Killing public schools

One comment I hear every time budgets for public education are discussed is, "You can't fix the educational system by throwing money at it."

This pisses me off on a variety of levels.  First, there's the sense that funding public schools is randomly "throwing money," as if it's inherently irresponsible to provide adequate resources for educating the next generation of citizens.  Implicit in this is that schools will just waste the money anyhow, that school boards spend their time looking for frivolous ways to spend their state and federal funding.

The worst part, however, is that this convenient and glib little quip ignores the truth of a different adage: "You get what you pay for."  If you want to obtain and retain quality teachers, ensure that they have manageable class sizes that optimize student success, and give them the resources they need to deliver top-quality education, you have to pay for it.

And it's not like if you refuse to spend tax money to fund schools, then somehow the money magically stays in your pocket.  Taxpayers will pay either for supporting schools, or for the consequences of a generation of poorly-educated, disaffected young adults whose career choices are constrained by a lack of opportunities in public schools, or who have chosen to go to college and racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans that will take decades to repay.

All of which is why the proposed federal education budget is such a travesty.

The Washington Post calls this "Trump's education budget," which is a little doubtful, given that Trump gives every impression of having never written anything longer 140 characters, much less an actual budget proposal.  The specifics, honestly, have Betsy DeVos written all over them.  The Secretary of Education is a staunch believer in federal funding for private and religious schools -- which she refers to as "school choice" -- and for cutting damn near everything else to the bone.

Here are a few of the provisions of this proposal:

• cutting a total of $10.6 billion from the overall budget for education
• cutting funding for college work-study programs by half
• cutting over a hundred million dollars from programs supporting mental health services and programs providing enrichment, honors, and advanced coursework in middle and high schools
• ending a program to provide student loan forgiveness for college graduates who work in public service
• cutting $168 million from grants to states for career and tech programs
• cutting $72 million from programs for international education and foreign language training
• cutting $12 million from funding for the Special Olympics
• cutting $96 million from a program for adult literacy instruction

On the other hand, it:

• expands support for charter schools and private and religious schools by $400 million
• adds $1 billion to programs to push school districts to adopt "choice-friendly" policies

"It’s time for us to break out of the confines of the federal government’s arcane approach to education," DeVos said.  "Washington has been in the driver’s seat for over fifty years with very little to show for its efforts."

Betsy DeVos [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

DeVos, of course, is in no position to make that kind of judgment.  She has never worked in a public school, did not send her children to public school, and her main claim to fame, education-wise, is pushing a program in her home state of Wisconsin that funneled $2 billion to private and religious schools despite peer-reviewed studies showing that these programs do not work.  And the situation in Wisconsin is by no means unique -- other states have tried voucher systems, and by and large they have been a dismal flop.  Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times gives one example:

A study released last February by a team of researchers led by Jonathan Mills of Tulane University found that students in Louisiana’s expanded program lost ground in their first two years in the program.  Those performing at average levels in math and reading — that is, at about the 50th percentile — fell 24 percentile points in math and eight points in reading after their first year in the program.  In the second year, they improved slightly in math, though they still scored well below non-voucher students, and barely improved at all in reading.

So let's take those results, and make them national by mandate!  That'd be a great idea!

It doesn't take an expert to recognize the terrible effect that such a diversion of funds has on schools.  You'd think this would be enough for even the most diehard supporter of "school choice" to say, "Oh.  I guess I was wrong, then."

But no.  Data, facts, and evidence have no impact on a doctrinaire ideologue like DeVos, who honestly doesn't seem to give a damn if public schools fail.  In fact, if by her actions public schools do decline, in her mind it will just prove what she's claimed all along; that education in America is in a tailspin.

 Look, I've worked in education for thirty years.  It's not that I think we're perfect.  There's wastefulness, there is misspent money, and I have long decried the increasing focus on trivial content and preparation for standardized tests.  But the solution is not to cut funding to the bone.  Faced with revenue loss, public schools have only one real choice -- reducing staff.  Most of the rest of the line items in school budgets are earmarked or non-discretionary -- school boards have no choice in whether to include them.  The only big-ticket item that boards actually do have control over is salaries.  But since the salary per teacher is set contractually, there's only one option: lay people off.

Which means higher class sizes, cutting of electives, and loss of program.

Not that DeVos would ever admit this.  But look at the actual results of voucher programs and charter schools, nationwide -- not the spin that DeVos puts on it, but real numbers coming from studies such as the ones described by Hiltzik in The Los Angeles Times article linked above.

The conclusion is unequivocal.  And the budget being proposed will, if passed, be a death blow to the schools that can withstand it least -- poor, overcrowded, inner-city schools.

Remember that next time you see Betsy DeVos smile her smarmy smile and say that she's pro-child.

Breaking news: The Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution!

Will Rogers once said, "If you find you've dug yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging."

This is a lesson that has apparently yet to sink in for some young-earth creationists who decided to get together and write a science textbook -- an endeavor that, in so many ways, resembles a bunch of ten-year-olds trying to stage a Broadway musical in their back yard.  (Source)

This particular crew turned out a book called Biology for Accelerated Christian Education, Incorporated, and (of course) the book harps continuously on the ideas that evolution is a great big lie, and that the Earth is only six thousand years old.  The consensus of thousands of trained research scientists is irrelevant in the face of the revealed truth of Genesis; in fact, there are hints of a huge anti-Christian conspiracy, funded by the secular left and (once again, of course) backed by Satan himself.  So far, all of this is fairly yawn-inducing, but for two things.

One of them is the new twist of using the Loch Ness Monster to disprove evolution.

I couldn't possibly make anything this bizarre up.  Here's the relevant passage, which I present here verbatim:

Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

In another lesson, the writers mention that a Japanese whaling vessel "caught what appears to be a small aquatic dinosaur."

So, what we have here is one mythological view of the world being used to prove another mythological view of the world, which would be funny except for the second thing: ACE-sponsored textbooks, including this one, are being used in some charter schools in Louisiana, which means that government-funded vouchers are being used to pay for this curriculum, and to teach it to children -- if you can call this teaching.  There you have it, folks: your tax dollars at work.

One thing that I was unclear on, however, was how Nessie (if she does exist) bears any kind of relevance to the truth of young-earth creationism.  Suppose dinosaurs did survive until the modern era; why does that mean that evolution is false?  Here's how it's explained by Jonny Scaramanga, an anti-fundamentalist activist who was subjected to an ACE curriculum as a child but fortunately came out with enough of his brain intact to be able to escape: "The 'Nessie claim' is presented as evidence that evolution couldn't have happened. The reason for that is they're saying if Noah's flood only happened 4000 years ago, which they believe literally happened, then possibly a sea monster survived.  If it was millions of years ago then that would be ridiculous. That's their logic. It's a common thing among creationists to believe in sea monsters."

Unsurprising, given what else they believe.  But as tortuous logic goes, this one beats anything else I've heard.  Having dug themselves into one hole -- abandoning the principles of scientific induction in favor of a Bronze-Age mythology for which there is absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever -- they continued to dig until they reached the further substratum of cryptozoology.  The horrifying thing is the number of people who are happily willing to join them in the pit, the government officials who are eager to fund the digging process -- and the thousands of children who are being dragged down there involuntarily in the name of "choice in education."