 1969. NB, the ratio of school age youths to the rest of the population has declined by 40%. And your response is MOAR manpower. …. Send the students with severe deficits to consortial programs off-site. <<
==
We’ve been doing this for years in terms of severe behavior and/or low cognitive ability. I just referred a student to specialized program in a co-op for severe behavior. You aren’t ahead of anything here, Art.
==
It’s not my aim to be ‘ahead’, but to discuss sensible policy, which is often lacking. I had a dear friend who was employed by the Rochester City School District. Her job was to take notes for a deaf student. One student, one employee. My aunt was employed by the Fairfax County public schools for 30 years, not a district lacking in funds. One year, she’s unloading to her sister: “They dumped three disturbed youths in my class. I spent most of my time attempting to work with those three disturbed youths, to the detriment of everyone else”. One of the earlier issues of City Journal was a memoir of a Teach for America disaster. The disaster was predictable on account of school policy (“Teach every child”).
==
Suggest social work be dismantled as an independent profession. Programs in counseling, public administration, child protective services (recruiting counselors, police officers, and nurses for cross-training), and on-the-job training can replace them.
==
Lol now you’e just running your mouth. I mean, an utterly dumb thing to say. I would guess you’re hot air is out of bitterness. You know how I know? Because you spared counseling even though I remember you in a past post, a couple of years ago, talking smack about talk therapy despite counseling being one of the major disciplines (besides social work) to offer talk therapy. Or maybe you don’ want to get on Neo’s bad side given she has a counseling degree.
==
The case is made here:
==
https://www.amazon.com/Social-Work-Survive-Colin-Brewer/dp/0851171885
==
It’s not difficult to discern something is terribly amiss about ‘social work’ as a distinct ‘profession’. You’ll get that just by reviewing the course lists of social work programs. As it happens, though, I’ve had to deal with social workers in their ‘professional’ capacity. A dear friend of mine, once statistician to the Monroe County Department of Social Services (“we count the mistakes, we don’t make them”) offered that ‘there is a ridgebone of competent people who keep government agencies running; then there’s the rest’. I’ve benefited from the guidance of county welfare department employees and their counterparts in local nursing homes to walk us through the thicket of an application for Medicaid financing of nursing home care. I very much appreciate these women. Since we’ve been through several rodeos with eldercare, I’ve gotten to see different sets of hospital and nursing home social workers at work. Very uneven. You hear complaints from other professionals about them as well.
==
I spared ‘counseling’ because its a distinct function for which there is some public demand. I don’t have much time for it myself. I do find third-party payments for counseling, financing counseling through public treasuries, and counseling given behind the backs of parents to be dubious activities. That would relate to some of our discussion.
==
CPS has been the domain of social workers since its conception so you wanting to “dismantle” social work as a profession is an emotional response.
==
The term ’emotional response’ does not mean what you fancy it means. The question at hand is whether or not social work programs are an optimal training ground for child protective employees as opposed to police work, nursing, and clinical psychology. Color me skeptical.
==
Social workers are also vital service providers in SPED, and because of your bitterness (for whatever reason you are against teachers … and social workers, oh, it’s me going against you — which you don’t like, that’s why) you practically offer asinine proposals.
==
Grow up, Art.
==
You’re a fountainhead of self-indicting remarks today. I think schools suffer from mission creep, that a great many schoolteachers went into their trade for the wrong reasons, that teacher-training programs are commonly a waste of time when they’re not out-and-out destructive, that teacher-training faculties and the school apparat are addled by stupid social ideologies, that many teachers are poorly prepared for the work they’re hired to do, and that services are delivered inefficiently. That burns your ass, but that’s not my problem.
Wrong question. The right question is when would an OT be needed to service a student. Answer is the following: Fine and gross motor issues (handwriting vs balance/walking/standing). Oral sensory issues. Visual processing issues (letter spacing, copying from board issues). Student with mild to severe autism (especially if they’re in a self-contained classroom). Students who have developmental delays (especially if they are in preschool or kindergarten).
==
Then you go on to describe a niche client. What is that client doing in a common-and-garden school?
==
Dyslexia isn’t a minor issue.
==
A youth with an IQ of 75 has a major issue that will follow him everywhere. A dyslexic youth has an impediment he has to work on. The dyslexic youth in my elementary school class had a long corporate career in the pharmaceutical industry (after a stint in the Peace Corps).
==
I prefer the students be taught in a bilingual class where their native language is spoken alongside English, but then I would rather them learn English at home to prepare them for the classroom.
==
They’re not proficient in English. They belong in a locus which provides the most efficient means to get them up to speed.