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But the core issue isn't access to private solutions for public school problems. The core issue is that the public schools simply aren't educating youth. They're producing widgets, and the widgets aren't even graduates. They're test scores.

Which gives us excerpts instead of novels, minimal teaching of grammar, minimal meaningful essay writing (and essays may end up being graded by peers or simply given credit for being turned in), "core competencies" over depth of knowledge, and so on.

It's as though we've become so used to the badness, we've started to accept it, and and have lost the ability to be outraged at the need for homeschooling and Mathnasium and Russian School of Mathematics and Sylvan Learning and Essay camp and a long list of other entities that do the school's jobs for them. It's one thing to WANT to use these things, but the NEED for them is outrageous.

Val, I hear you. I agree in principal with much of what you have expressed. Raising awareness of various experiences on the forum is helpful. So far, these experiences have been occurring under a different administration.

While any education system is falling short, I believe that we (as parents, as a gifted community, as people who care about others) must collectively continue to do several things:
1) Advocate at a national level (contacting Senators, NAGC, DeVos, etc), if we feel we are knowledgeable, among those called to do this, and up to the task.
2) Advocate locally for opportunities within our State, county, district, and/or school if we believe we have armed ourselves with facts and information.
3) Advocate individually for a child's unseen and/or unmet needs, gathering tips, expertise, and advocacy advice as we do so.
4) Educate our kids... even when that means outside the system, supplementing a child's learning... homeschooling, etc.

As mentioned upthread, from the US Dept of Education, whether led by DeVos or others in the past, parents can expect an "appropriate" education, not necessarily the "best" education.

Our public district is funded for about $13,000 or $14,000 per pupil (a large part of that being because of a generous community that supports levy requests) yet the claim they don't have enough and need to cut cut cut. For a while they were talking about going to a 4 day school week, cutting all extracurriculars, etc. They did actually cut from special ed, support staff, increased class sizes, etc. Yet, the AVERAGE teacher salary is about $70,000 plus generous benefits and the administrators and principals are paid anywhere from $120,000 to $180,000 (the super) plus $40,000 in benefits. It's ridiculous. We are in an average cost area, not San Francisco or New York. We are in a state which allows for a lot of school choice. So a large number of students do not attend their neighborhood school, they go to other public districts, or to charters. The district is now closing multiple schools because they don't have enough students to fill them and they are "half empty". This makes parents mad and even more students flee for other options. It's a downward spiral. The charters are overall not performing well (although a small minority are high performing). I'm not sure what the answer is, but our public district has a horrible attitude and they don't care about community input. I am thankful we have choices. But at the same time those choices are destroying our local schools. The schools actually seem to embrace all the standardized testing. They hyper-focus on math and reading scores to the detriment of everything else. They seem to buy into it, it's not just about money and they don't particularly care about attracting students either. They truly believe that if they get those scores to budge they are doing their jobs. Not the gifted kids, the kids who are right below proficiency. They want to get them up a couple points, right over the line. They push kids into AP who shouldn't be there. All of the stress is another reason students flee. Kids are either bored or pushed too hard. Kids simply aren't happy.

I hear you, blackcat, and see the same things you describe, happening in many States and many districts. These trends have been occurring under a different administration.

Yet I believe we cannot look to the selection of DeVos or any other individual to head the US Department of Education as the cure. There are a few things which "everyone should know"...

1) The 10th amendment to the US Constitution echoes an earlier provision of the Articles of Confederation: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people". The federal government has not been granted the power to direct public education; That power belongs to the States and to the people.

2) The League of Women Voters provides a decent timeline and history of scope creep: federal encroachment into local education policy and practice.

3) The US Department of Education (USDoE) was first created in 1979. Its functions have largely been to provide funding with strings attached.... States and districts willingly accept the money... and then must comply with a growing set of rules and regulations, thereby "willingly" giving up local control. For example: Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems, US DoE factsheet, July 2009. Schools are therefore no longer accountable to students, parents, and local community taxpayers... but are accountable to federal government.

4) A law of physics which states "An object in motion will stay in motion until force is applied" seems to apply to this type of government encroachment as well... it will continue until force is applied. The "force" would be our communication to Senators, NAGC, etc... largely a voice foregoing federal funding and the attached federal control... thereby truly having local control over all aspects of public education for children in that geographical area.

uhh-- let me be a counterpoint to that--

the "strings" attached to federal funding are the only thing that allows some children to have access to reasonable education at all.

Check out the 2e forums here if you don't believe me. ALL of the 2e children here would be kicked to the curb by one or more potential schooling options if those institutions weren't on some level afraid of noncompliance with the feds.

I for one am not one bit sorry for ADA and IDEA.

I had clearly not criticized IDEA and ADA.

It is my understanding that IDEA and ADA are laws; They are NOT examples of schools opting to accept funding from the US Dept of Education, then finding they must comply with rules and regulations attached to those optional funding dollars.

An example is: Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems, US DoE factsheet, July 2009.
While DeVos might inherit this, it was created under a different administration.

Errr, I think so... IDEA and ADA are laws, but if let's say private schools accept federal assistance funds like my DS private school then they have to honor reasonable accommodations on the IEPs. DS private school currently believes they have the right to ignore DS IEP for things like extended time and foreign language exemption, even though they offer those exemptions to other students, because they want to decide. I had previously filed a State complaint to get District compliant for DS IEP (reevaluations were behind and IEP had not reconvened in the past 12 months). Then I asked who enforces the IEP? I was told that I had to file an Office of Civil Rights complaint. IEP is a Federal document. Sounds OTT, but that's the procedure.

I think the thread is straying off-topic from DeVos and the Department of Education. Rather than hijack a thread, some may wish to create a new thread to discuss specific legislation and sub-agencies.

I do not think the point is around ADA/IDEA or Title IX. It is the way that an administration goes about these issues. When all the power is given to the Bureaucracy the results are pretty predictable as Val pointed out. There has to be a way of putting more power to the parents of the children. To be honest, Vouchers are the only real idea anyone has come up with to put power into the hands of the parents.

As noted earlier, I suspect that vouchers would or do mostly help people who already send their kids to private schools.

There are very serious problems in public education. Some are due to bad policies beyond the control of the schools (e.g. high stakes testing and NCLB, fads pushed on teachers). Some result from a teaching corps that's generally not knowledgeable about subject matter and that enjoys too much protection from the consequences of poor performance. Criticism is often met with "Stop bashing teachers!" No one is above criticism, and mine here is amply documented.

I don't believe that Betsy DeVos has the welfare of students in mind, and I also think that she'll do a lot of harm to our public schools. At the same time, IMO, the US public school system as a whole won't enact meaningful change without being forced to. Reforming the tests and hiring people who know their subjects would be a good start. I don't know if vouchers will do that. I don't know about charter schools, either. It's been shown that many of them are no better than the public schools. Certainly, the one my son attended for a year was such a disaster, it bled students (enrollment didn't increase in spite of adding a grade every year, and it eventually closed for a variety of reasons).