Parents Across America Group Outlines Ed-Tech 'Threats' - Education Week

Parents Across America Group Outlines Ed-Tech 'Threats' - Education Week:

Parents Across America Group Outlines Ed-Tech 'Threats'

An influential parent-advocacy group that has vocally opposed high-stakes testing, the Common Core State Standards, and charter school expansion has its sights on a new target: education technology.

Parents Across America, a nonprofit group with 44 chapters across 25 states, last month issued a set of resources warning of the "threats" posed by the explosion of digital- and online-technology use in schools, including rising screen time for children, increased testing and data collection, and what the group views as misguided teaching strategies based on low-quality digital products.

Although the group says it supports "appropriate" use of technology in schools, its recommendations include such controversial suggestions as "no in-school screen time before 3rd grade" and "no 1-to-1 devices before high school."

Roughly half of American K-12 students now have access to their own school-issued mobile-computing devices, according to FutureSource Consulting, a United Kingdom-based research group. A nationwide 2015 poll of parents commissioned by the nonprofit Data Quality Campaign (which advocates greater data use in schools), meanwhile, found that parents overwhelmingly want access to information on such issues as their children's academic performance and safety.

Some prominent research and children's-media groups see Parents Across America's stance as alarmist. They express concern that the group is giving renewed attention to some questionable research, including one widely discredited study calling for no screen time at all for children younger than 12.

Parents are "absolutely right to call into question many of the overheated claims for ed tech's benefits," said Michael Levine, the executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, a New York City-based research center. But, Levine said, "all screens are not created equal. There is a huge difference between video chatting with grandma and being left alone to play first-person-shooter games."

Julie Woestehoff, Parents Across America’s interim executive director.

Launched in 2010, Parents Across America is run on a small annual budget, with funding provided in part by a foundation associated with the Chicago Teachers Union. Despite its size and lack of structure, the group and some of its leaders have had a big impact: The standardized-testing opt-out movement they have helped support has gained considerable traction in recent years, and parent-activist concerns about student-data privacy played a huge role in the demise of inBloom, a massive student-data-warehouse project started with $100 million in support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York (both of which provide support to Education Week).

Julie Woestehoff, who has a 3-year-old grandson and a history of parent activism datingParents Across America Group Outlines Ed-Tech 'Threats' - Education Week: 

Alfie Kohn: Why Punishment Won't Stop a Bully - Education Week

Why Punishment Won't Stop a Bully - Education Week:

Why Punishment Won't Stop a Bully

Punitive discipline for bullies can be counterproductive

Bullying at school has attracted an enormous amount of attention, spurring academic studies and popular books, regulations, and training sessions for educators. By now its status as a serious problem is widely acknowledged, as it should be. We can never go back to the days when bullying was regarded as a boys-will-be-boys rite of passage, something that victims were left to deal with (and suffer from) alone.

But as with other ills, both within and beyond our schools, some responses are much less constructive than others. The least thoughtful (or useful) strategy is to announce a "zero tolerance" stance on bullying. Either this phrase amounts to empty rhetoric—rather like responding to repeated instances of gun violence in our country by sending each cluster of victims our "thoughts and prayers"—or else it refers to a policy of harsh punishment for bullies.

The latter approach is worth our attention precisely because it comes so easily to us, complementing a punitive sensibility already well-established in our schools. Students who break the rules or otherwise displease us are subjected to suspension, expulsion, detention, enforced isolation ("time-out"), loss of opportunity to participate in enjoyable activities, and so on.

—André Da Loba

Making children suffer for what they've done is often defended on practical grounds, but I've been unable to find any evidence to support the claim that punishment makes schools safer or leads the children who have been punished to become more ethical or responsible. Indeed, punitive responses—even if they're euphemistically called "consequences"—are often not merely ineffective but actively counterproductive. To cite only one in a long line of empirical investigations, an eight-year longitudinal study published in 2005 found that punitive discipline was subsequently associated with more antisocial behavior, less prosocial behavior, and increased levels of anxiety.

Interestingly, when many proponents of traditional discipline are presented with such evidence, they simply pivot to a very different defense, one that can't be dislodged with evidence: They insist that if someone does something bad, something bad must be done to that person. He or she must be "held accountable"; a consequence must be imposed for moral reasons, even if there are no practical benefits.

But the effects of punishment do matter, and where bullying is concerned, they suggest a painful irony: Punishing kids who bully not only fails to address the source of the problem, but actually makes things worse. As educator and author Barbara Coloroso pointed out in her book The Bully, The Bullied, and the Bystander, punishment teaches the bully "to be more aggressive and hurtful. He will undoubtedly master the art of doing his bullying in ways that are sneaky or 'under the radar' of even the most observant and aware adults. More important," she adds, "punishment degrades, humiliates, and dehumanizes the children who are its objects. (Sounds like bullying to me.)"

"Punishment in general is likely a hidden contributor to bullying, both because of what it models and because of its effects on the students who are punished."

Decades' worth of research shows that punishment—even when it doesn't include physical force—promotes aggression. But studies conducted in the United States and in Sweden revealed another layer to that reality: Bullies in particular are more likely to have been raised by authoritarian parents who rely on punishment. Dan Olweus, a leading authority on the subject, conducted the latter study. He, like other critics of punishment, has offered suggestions for what can curb bullying. The key is to "restructure the social environment"—the entire school culture—rather than trying to target individual students by encouraging intervention by bystanders, offering advice to potential victims, or, worst of all, punishing bullies.

It's easy to assume that punitive discipline is an inevitable part of school life. That Why Punishment Won't Stop a Bully - Education Week:

An Effective but Exhausting Alternative to High School Suspensions - The New York Times

An Effective but Exhausting Alternative to High School Suspensions - The New York Times:

An Effective but Exhausting Alternative to High School Suspensions

When kids get into trouble at school, traditional forms of discipline often lead to more trouble. Is there a more productive way to change behavior?

n December 2013, Colleen Walsh, a social-studies teacher at Leadership and Public Service High School in Manhattan’s Financial District, called one of the school’s four deans in charge of discipline. She had just had a short, heated dispute in the hallway with a 17-year-old student who had his cellphone out, a violation of school rules. Walsh, then 27, was an energetic teacher, entertaining and assertive, but something about the way she spoke to the young man, who was not her student, infuriated him. A junior who could be exceptionally charming but also combative, he started yelling at Walsh, at which point she contacted a dean in the hope that he could calm him so they could all discuss what had happened.

Leadership is housed in a tall, narrow building originally intended as office space, with revolving doors at the entrance and an echoing lobby. That day in December, the student had already taken the elevator down to the lobby after the confrontation when he encountered the dean, who, misunderstanding Walsh’s intent, imposed a punishment instead. He told the young man, who was on the school’s basketball team, that he could not play in that evening’s game and that he would also be suspended, because this infraction came on the heels of several others. The student (who declined to comment for this article), now even more irate, took the elevator back to the ninth floor. He burst through the door of Walsh’s classroom, where three students had lingered after class, and faced her, yelling, cursing, accusing her of lying, ignoring Walsh’s repeated requests that he leave the room. Friends tried to pull him toward the door, but he broke away, then hurled over one of the classroom’s chair-desks. They finally succeeded in pulling him out of the classroom, at which point a dean arrived.

Some kind of consequence was clearly in order, the deans and the principal, Phil Santos, agreed. The question was: What would it be?

For the past two decades, how to discipline students has been as hotly contested a subject as how to educate them. For much of that time, many public-school systems, including New York City’s, have enforced zero-tolerance policies that require mandatory suspensions for certain offenses. Originally generated in response to fears about weapons in schools, zero-tolerance policies, especially in New York, where Rudolph W. Giuliani’s “broken windows” theory had taken hold, signaled to educators that crackdowns on unruliness of all kinds were in order. Between 1999 and 2009, the number of student suspensions in New York nearly doubled, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, reaching about 450,000 suspensions over the course of the decade. In that era, infractions that once might have merited a call home, like shoving another student or cursing, were increasingly common grounds for suspension.

The broad implementation of punitive suspension policies gave researchers ample data, the analysis of which has yielded a body of work suggesting the failure of this experiment in discipline. Suspensions do not deter bad behavior, numerous studies have found, and most likely feed it by alienating students from the school community. Other studies show that suspensions are not just ineffective but inequitable, as students of color are more likely than white ones to be suspended for the same behaviors. In New York City, black students made up only 30 percent of all students from 1999 to 2009 but accounted for 50 percent of the suspensions, according to a N.Y.C.L.U. report. Additional studies show that a student who has been suspended is more likely to eventually drop out of school or end up in the criminal-justice system. (In New York, the heavy presence of school safety An Effective but Exhausting Alternative to High School Suspensions - The New York Times:

New evidence that summer programs can make a difference for poor children - The Washington Post

New evidence that summer programs can make a difference for poor children - The Washington Post:

New evidence that summer programs can make a difference for poor children

Rising fourth grader, Kevin Ramirez, 9, works on a self portrait during art class, part of a new summer program for low-income children in Montgomery County, Md. The program was not among those funded and studied by the Wallace Foundation. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

During their long, languid summers, lots of children forget the lessons they learned in school. But the hot empty months pose an especially big academic hurdle for poor children, whose families might not have time or money for camps or enrichment activities.

Now new research suggests that school districts can stave off the so-called summer slide by offering free, voluntary programs that mix reading and math instruction with sailing, arts and crafts and other summer staples. The research also shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, that students have to attend the programs regularly to reap the benefits.

“We would hope that these findings would encourage district leaders and others to consider whether summer programs can help them achieve their broader goals,” said Ann Stone, of the Wallace Foundation, which funded the research as part of its $50 million National Summer Learning Project.

The new findings come as many districts have sought to minimize learning loss by shortening summer vacation or moving toward year-round schooling. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) bucked that trend last week when he issued an executive order prohibiting districts from starting class before Labor Day, a move that sparked backlash from district leaders who said it could cost students academically.

[Hogan orders Md. schools to start after Labor Day]

The new study, conducted by RAND, compared the performance of third-grade students who applied to and enrolled in five district-run summer programs to the performance of third-graders who applied to those programs and did not get in.

The participating districts, which received funding from the Wallace Foundation to run their programs, were in Boston; Dallas; Duval County, Fla.; Pittsburgh; and Rochester, N.Y.

Though each ran its program differently, there were some commonalities. The programs were tuition-free and ran five days a week for at least five weeks, or 25 days; they offered free transportation and meals; they capped class size at 15; and they included at least three hours per day of math and language arts instruction.

Researchers found no long-term academic effects, on average, for all students who signed up. But that analysis included a significant number of children — about one in five — who enrolled and then never actually attended. Some of those students had left the district altogether by the time summer rolled around; others dropped out for unknown reasons.

Another portion of students — 29 percent — had low attendance, showing up for 19 or fewer days.

But half of all the students who enrolled showed up and then attended for at least 20 days. And New evidence that summer programs can make a difference for poor children - The Washington Post:

Starting a Black Parent Affinity Group at your School SF Public School Mom

Starting a Black Parent Affinity Group at your SchoolSF Public School Mom:

Starting a Black Parent Affinity Group at your School 

Parent affinity groups can have profound effects on schools. This post about my experiences starting an affinity group at my daughters’ elementary school, originally appeared on Blavity, a an online community of “the most exceptional multi-cultural creators and influencers in the world.” Blavity partners with diverse content creators and influencers to “help them reach a wider audience, amplify their message, and fund their hustles.” I am proud my work is highlighted there. Check out my article there, as well as more great content by Black millennials, artists, culture critics and entrepreneurs.

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One Step Back, Two Steps Forward–Starting a Black Family Affinity Group at your School

Needs of underrepresented groups can get overlooked. Parent affinity groups can help.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I last spring I begun hosting a Black Family Breakfast affinity group for Black families at my daughters’ elementary school. This is part of an effort that my principal, I and a few key staff have initiated to “explore race and culture” at our school. Teachers noted last year that parents needed to be involved in the process (not just teachers and kids). As parents, we can undermine efforts of staff in creating a safe and welcoming environment for all families. That said, after several conversations with Black families at our school, we decided to get together to share ideas and resources to help make our school and even more welcoming place.

Apparently my “great idea” of bringing Black families together was not met with open arms by all staff. A few days after sending out invitations for our second meeting I learned some teachers were voicing concerns about Black parents getting together to talk about their experiences at the school (?!) This happened even at a school with an enlightened and supportive principal like mine! At this moment, I realized, there was still a LOT of work to be done in our district and at our school. Nonetheless, I’m glad I’m doing it.

What was all the hubbub about? Some staff expressed their concerns that an affinity group would be too “exclusive” and could potentially be seen as unfair by other racial and cultural groups at the school.

As a Black woman who is constantly having to navigate “white spaces”, I understand the importance of being able to “tell it like it is” and in a room full of folks who “get it.” I also understand how important it is to be able to speak about my experience without having to worry about defensive reactions of others.

With support from the principal (which is KEY) we decided to move ahead and use this incident as a “teachable moment.” The principal agreed to listen to staff concerns while still encouraging them to live with the potential discomfort that their questions stirred up. I explained to the principal that I was happy to answer any specific questions staff had, and we both agreed that if staff felt other affinity groups should be formed

Luckily, a friend of mine shared an article that proved helpful in explaining why our affinity group is so important for our families. This article is focused on setting up student affinity groups, nonetheless, I feel it also applies to parents as well:

Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Good Friday have long been on the calendar at Madeira School in McLean, Virginia; no major tests are given on those days. But it wasn’t until students in the school’s Muslim affinity group were discussing the dilemma of choosing between taking tests or attending Eid services that the lack of inclusion on the calendar became apparent.

“You really shouldn’t be having tests on a major holiday. We can communicate this up to the teachers and the administration,” math teacher and affinity group leader Jeannie Rumsey told the students. “We can find another time for you to make that up, but this is a major holiday for you and you should be able to celebrate it.” After organizing and communicating with their administration, the group succeeded in adding the major Muslim holy days to the following year’s school calendar. The dates were given the same treatment as the Christian and Jewish holidays: no tests.

This example of collective action is one of the purposes of affinity groups in schools: They allow students who share an identity—usually a marginalized identity—to gather, talk in a safe space about issues related to that identity, and transfer that discussion into action that makes for a more equitable experience at school.

(Read more here.)

Even though I experienced some initial pushback, it’s been interesting to see some positive outcomes of moving forward DESPITE the initial resistance.

First, it became very clear that YES… our teachers actually NEEDED to talk about Starting a Black Parent Affinity Group at your SchoolSF Public School Mom:

Common Core, Cuomo targeted in district’s biting back-to-school spoof - The Washington Post

Common Core, Cuomo targeted in district’s biting back-to-school spoof - The Washington Post:

Common Core, Cuomo targeted in district’s biting back-to-school spoof

 Administrators drone on and on! All their speeches cause me to yawn.

I hope somebody will pull the alarm

A fire drill won’t cause no harm.

Those lyrics come from a rather unusual back-to-school video showing staffers from the Bay Shore School District in New York performing a biting spoof at a superintendent’s conference Tuesday, the day before the opening of the 2016-17 school year.

Titled “Welcome Back Bay Shore Teachers” and written to the tune of “Summer Nights” from the “Grease” musical, the song targets the Common Core State Standards and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), and throws in a reference to the district superintendent, Joseph Bond.

As you read the lyrics, imagine an auditorium with teachers and administrators singing and dancing around with the lyrics projected on a screen on the stage. Or you can watch the videobelow.

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Summer’s over had me a blast

Summer’s over happened so fast

Yesterday I’m in the Keys

Yesterday I was at ease

Summer’s gone

Now back to school

Oh no now

Think about Common Core

Common Core, Common Core,

Cuomo isn’t our friend

Common Core Common Core

When’s his 2nd term end?!

Governor Cuomo, sure likes to spend

He proposes cuts till the end

He struts his stuff in Albany!

Treats New York like his property!

Summer’s gone now back to school

Oh no now, how I hate Conference Day

Conference Day Conference Day,

Joe Bond seems kinda cool

Conference Day Conference Day

Not as cool as the pool!

Administrators drone on and on!

All their speeches cause me to yawn.

I hope somebody will pull the alarm

A fire drill won’t cause no harm.

Summer’s gone

Now back to school

Here come all of the Stats!

Here’s a Stat! There’s a Stat!

Oh, the numbers don’t lie.

Here’s a Stat! There’s a Stat!

Tell us what they imply.

Shoo da bop bop …

A statement published by Newsday from the school district says:

“The moment depicted in the video was a small part of a larger event celebrating the difference Bay Shore teachers make in the lives of our students. Part of that moment included a lighthearted spoof of some of the issues that are currently at the forefront in public education. The overall purpose of the moment and the event as a whole was to celebrate our schools and the lives that can be changed when an entire community comes together to support our students.”

Watch the video. It’s a hoot.Common Core, Cuomo targeted in district’s biting back-to-school spoof - The Washington Post:

Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.

  Follow @valeriestrauss

CTU chief Lewis balks at CPS' request to stop pension benefits | Chicago Sun-Times

CTU chief Lewis balks at CPS' request to stop pension benefits | Chicago Sun-Times:

CTU chief Lewis balks at CPS’ request to stop pension benefits

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said Tuesday she opposes Chicago Public Schools’ proposal to stop paying a 7 percent pension benefit but did not rule out taking the offer to her members, despite CPS doing a poor job of explaining why it’s necessary.

The union is planning to discuss strategies around a possible teachers strike Wednesday evening at a scheduled meeting of its governing body.

The district has proposed phasing out the 7 percent contribution over this year and next. Sources have told the Sun-Times the board would also consider a three-year wind down as well to spread out the pain.

The union leader had said last January, before taking an offer to her members she considered “serious,” that she was open to pension concessions as part of negotiations. But on Monday, CPS’ first day of classes, she said her members aren’t interested in any contract that cuts their pay or their schools.

“That’s something we’d have to talk about with our members, if they’re willing to do that,” Lewis said of eliminating the pension benefit.

“I don’t understand why it has to be phased out. Nobody’s made a clear argument for me to why that is, when we’re looking at coming out of a contract with less money than we started. So as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know how you take that to your members and say, ‘Oh, what do you think?’ And then expect me to look with a straight face to my members and say, ‘Wait a minute, my paycheck is going to be lower,’ ” Lewis said at CTU headquarters, flanked by vice president Jesse Sharkey.

Her comments could add more complications to contract talks between CPS and CTU that have dragged on for nearly two years without an end in sight. She has said her members will not work another full school year without a new deal.

The broke Board of Education has asked teachers to start paying 7 percent of their employee contribution toward pensions, a cost the district agreed decades ago to bear instead of paying raises. In exchange, the district offered modest raises over three years of its proposed four-year contract that it says will benefit teachers by the final year.

“The pension pickup is obviously something that is very costly to the district,” CEO Forrest Claypool said outside a newly reopened Dyett high school Tuesday, declining to explain why it’d cost more than paying out cash raises. He called the pickups unusual for unions in Chicago, saying most city employees pay some 10 percent toward their own retirements, even if conceding that many Illinois school districts pay them.

But he added that the scenario on the table isn’t set in stone.

“We’ve said repeatedly that we’re open to any ideas that CTU has to culminate a deal,” Claypool said. “We’re flexible on different terms that can be worked through across the CTU chief Lewis balks at CPS' request to stop pension benefits | Chicago Sun-Times:

The Shill-y Season – EduShyster

The Shill-y Season – EduShyster:

The Shill-y Season

Where does Democrats for Education Reform’s single-issue extremism lead? 

At a time when Democrats and their party are, by virtually every index, moving left, a powerful center-right pressure group within the liberal universe has nonetheless sprung up. Funded by billionaires and arrayed against unions, it is increasingly contesting for power in city halls and statehouses where Democrats already govern…

Quick reader: why does this pithy description of the charter school lobby, quoted from a recent op-edin the Los Angeles Times, sound, um, so accurate? If you answered *because this is exactly what’s playing out in Massachusetts,* you would be correct. To see for ourselves, we need travel no further than Somerville, MA, which is the site of a somewhat, ahem, unusualpolitical showdown. In one corner is Senator Pat Jehlen, a longtime progressive leader in the state Senate and public education champion. Her opponent, Leland Cheung, is a former Republican legislative candidate from Virginia turned Harvard student turned Cambridge City Councilor turned Democrat for Education Reform. Thirsty already, reader? 

Blue state blues
Ah, Massachusetts, my adopted home state. How surprised I was upon alighting upon your shores so, so long ago, to learn that your progressive reputation is, how shall I put this delicately?, somewhat exaggerated. If you are reading this from someplace that it is not blue, perhaps you have even cast an envious eye in our direction, coveting our solid cerulean state. Alas, reader, beneath that solid blue Mass. has long lurked something less inspiring: a sort-of three party system in which conservative Dems play BFF with what there is of a Republican party, ganging up again and again to quash any kind of progressive agenda. 

No need to reach for the coozie just yet, reader, for here is where our story takes an inspiring turn. During the past few years, Massachusetts has taken a measurably progressive lurch. Like a million workers getting paid sick time for the first time. Or a big bump in the state’s minimum wage. What happened? I’m going to go ahead and The Shill-y Season – EduShyster:

CURMUDGUCATION: Mother Jones: Black Teachers Matter

CURMUDGUCATION: Mother Jones: Black Teachers Matter:

Mother Jones: Black Teachers Matter

I usually save my reading recommendations for Sunday, but if you read one article this week, it must be "Black Teachers Matter" by Kristina Rizga at Mother Jones.

Rizga addresses the all-important question of why we're missing so many black teachers in this country (and she does it far more thoughtfully than the folks at Brookings) by focusing on one school in the Philadelphia district. It is a sad and frustrating tale, and it shows how black teachers have become the canaries in the educational coal mine. The lack of black teachers is a problem in and of itself, a problem that needs to be addressed-- but it is also a symptom of the larger disease of education reform.

Rizga has done her homework. Some of the data points are familiar, like the huge drop in black teachers in some urban settings-- 18.5% in Philly, 40% in Chicago, and a whopping 62% in New Orleans.

And some of the details were new to me-- the Boston Consulting Group estimates that every child who attends a charter school adds $7,000 to district expenses.

This is the story of how Broad Academy graduates like Hite of Philly are trained to "right-size" districts, how reformers have prioritized charters over integration, how the destruction of schools has become part of the destruction of the inner city.

Most of all it's a clear, direct look at how cutting schools out of a community slices right through the heart of those community's ties. Why are we losing and missing so many black teachers? Because like most schools in the country, inner city schools, non-wealthy schools, non-white schools get many of their teachers from the pipeline that runs right from the heart of their own community, and when you cut the school's ties to the community, you sever that pipeline. And if that doesn't do enough damage, you then replace that community based school with a school that is either colonial in nature, with outsiders coming to impose their view on the community school (because, you know, Those People aren't really fit to educate their own children), or you scare the school that hasn't yet been shut down, scare it into submitting to the imposed agenda just to stay alive.

Chris Emdin, an associate professor of education at Columbia University and the author of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too, told me that many black educators leave CURMUDGUCATION: Mother Jones: Black Teachers Matter:

Throwback: When a New Administration Tried to Dismantle the Ed. Dept. - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Throwback: When a New Administration Tried to Dismantle the Ed. Dept. - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Throwback: When a New Administration Tried to Dismantle the Ed. Dept.

If Donald Trump, the real-estate mogul turned GOP nominee, is elected president we might see a push to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.

If that happens, it wouldn't be the first time an incoming administration set its sights on getting rid of 400 Maryland Ave.

Thirty-five years ago this week, in its very first issue, Education Week published details of a tightly guarded memo, written by U.S. Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell, that concluded that the "Federal Government does not have responsibility for education." (Bell was GOP President Ronald Reagan's first education secretary.) 

The memo, which came out when Reagan had been in office less than a year, proposed a big shift of authority over programs, regulations, and financial management back to states. And it called for transferring some of the Education Department's functions to other agencies.

For instance, the memo suggested, the U.S. Treasury could take over the Pell Grant program.

The goal: to reverse a 25-year "sea change in the relations of government and education" that has resulted in "an overly intrusive federal role."

Those sentiments would be music to the ears of a potential Trump administration ... maybe.

Trump, who hasn't sketched out a comprehensive plan on K-12 education, has said he'd like to eliminate the Education Department, or at least "cut it way, way down." (More on his education positions, and how they stack up against those of his his rival, Hillary Clinton's, here.) For what it's worth, he's also said that education is one of the three most important functions of the federalgovernment.

That lack of clarity hasn't stopped Clinton's allies, from using the Republican contender's anti-Education Department pitch against him. The Center for American Progress Action Fund, which is affiliated with a think tank close to the Obama administration, outlined a sort of worst-case scenario of what getting rid of the department might mean.

Its analysis, which assumes that none of the department's programs or responsibilities would wind up on other agencies' plates, warns that 490,000 teaching positions could be eliminated, for example.

For the record, though, it's really, really hard to get rid of the Education Department. Numerous attemps have been made, to no avail.  

Back in 1981, for example, Bell's memo was sent to the White House, stirred up some controversy ... but never came to fruition. Throwback: When a New Administration Tried to Dismantle the Ed. Dept. - Politics K-12 - Education Week: