Trump Administration shifts funds away from comprehensive sex ed classes to those that teach abstinence.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

The Trump administration will shift federal funding aimed at reducing teen pregnancy rates to programs that teach abstinence. 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Friday the availability of grants through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, (TPPP) a grant program created under former President Obama that funds organizations and programs working to reduce teen pregnancy rates. 

Trump's HHS announced, however, that unlike under the Obama administration, grants will be geared toward organizations that teach abstinence education to teens instead of the comprehensive sex ed approach the previous administration supported. In a funding announcement released Friday, the administration announced two tiers of funds for the TPP program. 

"Projects will clearly communicate that teen sex is a risk behavior for both the physical consequences of pregnancy and sexual transmitted infections; as well as sociological, economic and other related risks," the funding announcement reads. "Both risk avoidance and risk reduction approaches can and should include skills associated with helping youth delay sex as well as skills to help those youth already engaged in sexual risk to return toward risk-free choices in the future."

Well I think we can all look forward to a dramatic spike in teen pregnancy. 

As the product of a teen pregnancy, I can attest to the fact that the "just say no" approach is deeply flawed.

Florida teacher who hosted a white supremacist podcast has resigned.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Florida middle school teacher Dayanna Volitich submitted her resignation after it was found she was also the host of a white supremacist podcast called "Unapologetic" and the voice behind a Twitter account riddled with racist and anti-Semitic posts.

Charles E. Moore, Volitich's attorney, had no comment on his client's resignation letter. 

Volitich, 25, taught social studies at Crystal River Middle School in Crystal River, Florida. Online, she went by the pseudonym "Tiana Dalichov." Last month, she confirmed through her attorney that she was the one speaking as Dalichov on the podcast, but said her comments were "political satire and exaggeration" and the persona was a "hobby."

 "None of the statements released about my being a white nationalist or white supremacist have any truth to them, nor are my political beliefs injected into my teaching of social studies curriculum," she said in the statement.

That's funny, that "political satire" and "exaggeration" claim is the same one made by Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones when their hateful rhetoric was in danger of costing them a job, or custody of their kids. 

The local school district has not yet accepted Volitich's resignation but it is hard to see how they won't, after all even for Florida this is bad publicity. 

For those who did not catch our March post on this terrible person, yow can find it here.

Keep in mind that three Arkansas students received corporal punishment for protesting gun violence in schools on Wednesday. Just let that soak in.

My kid and two other students walked out of their rural, very conservative, public school for 17 minutes today. They were given two punishment options. They chose corporal punishment. This generation is not playing around. #walkout

— Jerusalem Greer (@JerusalemGreer) March 14, 2018

Courtesy of the Daily Beast: 

Three students in a rural part of Arkansas have allegedly been smacked for participating in Wednesday’s national walkout protesting against gun violence. 

Despite that drastic punishment, one student’s mother, Jerusalem J. Greer, applauded her son and the other students at Greenbrier Public School for their defiant protest following the deadly shooting that killed 15 students and two adults at Stoneman Douglas High School last month in Parkland, Florida. 

“My kid and two other students walked out of their rural, very conservative, public school for 17 minutes today,” Greer wrote on Twitter. “They were given two punishment options. They chose corporal punishment. This generation is not playing around.”

According to Greenbrier Public School’s official policy, the school board “authorizes the use of corporal punishment to be administered in accordance with this policy by the Superintendent or his/her designated staff members who are required to have a state-issued license as a condition of their employment.” 

The handbook says that before students are smacked they are to be “given an explanation of the reasons for the punishment and be given an opportunity to refute the charges. administered privately, i.e. out of the sight and hearing of other students.”

This has to be the most tone deaf response to these protests imaginable.

Think about it.

These children take to the streets to protest that fact that they do not feel safe in their own schools, and the response is to physically abuse them? 

And in 2018 no less.

Betsy DeVos tries to shame teachers on Twitter, gets taken to school instead.

Does this look familiar? Students lined up in rows. A teacher in front of a blackboard. Sit down; don’t talk; eyes up front. Wait for the bell. Walk to the next class. Everything about our lives has moved beyond the industrial era. But American education largely hasn’t. #SXSWEDU pic.twitter.com/kyy2r7bTud

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) March 6, 2018

Okay now those images look exactly like the classrooms that I sat in while I attended elementary school way back in the 1960's.

However I also fairly recently worked in public schools and I know something that apparently Betsy DeVos, the actual Secretary of Education, does not.

Here let some real teachers do a little educating.

Don’t you know that stock photos aren’t real? How many classrooms have you visited in the past year? Classrooms don’t look like that anymore. Students don’t work like that anymore. I would think that as Sec of Edu you would be celebrating us, not putting us down. #Bye pic.twitter.com/GPDr1aS7vp

— Teresa Hurtado (@MissHurtad0KISD) March 6, 2018

Ok, first of all, give Stock Photo teacher some credit, she has the whole class eager to share. (Her biggest problem, tbh, is the lack of decorations. Put a poster up on your stock photo walls!) Secondly, this is a real, public school classroom right here: pic.twitter.com/sU8hYnn7SY

— PostMalonialism (@Mr_Orlopp) March 7, 2018

No. It doesn't look familiar. THIS is what public school looks like. pic.twitter.com/OYYrXvIRq2

— LPG (@puckettgarcia) March 7, 2018

Damn teachers do not play when you insult the progress they have made in their teaching methods and classroom atmospheres.

But this last tweet really put the nail in Miss Betsy's coffin.

Meanwhile at the DeVos funded West Michigan Aviation School... pic.twitter.com/8Dutpd43iZ

— Kristen Famiano (@kfam) March 6, 2018

Now THAT is the kind of burn which leaves a lasting mark right there.

So it appears that Trump's Education Secretary not only got school by the Parkland students, but our amazing public school teachers as well.

Good choice there Donnie!

Florida public school teacher had secret life as an online white supremacist provocateur.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Dayanna Volitich, a 25-year-old social studies teacher at Crystal River Middle School in Florida, has been secretly hosting the white nationalist podcast “Unapologetic” under the pseudonym “Tiana Dalichov” and bragging about teaching her views in a public school, HuffPost has discovered. 

In her most recent podcast on Feb. 26, a guest railed against diversity in schools, dismissing the idea that “a kid from Nigeria and a kid who came from Sweden are supposed to learn exactly the same” and have the “same IQ.” Volitich enthusiastically agreed with the guest, and went on to argue that “science” has proven that certain races are smarter than others. 

In the same episode, Volitich boasted about bringing her white nationalist beliefs into the classroom and hiding her ideology from administrators. She said that when parents complained to the school’s principal about how she is injecting political bias into the classroom, Volitich lied to the principal and said it was not true. 

“She believed me and backed off,” she said. 

Volitich also agreed with her guest’s assertion that more white supremacists need to infiltrate public schools and become teachers. “They don’t have to be vocal about their views, but get in there!” her guest said. “Be more covert and just start taking over those places.” 

“Right,” Volitich said. “I’m absolutely one of them.” 

Huffington Post did a pretty admirable job of linking this "Tiana Dalichov" character to public school teacher Dayanna Volitich.

Heavy.com also found where Volitich, as "Tiana Dalichov," criticized the victims of the Florida school shooting, and even confronted them online.

They also featured part of her podcast which leaves no doubt that these two people are one and the same.

Thankfully, partly due to their efforts, she has now been removed from the classroom where she can no longer poison the minds of her students:

“The teacher has been removed from the classroom and the investigation is ongoing. Pursuant to Florida Statute an open investigation and materials related to it are exempt from public record and cannot be discussed until the investigation is complete,” the statement from Citrus County schools said.

Remember how we talked about the election of Donald Trump empowering these cowards and making them feel bold enough to come out of the woodwork?

Well this is yet another example of that very thing.

States are now pushing for media literacy programs in public schools to battle the proliferation of "fake news."

Courtesy of the AP: 

Alarmed by the proliferation of false content online, state lawmakers around the country are pushing schools to put more emphasis on teaching students how to tell fact from fiction. 

Lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed bills calling on public school systems to do more to teach media literacy skills that they say are critical to democracy. The effort has been bipartisan but has received little attention despite successful legislation in Washington state, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Mexico. 

Several more states are expected to consider such bills in the coming year, including Arizona, New York and Hawaii. 

"I don't think it's a partisan issue to appreciate the importance of good information and the teaching of tools for navigating the information environment," said Hans Zeiger, a Republican state senator in Washington who co-sponsored a bill that passed in his state earlier this year. "There is such a thing as an objective source versus other kinds of sources, and that's an appropriate thing for schools to be teaching."

I am totally behind this effort, and see it as a complete necessity moving forward.

I think on the first day of class, lesson one should be do not listen to a damn thing this guy says.

The Satanic Temple masterfully trolls Christians in Texas.

Courtesy of Dead State:   

The Satanic Temple is known for their masterful trolling of Christians. This time they’re going after “sadists” in Three Rivers, Texas. Why? Because last summer, the city’s public school district voted to allow paddling as a form of punishment for children. 

Now Temple spokesman Lucien Greaves says that school administrators who think hitting kids is okay need to be replaced, and that sentiment was reflected in a billboard put up by the Temple in Three Rivers. 

The billboard reads: “Our Religion Doesn’t Believe in Hitting Children.” 

“Hopefully, our billboard will give pause to passersby who will be forced to confront the fact that the school district is being operated by depraved and ignorant sadists who have no business being in education,” Greaves said, according to Patheos. “The billboard should be a wakeup call that the school district trustees, who voted 6 – 0 for corporal punishment, need to be replaced by competent and humane members of the community who have children’s best interests at heart.”

One of the Satanic Temple's tenets is that no one is allowed to cause bodily harm to another, which would already make them morally superior to fundamentalist Christians. 

Oklahoma teacher takes to panhandling to raise money for school supplies and public awareness as well.

Courtesy of Fox 23 News: 

A Tulsa teacher is making a bold statement about the state of education as she pleads for money at a local intersection in order to pay for classroom supplies. 

Teresa Danks is a third grade teacher in the Tulsa Public Schools systems.

As a result of serious education budget cuts, Danks says she is now spending between $2,000 and $3,000 of her $35,000 salary on supplies for her students. 

Oklahoma ranks nearly last in teacher pay when compared to other states across the U.S.

There is nothing unusual about that by the way, a LOT of teachers are forced to spend their own money to make sure that their students have the materials that they need to learn in the classroom. 

And good for this teacher to bring attention to that fact, and to hopefully shame some of the politicians in her area to start adequately funding public education.

The Trump effect is rapidly undermining science all over the country.

Remembering the way things used to be.

Courtesy of CBS News:

The science division of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was unstaffed as of Friday as the three remaining employees departed this week, sources tell CBS News. 

All three employees were holdovers from the Obama administration. The departures from the division -- one of four subdivisions within the OSTP -- highlight the different commitment to scientific research under Presidents Obama and Trump. 

Under Mr. Obama, the science division was staffed with nine employees who led the charge on policy issues such as STEM education, biotechnology and crisis response. It's possible that the White House will handle these issues through staff in other divisions within the OSTP.

That actually may prove difficult since the entire OSTP is dramatically understaffed.

"All of the work that we have been doing is still being done," a White House official familiar with the matter told CBS News, adding that 35 staffers currently work across the OSTP. 

"Under the previous administration, OSTP had grown exponentially over what it had been before," the official said. "Before the Obama administration, it had usually held 50 to 60 or so policy experts, director-level people, for all of OSTP." 

The Obama administration staffed the OSTP with more than 100 employees.

35 down from 100, does not seem like a large enough staff to handle too many extra duties, and now with the science division completely vacated it does not bode well for the representation of science in the White House.

But wait, there's more.

Kentucky has passed law allowing public schools to teach course on the Bible.

Courtesy of Salon: 

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin signed into law a bill that will allow courses on the Bible to be taught in public schools beginning on Friday. Overwhelmingly passed by Kentucky’s Republican-controlled state legislature, HB 128 gives Kentucky school boards the option to add elective courses on Bible literacy to their social studies curriculum. 

“The idea that we would not want this to be an option for people in school, that would be crazy. I don’t know why every state would not embrace this, why we as a nation would not embrace this,” Bevin said during a public bill signing ceremony. 

According to the bill, the courses must discuss all aspects of the Bible — such as characters, poetry, and narratives — because they are “prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture.” 

The bill’s supporters argued that Bible literacy courses as a way to get a better insight on the structure of the country. Republican Senator Stephen West said the bill serves a “secular purpose,” claiming it would “help to educate our kids on the background of how they came up with our founding documents.” 

“It really did set the foundation that our founding fathers used to develop documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights,” Republican Rep. D.J. Johnson said, “all of those came from principles from the Bible.”

“All of those came from principles from the Bible.”

Actually no, no they did not.

In fact Thomas Jefferson even said as much:  

In a January 24, 1814 letter to John Adams, Jefferson went through a detailed lawyer's brief to show that the entire idea that the laws of both England and the United States came from Judaism, Christianity, or the Ten Commandments rests on a single man's mistranslation in 1658, often repeated, and totally false. 

"It is not only the sacred volumes they [the churches] have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land," he wrote. "Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these make a part of the law of the land."

The only people who believe this country was founded on Biblical principles are Fundamentalists  like that phony American history "expert" David Barton who Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee are constantly promoting.

The teaching of the Bible in public school will no more inform students about the history of this country than reading Harry Potter will teach them about science.

It is yet another sneaky attempt to teach religion in classrooms dedicated to the learning of facts and not primitive superstitious nonsense.

Of course what can you expect from a state which has a "museum" dedicated to teaching children a fable about a giant boat that magically fit two of every animal in the world?

If this Governor Bevin is so keen to have the children of Kentucky learn about the foundations for democracy he would be better served having them read about Greek and Roman history rather than from a book of iron age fairy tales.

Trumpism infiltrates our public schools.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:

In the first comprehensive review of post-election bullying, BuzzFeed News has confirmed more than 50 incidents, across 26 states, in which a K-12 student invoked Trump’s name or message in an apparent effort to harass a classmate during the past school year. 

In the parking lot of a high school in Shakopee, Minnesota, boys in Donald Trump shirts gathered around a black teenage girl and sang a portion of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” replacing the closing line with “and the home of the slaves.” On a playground at an elementary school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, third-graders surrounded a boy and chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” 

On a school bus in San Antonio, Texas, a white eighth-grader said to a Filipino classmate, “You are going to be deported.” In a classroom in Brea, California, a white eighth-grader told a black classmate, “Now that Trump won, you're going to have to go back to Africa, where you belong.” In the hallway of a high school in San Mateo County, California, a white student told two biracial girls to “go back home to whatever country you're from.” In Louisville, Kentucky, a third-grade boy chased a Latina girl around the classroom shouting “Build the wall!” In a stadium parking lot in Jacksonville, Florida, after a high school football game, white students chanted at black students from the opposing school: “Donald Trump! Donald Trump! Donald Trump!”

The first school year of the Donald Trump presidency left educators struggling to navigate a climate where misogyny, religious intolerance, name-calling, and racial exclusion have become part of mainstream political speech. 

These budding political beliefs among some students carry consequences beyond the schoolyard. Today’s high schoolers will be eligible to vote in 2020, and today’s fifth-graders will be eligible to vote in 2024. But even if the wave of Trump-related bullying doesn’t reflect some widespread political awakening among young people, it indicates a more troubling reality: the extent to which racial and religious intolerance has shaped how kids talk, joke, and bully.

I am old enough to remember school yard arguments about the Vietnam War and Watergate, where children often argued their parent's point of view overheard at home with angry words and sometimes angrier fists.

We only had the vaguest understanding of the various arguments, but we were certainly not lacking passion or confidence that we were right.

That was one of the most volatile times that I can remember in this country, and to be honest it essentially pales when compared to what we are seeing today.

For all of his faults Richard M. Nixon was a man concerned with setting a proper example and the dignity of the office.

Donald Trump on the other hand is like an escaped circus orangutan who passed out in the Oval Office and woke up with everybody calling him Mr. President.

He is a classless, racist, misogynist who has no idea how to comport himself as a human being, much less the leader of the free world.

That means that every young,  impressionable child who looks for an example of how to deal with responsibility, interact appropriately with others, and demonstrate self control, will look at the leader of his country and find the worst possible role model imaginable.

There is no way that is not going to have a negative impact on the future leaders of tomorrow.

Trump's Education Secretary claims that she could do nothing to make America's public schools any worse, but of course we know that is far from true.

Wait until you see how badly SHE'S going to fuck everything up!

Courtesy of Slate:  

On Wednesday, at a forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington, the president’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was asked whether she would concede that when poorly implemented, the “school choice” doctrine she has championed for much of her career could have a negative effect on students. She saw no such risk: 

“Well, I’m not sure how they could get a lot worse on, you know, a nationwide basis than they are today,” the secretary said. “The fact that our PISA scores have continued to deteriorate as compared to the rest of the world and, you know, that we’ve seen stagnant—at best—results with the NAEP scores over the years—I’m not sure that we can deteriorate a whole lot.” 

The problem with DeVos’ sweeping assertion—and by extension, her apocalyptic view of American public education—is that the numbers tell a more complex, muddier story. Take PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, a test that compares 15-year-olds’ performance across dozens of countries. Depending on how you read the most recent PISA results from 2015, American schools could be described as doing great (we’re ahead of Switzerland in reading, and above France and Sweden in science), as doing OK (the U.S. placed near the middle overall), or as failing miserably (America’s math ranking is bad and has gotten worse since 2012). 

And, of course, numbers can also be an unreliable diagnostic tool: Just because you think the PISA or National Assessment of Educational Progress numbers are awful doesn’t mean you know what to do to improve them—or even know how to track that you’re doing something right. DeVos certainly doesn’t seem to: Asked earlier in the Brookings Q&A what dataset could be used to assess her own performance as education secretary in four years’ time, DeVos rambled a little about the primacy of policies that favor choice while conceding, “I’m not a numbers person.”

No she is not a "number's person" but neither is she an "education person." 

Simply put she is uniquely unfit for this particular responsibility.

As for not making things worse, all one has to do is look back at the LAST Republican President's attempts to make over our education system, the disastrous NCLB, to quickly realize the ignorance of that statement.

The attack on climate science is ratcheting up.

Courtesy of Frontline: 

Twenty-five thousand science teachers opened their mailboxes this month and found a package from the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. 

It contained the organization’s book “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming,” as well as a DVD rejecting the human role in climate change and arguing instead that rising temperatures have been caused primarily by natural phenomena. The material will be sent to an additional 25,000 teachers every two weeks until every public-school science teacher in the nation has a copy, Heartland president and CEO Joseph Bast said in an interview last week. If so, the campaign would reach more than 200,000 K-12 science teachers. 

Accompanying the materials is a cover letter from Lennie Jarratt, project manager of Heartland’s Center for Transforming Education. He asks teachers to “consider the possibility” that the science is not settled. “If that’s the case, then students would be better served by letting them know a vibrant debate is taking place among scientists,” he writes. The letter also points teachers to an online guide to using the DVD in their classrooms.

I would bet my house that this group is heavily funded by folks with ties to the fossil fuel industry.

That is one front on this war on science, convincing educators to question the facts.

This is yet another front.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Prominent scientists operating outside the scientific consensus on climate change urged Congress on Wednesday to fund “red teams” to investigate “natural” causes of global warming and challenge the findings of the United Nations’ climate science panel. 

The suggestion for a counter-investigative science force — or red team approach — was presented in prepared testimony by scientists known for questioning the influence of human activity on global warming. It comes at a time when President Trump and other members of the administration have expressed doubt about the accepted science of climate change, and are considering drastic cuts to federal funding for scientific research. 

A main mission of red teams would be to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change, including the work of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports are widely considered the authority on climate science.

So convince public school teachers to question science, while attempting to obfuscate the facts at their source.

And all of this while Donald Trump guts the EPA.

They are not even trying to cover up their agenda for destroying this planet are they?

I guess it is up to us to expose all of this as often as possible and to elect politicians who understand science and will work to preserve this planet for our children, and our children's children.

Remember, all we have to lose is the water that we drink, the air that we breathe, and the planet on which we make our homes.

Anchorage School board passes budget that dramatically cuts back on classroom teachers and support staff.

Courtesy of ADN:

The Anchorage School Board on Tuesday unanimously passed a budget for next school year that cuts dozens of classroom teaching positions to partially close a $15.3 million budget gap. 

The seven-member board voted on the budget after about 30 minutes of discussion at its evening meeting, leaving the document crafted by the district administration largely unchanged. 

Assuming the state Legislature doesn't decrease or increase per-pupil state funding, the $563.6 million general fund budget for the 2017-18 school year results in the net loss of about 123 "full-time equivalent" positions, including 99 teachers, to save about $7.2 million total. 

"This budget document is not as rosy as I would like it to be, but it's the circumstances that we are in — when you have flat revenue and increasing expenditures," said Anchorage School Board member Kathleen Plunkett. "We're not going to be able to do everything that I know we would all love to do."

As I think I have made abundantly clear over the years I am a huge advocate for spending on public education, so I find this very troubling. 

When I graduated from high school, Alaska's schools were some of the best in the nation.

Since that time I have watched our schools suffer from budget deficits, diminishing support for our teachers, and of course the implementation of NCLB.

These budget cuts leave already overworked teachers with less support and even less of the time and resources they need to do their jobs effectively.

Ultimately all of this hurts the kids.

Trust me if these people REALLY believed that children were our future, public school teachers would be the LAST jobs they would look to cut from the budget.

You mark my words, the state income tax is coming.

It has been 37 years since Governor Hammond signed that bill back in 1980 to eliminate our state income tax but I think with the oil revenue drying up that the writing is on the wall.

And I have to say that if it helps to keep teachers on the job, I would have no problem paying a little more in taxes. 

Public school educators take Betsy DeVos to school.

This is what Sec. DeVos said about our teachers after her visit. Needless to say, we're about to take her to school... @dcpublicschools pic.twitter.com/Wcx1YyqDHL

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

First, the secretary visited the classroom of Ashley Shepherd and Britany Locher, a dynamic co-teaching team that differentiates for the...

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

needs of students ranging from a first grade level to an eighth grade level in reading. They build amazing relationships with students and..

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

maintain a positive classroom environment focused on rigorous content, humor, and love. They aren't waiting to be told what to do.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Then she saw Latisha Trent in action. Ms. Trent has been at Jefferson for 3 years, and each year her students grow MULTIPLE grade levels...

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

in Math. EVERY student realizes his or her maximum potential in Ms. Trent's room. She isn't waiting to be told what to do.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Then the Sec. met Band teacher Jessica Harris, who has built our Music program from the ground up. Ms. Harris pours her heart into her work.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Ms. Harris is patient, kind, relentless, and reflective. She is everything you want in a teacher. She isn't waiting to be told what to do.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Morgan Markbreiter was there as well. Ms. MB has unleashed the passion of countless students through her Video Game Design course. MB also..

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

runs our INCREDIBLE after-school program, which provides FREE tutoring and enrichment to our kids. She isn't waiting to be told what to do.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

JA teachers are not in a "receive mode." Unless you mean we "receive" students at a 2nd grade level and move them to an 8th grade level.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Apparently somebody brought this to the attention of DeVos who then sent out this attempt at conciliation.

.@JATrojans Your teachers are awesome! They deserve MORE freedom to innovate and help students.

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) February 18, 2017

Somehow I doubt that the teachers will be fooled by that.

Educators are by definition intelligent and well informed.

They know what's coming, and it terrifies them.

NCLB crippled public education in this country, and DeVos clearly has plans to finally put it out of its misery. 

(H/T to the Daily Dot.)

So today Donald Trump got just that much closer to destroying public education in America.

This will teach liberals to stay home on election day.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

The Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos on Tuesday as education secretary, approving the embattled nominee only with the help of a historic tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. 

The 51-to-50 vote elevates Ms. DeVos — a wealthy donor from Michigan who has devoted much of her life to expanding educational choice through charter schools and vouchers, but has limited experience with the public school system — to be steward of the nation’s schools. 

Two Republicans voted against Ms. DeVos’s confirmation, a sign that some members of President Trump’s party are willing to go against him, possibly foreshadowing difficulty on some of the president’s more contentious legislative priorities. 

It was the first time that a vice president has been summoned to the Capitol to break a tie on a cabinet nomination, according to the Senate historian. Taking the gavel as the vote deadlocked at 50-50, Mr. Pence, a former member of the House, declared his vote for Ms. DeVos before announcing that Mr. Trump’s nominee for education secretary had been confirmed.

This, by the way, was an appointment that DaVos and her family essentially paid for with donations.

Donations from Betsy DaVos and her family.

I think we are supposed to take some solace in the fact that the vote was this close, but in the end DeVos was confirmed and that is all that counts.

I am also hearing some voices suggesting that we should stay calm because the Federal Government can only have so much of an impact on public education, but those people must not have been paying attention to what Bush's NCLB did to our schools and to our teachers.

I lived through all of that and saw first hand the devastating effects that NCLB had on our ability to adequately prepare children for college, their future career path, and for life in general.

In fact we are still recovering.

So yes Betsy DeVos can have an incredibly negative impact on education in this country.

And I imagine that is exactly the kind of impact that she WILL have.

Donald Trump's nominee for Education Secretary cites grizzly bears as reason for guns in schools.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's education secretary nominee, said it should be up to states whether guns are allowed in schools, citing grizzly bear protection as part of her answer. 

She also said she would support Trump if he moved to ban gun-free schools zones, a position he advocated on the campaign trail. 

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who represents Sandy Hook, the site of the 2012 school shooting, asked DeVos if she believes guns have "any place in and around schools." 

"I think that is best left to locales and states to decide," she said. 

After Murphy pushed DeVos about why she can't say definitively whether they belong, DeVos brought up a story Sen. Mike Enzi told earlier about a school in Wyoming that has fences around it to protect against grizzly bears. 

"I will refer back to Sen. Enzi and the school he is talking about in Wyoming. I think probably there, I would imagine there is probably a gun in a school to protect from potential grizzlies," she said. 

The comment drew some laughs in the room.

I actually watched this live as it happened, and even tweeted about it.

Went to school in Alaska. Never once had grizzly bear show up in classroom. https://t.co/aJwkE2SFu4

— Gryphen 2009 (@Gryphen2009) January 18, 2017

I kind of forgot about the exchange until I saw it show up again last night and thought it needed to be shared here on IM.

First off I am sure that all of you know that I consider the idea of guns in public schools to be just about the dumbest idea imaginable.

Having said that I thought I should share that I actually worked at a school where a grizzly bear once ambled onto the playground.

We had moose show up with some frequency but this was our first bear.

In case you are wondering the protocol was to bring the children into the school, no running, and to then notify the authorities that there was a bear in the area.

No shots were fired, because we are Alaskans and we know that is an ignorant overreaction.

We actually went back out later in the day as if nothing had happened, and the bear never made a return visit again.

Simply put there is NEVER a good reason for guns to be in a public school setting, and no not even if a grizzly bear shows up.

P.S. By the way this was only one of the pathetic answers provided by DeVos, you can see many more by clicking here.

Anti-science Christians sign petition urging future VP to ban the teaching of Evolution.

Here is the petition in question: 

To Mike Pence, Vice-President of the United States of America: 

We the undersigned note that, when you were a member of the U.S House of Representatives, you spoke out on the subject of science education and for presenting students with all available information. Recently, we have seen the passage of academic freedom bills in Louisiana and Tennessee which have allowed for critical evaluation in the classroom and improved educational standards. However, whilst an important development, they were only enacted owing to the need to protect students from indoctrination. We object to the teaching of the very controversial theory of evolution as part of the K-12 science curriculum which we regard to be unnecessary and unhelpful. 

It is obvious to us that Evolutionism-Darwinism is an anti-Christian atheistic dogma masquerading as science. According to renown philosopher of science, Professor Michael Ruse, himself an ardent evolutionist, there is no doubt that the theory of evolution represents a philosophical worldview: “Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity.”

Evolutionists, indeed, themselves speak about their “theory” with an unmistakably religious fervour.

The petition then goes on to trip all over itself misrepresenting, and misunderstanding the science in order to claim that Evolution is false and should not be taught to children.

Now this would usually be dismissed as laughable as Mike Pence really does not have the power to simply strip the teaching of Evolution from school books in every classroom, and in every state, in the country.

However the signers of this petition clearly recognized that if Mike Pence could, he would do just that. It is a new dawn in America my friends.

A dumber, religiously fundamental, scientifically illiterate, new dawn. 

Trump's choice for Education Secretary wants to "advance God's Kingdom" in American education.

Psst, she secretly hates kids learning anything. Don't tell anybody.

Courtesy of Politico:

The billionaire philanthropist whom Donald Trump has tapped to lead the Education Department once compared her work in education reform to a biblical battleground where she wants to "advance God's Kingdom." 

Trump’s pick, Betsy DeVos, a national leader of the school choice movement, has pursued that work in large part by spending millions to promote the use of taxpayer dollars on private and religious schools.

Her comments came during a 2001 meeting of “The Gathering,” an annual conference of some of the country’s wealthiest Christians. DeVos and her husband, Dick, were interviewed a year after voters rejected a Michigan ballot initiative to change the state’s constitution to allow public money to be spent on private and religious schools, which the DeVoses had backed.

In the interview, an audio recording, which was obtained by POLITICO, the couple is candid about how their Christian faith drives their efforts to reform American education.

Well it looks like Trump has finally done the impossible.

He has almost turned me into an advocate for homeschooling.

Because let's face it once this Christofascist is finished with our education system the only place an American child will receive a well rounded education is as far away from the public school system ad they can possibly get.

And that is really the evil genius of Republican politics.

They screw government social programs and services up so much that soon American citizens are BEGGING for them to be given to the private sector.

It's not government that sucks, it's Republican led government that sucks.

The Obama Administration calls for an end to corporal punishment in our schools.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

The Obama administration Tuesday called for an end to corporal punishment in states and school districts that continue to allow the practice. 

In a letter to governors and state school leaders, U.S. Education Secretary John B. King, Jr., called corporal punishment “harmful, ineffective, and often disproportionately applied to students of color and students with disabilities.” 

He urged states that had not yet ended corporal punishment — generally defined as paddling, caning or otherwise using physical force to inflict pain as punishment — to “eliminate this practice from your schools, and instead promote supportive, effective disciplinary measures.” 

While corporal punishment is banned in 28 states and the District of Columbia, there are 15 states that permit the practice and seven more that do not expressly prohibit it.

Just he very idea that this even has to be done in 2016 makes me sick to my stomach.

We now know so much about the harmful effects of corporal punishment on the emotional and mental well being of our children, and there are now so many more effective methods for behavior management, that it just seems barbaric that there are still institutions of learning who resort to physically injuring a child in order to gain compliance.

And of course this letter needs to be written now because once Jerry Falwell Jr. replaces John B. King Jr, as our Education Secretary I imagine he will reintroduce public floggings as a form of behavior modification.