How Trump’s Education Scheme Will Screw Rural People Who Elected Him
THIS WEEK: Out Of Touch DeVos … DeVos Backs Quack Science … Obama’s Failed School Policies … Black Students Targeted … School Funding Unfairness
TOP STORY
How Trump’s Education Scheme Will Screw Rural People Who Elected Him
By Jeff Bryant
“Rural schools make up more than half of the school districts in America and serve around a quarter of the nation’s students … But rural schools are in trouble. Dropout rates for rural students are significantly worse than in urban districts, suspension rates are higher, school facilities are frequently lower quality, funding is disproportionally lower, and reading proficiency levels are sometimes below statewide averages … None of these problems will be solved by creating more charter schools and using vouchers … That option will only make things worse.”
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NEWS AND VIEWS
Betsy DeVos’ Big Education Idea Doesn’t Work
Slate
“Although DeVos’ exhortations on behalf of parental school choice are familiar to anyone who follows education reform, today she is wildly out of touch with a large part of the movement she purports to represent… she has repeatedly depicted school choice as antithetical to, and necessarily independent from, the government’s role in education … Yet unchecked free markets in education will inevitably put poor families in an even worse position … Substantial research showing that charter schools tend to perform better in states with rigorous vetting of charter operators, helped usher in a new phase of ‘school choice’ in many communities: one in which government agencies or designees play a more aggressive role.”
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DeVos-Backed Company Makes Questionable Claims On Autism, ADHD
Education Week
“President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the federal Education Department is a major backer of a company claiming its neurofeedback technology can ‘fix’ problems such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and has ‘proven and long-lasting’ positive effects on children with autism… DeVos sat on Neurocore’s board from 2009 until November … As part of her divestiture plan … DeVos and her husband will maintain an indirect financial interest in the company … between $5 million and $25 million … It’s worrisome that the country’s new education secretary nominee would remain closely tied to a company that has apparently made exaggerated and misleading claims about its service.”
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Obama Administration Spent Billions To Fix Failing Schools, And It Didn’t Work
The Washington Post
“One of the Obama administration’s signature efforts in education, which pumped billions of federal dollars into overhauling the nation’s worst schools, failed to produce meaningful results … Test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment were no different in schools that received money … than in schools that did not … Some education experts say that the administration closed its eyes to mounting evidence about the program’s problems in its own interim evaluations, which were released in the years after the first big infusion of cash.”
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Black Students More Likely To Be Arrested At School
Education Week
“Black students are arrested at school at disproportionately high levels … One reason may be that black students are more likely than students in any other racial or ethnic group to attend schools with police … Nationwide, black boys are at the highest risk, three times as likely to be arrested at school as their white male peers. And African-American girls fare little better: They are more than 1.5 times as likely as white boys to be arrested.”
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School Funding Remains Unfair For Most Students Across The Nation
Education Law Center
“Public school funding in most states continues to be unfair and inequitable, depriving millions of U.S. students of the opportunity for success in school … Many states with low funding levels … invest a low percentage of their economic capacity to support their public education systems … Students in certain regions of the country face a ‘double disadvantage’ because their states have low funding levels and do not increase funding for concentrated student poverty … States with unfair school funding perform poorly on key indicators of resources essential for educational opportunity.”
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1/26/2017 – How Trump’s Education Scheme Will Screw Rural People Who Elected Him: