Education Department cutting nearly half of workforce

[Slant Eyed Polack]

Link: Education Department cutting nearly half of workforce

The US Education Department announced Tuesday that it is cutting nearly 50% of its workforce, as President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating the agency altogether.

Hundreds will be laid off starting Tuesday evening, in addition to those who took voluntary “buyouts.” Those actions will cut the department’s workforce of about 4,100 at the start of the Trump administration in half...

Every Republican POTUS of my lifetime - not to mention RINO posers in Congress - have paid lip service to gutting the Dept of Ed. Trump is the only one who has lifted a finger. Halfway there, Mr. President!

 

[Patriot]

It is very refreshing and satisfying to see things like this actually getting done. Trump is operating at a business type pace, and the sloth-like Washington bureaucrats and their sycophants are losing their minds. Delicious.

 

[Melensdad]

I believe this is pretty close to accurate. From 1950 to today, there’s been a 100% increase in the number of students in public schools, a 243% increase in the number of teachers, and a 709% increase in the number of non-teaching staff, which are largely administrative positions. Only 47.5% of people in the public school system are actually teachers.

FWIW, the Dept of Education did not even exist while most of the members here on the forum were in K-12.

Seems like now the main screaming we hear is from the teachers unions. They money from the federal government could be given to states in "block grants" but the unions don't want that to happen because many states will use the money to allow a continuance of 'school choice' programs.

Thread by @DeAngelisCorey on Thread Reader App

@DeAngelisCorey: BREAKING: The main witness testifying against school choice in Texas admitted he's funded by Randi Weingarten’s union. The Education Law Center is funded by the teachers unions. He went to a private...…

threadreaderapp.com

 

[Patriot]

I believe this is pretty close to accurate. From 1950 to today, there’s been a 100% increase in the number of students in public schools, a 243% increase in the number of teachers, and a 709% increase in the number of non-teaching staff, which are largely administrative positions. Only 47.5% of people in the public school system are actually teachers.

And in the last 25 years, despite a $32 billion increase in annual budget to the DoE, math and reading scores among students in the U.S. have not improved. Central planning at its finest.

 

[Melensdad]

I will say that over the past few years I've been interacting with more and more homeschool kids. Pre-Covid I don't think I had met more than 1 or two. Now I have a handful of them fencing at my fencing club and/or adopted onto high school teams that allow homeschoolers into the after school programs.

The homeschool kids are generally awesome, achieving higher learning scores in all testing levels of testing. They are also well adjusted and socialized kids. The parents are very committed to their children.

The schools are layer upon layer of counselors and assistants, perhaps because many parents are NOT committed to their kids? I don't really know, but I do know that kids respond to orderly education, rules, setting goals and achieving them. Not sure if the school systems provide what the kids need? Seems like much is there, in the school systems, for unions and social activist indoctrination. Much is there for experimenting on the kids.

We know how to teach kids how to read but they keep changing the methods to methods that fail. Why change what actually works?

 

[waybomb]

All I know is the old school method works. The board of education really works. A good hard slap on the ass adjusts attitudes quickly

 

[Patriot]

All I know is the old school method works. The board of education really works. A good hard slap on the ass adjusts attitudes quickly

Yes, because education starts in the home. Teachers can only shine a turd so much. Homeschooled kids are generally better kids because by definition their parents take an active role in their lives and educations. The real reasons behind why American grade school students are falling behind are cultural. There are just too many bad or absent parents, which produces bad kids. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at education, kids won't learn if they don't care.

 

[Slant Eyed Polack]

Yes, because education starts in the home...

I spent the bulk of my professional life on the air in radio. At one of my early gigs, we did a weekly interview show with the local school superintendent, where we'd discuss various events, efforts & programs underway in the district.

One week, the supe brought an elementary parent with him to highlight the district's literacy initiative. Mom was encouraged with the progress her 2nd grader was making, but a little frustrated it wasn't going as easily as she had been hoping it would. I shared an experience of my own.

As a youngster I had a devil of a time learning to read. My parents bought some flash cards with basic words on them. Every morning before school, the cards would be arrayed on a card table in the TV room, arranged in simple phrases and sentences. I would be required to read them before breakfast. Either mom or dad would be there to help me sound it out, but I had to do the work. It took about a month of slogging away, and then it was water downhill.

I suggested to the mom I was interviewing that she might give that a try. Her facial expression can only be described as horrified. "That's what I send him to school for!"

A significant component of our current circumstance can be translated thusly: The people are the problem.

 

[Melensdad]

Yes, because education starts in the home. Teachers can only shine a turd so much. Homeschooled kids are generally better kids because by definition their parents take an active role in their lives and educations. The real reasons behind why American grade school students are falling behind are cultural. There are just too many bad or absent parents, which produces bad kids. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at education, kids won't learn if they don't care.

To this I would agree.

But I'd also add in broken families and fatherless homes as a major factor. We know that fatherless boys tend to be violent, tend to get into trouble, trend toward prison at higher rates ... all regardless of color/race. We know that fatherless girls tend toward sexual activity at young ages, early pregnancy, etc. And both tend toward being failures in school.

So if we can work on keeping families together is a good first step. Fixing education is more than fixing schools, it may also be fixing society.

 

[Slant Eyed Polack]

To this I would agree.

But I'd also add in broken families and fatherless homes as a major factor. We know that fatherless boys tend to be violent, tend to get into trouble, trend toward prison at higher rates ... all regardless of color/race. We know that fatherless girls tend toward sexual activity at young ages, early pregnancy, etc. And both tend toward being failures in school.

So if we can work on keeping families together is a good first step. Fixing education is more than fixing schools, it may also be fixing society.

A rare piece of common ground conservatives share with people like Louis Farrakhan.

 

[Patriot]

I suggested to the mom I was interviewing that she might give that a try. Her facial expression can only be described as horrified. "That's what I send him to school for!"

A significant component of our current circumstance can be translated thusly: The people are the problem.

Public schools were instituted as a way to educate young people who both couldn't afford a private education and whose parents wanted to educate their children but were too busy working themselves to do it. It was understood to be a community pooled resource tool, funded by local taxes, that would help provide a better future for people. However, as public schooling caught on and became the norm, laws were passed that made it mandatory for kids to attend school, whether they or their parents wanted to send them or not.

Public school started to be viewed less as an educational tool to help parents raise their kids and more as a mandatory institution that forces education on kids regardless of parental concern.

Thus, we started to have a growing portion of the student body made up of kids whose parents didn't care so much if they received an education, and, reflectively, a growing number of students who didn't care either. We then arrive at the point, today, where many parents don't see the education of their children as their responsibility at all. Their kids are forced to go to school, the parents are forced to pay taxes that fund the schools, so, the parents just expect that the schools will educate their kids no matter what, and without any further help from them. They wash their hands of it, and focus on their own selfish lives. School is just daycare, as far as they're concerned. This is what happens when we essentially turn over our lives to the government.

 

[Patriot]

To this I would agree.

But I'd also add in broken families and fatherless homes as a major factor. We know that fatherless boys tend to be violent, tend to get into trouble, trend toward prison at higher rates ... all regardless of color/race. We know that fatherless girls tend toward sexual activity at young ages, early pregnancy, etc. And both tend toward being failures in school.

So if we can work on keeping families together is a good first step. Fixing education is more than fixing schools, it may also be fixing society.

Absolutely. That is what I meant by absentee parents. Families break up way too easy these days because marriage and pregnancy are entered into way too lightly. This problem is at the heart of most social ills in America today, not just education.