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Forums - Politics Discussion - Betsy DeVos confirmed as Education secretary after Pence breaks 50-50 tie.

fleischr on 07 February 2017

A victory for students and school choice.

Racism ends in America when we remove the racial/class barriers that exist in education today. That simply won't happen with the monopoly many local school districts in the US have today.

Time to end the red tape from time-consuming standardized tests and other useless federal education regulations like Common Core. Devos will do that by giving more power back to states and local school boards - e.g. the people who really understand what their students need.

Don't be fooled by all the rancor: the left sold out to teacher unions ages ago and it hasn't done students one lick of good.



I predict NX launches in 2017 - not 2016

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Nautilus on 07 February 2017

Not wanting to sound mean, but is it really necessary to make athread for every single thing that Trump and its government does?I really like discussion about miryad subjects, but this is getting really tirinh.Make a mega thread about Trump and everyone is happy.



My (locked) thread about how difficulty should be a decision for the developers, not the gamers.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241866&page=1

monocle_layton on 07 February 2017
irstupid said:
axumblade said:

Education is already screwed up. Most schools have cut the Arts programs significantly. I've also heard there have been some schools that have cut a lot of funding for science programs as well. I can only imagine how bad it will get

I always love when people complain like this.

"OMG school has been getting shittier and shittier and are ranking and grades have been dropping steadily for years compared to world wide. How dare they put someone new into power that isn't going to do the same thing we have been doing"

I have no idea who this lady is or what she stands for, but how about we let her do something before we cry about the sky falling. I've been hearing for years how our school system is going to shit. Thus doesn't that mean that our prior Education Secretarys have been shit?

 

edit: also arts programs get cut for lack of funding, not because of some agenda. If you care so much for them, make a donation to the school of your choosing and stipulate it be used for the arts. My colleges call me all the time for donations. High Schools don't, but I guarantee they are not against donations.

she said grizzly bears are the reason why guns should be allowed in school. Regardless of context, you can't get more retarded than that.



monocle_layton on 07 February 2017
Peh said:
Do they still try to push creationism as science?

All the time.

 

According to many christians, creationism should be held to the same level as science just because many people believe it in. Even though there's basically no evidence for creationism, they somehow manage to force their way into the education system to provide a bullshit "unbiased viewpoint of different scientific viewpoints". It's disgusting, and simply hypocritical of them. they want to be 'fair' to everyone's "scientific viewpoints". The Mayans believe they were made of tortilla. Why don't we teach that?...oh, wait, it isn't Christianity! Their opinion is just based off of beliefs, so it should be disregarded. Not like creationism has no scientific basis or anything...



JWeinCom on 07 February 2017
irstupid said:
axumblade said:

And you know about my donations to anything and about my life? At least I understand DeVos has virtually no association with public schools and only got her position because she donated to the Drumpf campaign being put anywhere in control of education.

Didn't say you donated or not. Just mentioned poeple can.

The point is, you were complaining about education having been going to shit lately and then complaining about DeVos. As you just said she has no association with public school (I have to take your word, as I said, not following this story) so why are you bashing her already. You shoudl be bashing those that were in charge before that were taking us downards already. Who knows how this DeVos does. Maybe she will be worse, maybe the same, maybe better.

Point is, she is not the same as we have had and thus how can you already be hating her? I'm guessing cause some news program told you to.


You admittedly know nothing about Betsy DeVos, but you assume people hate her for no reason?  No.  It's because she has a sickening number of conflict of interests, has tried to dismantle the separation of church and state, doesn't understand basic education concepts such as the difference between growth and proficiency, wants to use public funds for religious schools, promoted policies in Michigan that has seen charter schools perform worse than public schools and caused a decline in education performance, has no expertise in the field of education, and bears no qualification beyond the millions of dollars she has donated to the republican party.  She is different from what we have in the sense that arsenic is different than what we usually eat for dinner.

There are plenty of great reasons to hate her.  If you admittedly know nothing about her or the situation, maybe you should take the time to educate yourself before commenting.



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Thuglas on 07 February 2017
StarOcean said:
I'm sure Trump's devoted cult will find a way to defend this pick

For a mod, you don't seem to add much to threads other than insults at people with differing political views than yours. I did defend this pick and so did a few other users here as well, who I think did it better than me.  Debate is absoluetly a necessity on political topics and I would like you to address either my previous post or the other "pro school choice" posts.

 

Its not just you, almost all the anti-Trumpers do this. My God, this is a forum, converse with people or have a debate.



Thuglas on 07 February 2017
double post


JWeinCom on 07 February 2017
Thuglas said:
Hiku said:

This is your drained swamp, America. A billionaire GOP donor gets a Cabinet job she's utterly unqualified for.
And her embarrasing incompetence is not even the most scary part. It's that she has actively worked to ruin public schools by taking away government funding from them in order to instead fund private (religious) schools. Which caused the affected public schools to fail badly. This has been her life long ambition.

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed school choice advocate Betsy DeVos as Education secretary by the narrowest of margins, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking a 50-50 tie in a historic vote.

Two Republicans joined Democrats in the unsuccessful effort to derail the nomination of the wealthy Republican donor. The Senate historian said Pence's vote was the first by a vice president to break a tie on a Cabinet nomination.

https://www.apnews.com/53d48c109fd74ff68659e8795e70521e/Senate-set-to-confirm-DeVos-as-education-secretary?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP

Somehow I can't believe she got confirmed after how much public attention her confirmation hearing got, where her incompetence was put on full display. But that just goes to show how shameless politicians who are bribed by wealthy people or corporations are.

Public schools are absolutely garbage in most low income cities in America. The religious schools (and charter schools) perform better than other Public school. How can you posibly be against giving more oportunity for children to get better education? I grew up in Detroit and it became so apparent why it is so hard for people to escape poverty. The biggest problem were the public schools I attended. Kids in every classroom were out of control and the teachers didn't care at all.  This isn't the case for charter schools in inner cities (she advocated for charter schools too). Charter school demand has been on the rise yet their has been fight back against creating more of them.

Democrat leaders seem to be adamently against allowing young kids a chance to escape the broken public school system as of late. They are fighting against DeVos plan for school choice and public education officials have shot down the creation of charter schools in the past claiming "it doesn't meet our education standards" despite them consistantly out perfoming public schools in the same area. We need more charter schools in inner cities! Nothing wrong with religuous schools either since they have proven they know how to teach kids. If we want to help poor comunities then it starts at education. how many more decades of failing public schools do we need before we try something new?

Charter schools in Michigan, where DeVos and her husband helped shape policies, performed worse overall than public schools.  Religious schools are a major problem, if they are given federal funds.  Complete violation of separation of church and state.  Imagine if their was a school that explicitly promoted Islam that received federal funds.  The christians who are promoting religious schools now would be rioting.

But, this isn't about charter schools.  There are intelligent qualified individuals who have had success as teachers and as administrators who support charter schools.  Betsy DeVos is not one of these people.



fatslob-:O on 07 February 2017

Hmm, I've got mixed feelings about DeVos being confirmed as secretary of education ... 

Let's get this out of the way first, public schools often outperform private schools on average controlling for factors such as student background but I do not believe our current educational institutions are the main problem ... 

I believe students are the problem and Instead we should try to emulate east asian models when their so academically successful. I'm all for DeVos if she can make american kids suck less compared compared to the rest of the world ...



VitaminZ on 07 February 2017

You don't want Trump to run your school? Cool. Gut the Department of Education and leave it up to the states.

Don't want Trump to run your healthcare? Cool. Me neither. Don't let the feds run it then.