DeVos confirmed

Get a life, rednecks. "Unelected bureaucrats", eh? Well, maybe you should have them elected then. (Perhaps with a little help from Russian electoral experts.)

"Parents ... know how to meet (students') individual needs best." Right. What a load of rustic malarky!

"Wahhhhhh!!! She supports voucher programs!!!! Wahhhh!!!!"

The public schools have failed. They're a cesspool of unmotivated & disruptive kids with severe emotional & behavioral problems, and teachers who were burned out 6 months after entering the profession. And that's not even mentioning the teachers who are simply incompetent. I've never met a parent who, if they could afford it, wouldn't send their kid to private school.

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Y'know what? My hamster died. Good thing I stopped feeding it about two weeks before. Woulda been wasted money.

Meh. We already have Common Core. What more harm can this loon do?

Here is the problem. Every school she has tried to fix ended up worse than before she came in to fix it. We need to have fact based reforms not ideological fact free reforms.

Common core was done by states, the feds had nothing to do with it, and the Republicans always claim they want local action like this. Yet when local action happens they STL whine and complain.

Lastly, in case some of you foreigners don't already know the main reason the right wing hates public schools is because they can't force Christian theology on to everyone. Once the courts threw that shit out the right became rabidly anti education.

You're just mad about all the times you got beat up in public school

*A car drives by, I shoot out its tires. I repeat the process hundreds of times*

The automobile has failed! They're hunks of junk that keep having flat tires! Time to bring back the horse and buggy!

That pretty much boils down the Republican strategy on public schools for the last 40 years.

I got a form letter back from Senator Portman responding to my initial concerns about DeVos:

I especially like the part where he looks forward to working with her regarding children with disabilities. It's like none of them even bothered to listen to what she actually said.

Folks, your argument for education programmes in a nutshell. Or nutsack. He's one of the two.

He won't mind me saying that as, thanks to homeschooling, he thinks one and two are the same thing.

So, you're not a parent then? Public schools haven't failed. The problem of the disruptive kids falls on the parents, not the schools.
I wouldn't send my kids to private school. Most of those are religious and I'd rather my kids read comic books if they want fantasy.

You think they make disruptive kids the responsibility of the parents?????

No, you drooling idiot. Disruptive kids are the fault of bad parents and/or diagnosed ADD issues. How are you allowed to be outside unsupervised?

I know it is the fault of parents (mostly).

But society doesn't make real effort to hold bad parents responsible.

As for how I'm allowed outside unsupervised.

Ask your mother...

I keep seeing the thread title as "Davros confirmed", but at least he was in favour of the scientific theory in schools.

And extermination of all lesser lifeforms.

So he should have passed the GOP smell test.

Montessori ain't religious

But to reply to @The Flashlight 's remark a few posts up, my aunt (herself an educator, first for low income students in Oakland, then for inmates at the local prison) pulled her own kids out the Montessori school program they were in because she saw a specific small-class program at a public school across town from her that achieved the same thing she wanted and got to save $5k in the process.

This school BTW was in the "bad" part of town, by which I mean "tons of Mexican immigrants who the white folks looked down upon."

Who else's fault would it be, genius?

Liberal society, duh.

Having "tons of Mexican immigrants" doesn't make it a bad part of town.

Surprised you are so racist. Similar to what's their names Dinner or is it Gturner?

Sarcasm isn't your strong suit, "teacher."

But to break it down to you, there was a lot of snobbery against this school (which I had also attended myself) and there were many poor white folks who lived in the same area I did fighting to get their kids in the year-round school another mile away that got so full, they halted out-of-neighboorhood transfers for three years.

My school wasn't bad at all, apart from the usual issues of having one teacher stretched thin between the kids.

Well if your school only had one teacher I can see why some looked down on it.

And you people make fun of schools in my state.........

Eight years of post-secondary ed., suck it.


[And not just because it was hard either.]

So, have our resident Trump apologists explained why having a moron for education secretary is a good thing?

I mean, have they actually grown a pair, and said "a moron in charge of schools is good because....", or are they just tapdancing around with nitpicky distractions because they're weasly little cowards?

Calling her a "moron" is not helpful is it?

Calling it something else would be a lie.

On what basis do you call her a "moron"?

Are there any indications that she lacks intelligence. ?

The footage of her getting stumped by Al Franken like a 4th grader with stage fright on the set of Jeopardy was enough for me.