Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Devos Confirmation

Indigo, I have always appreciated your deep answers which reference a great variety of sources. Thank you.

While some may ignore evidence, others may analyze and categorize (anecdotal evidence vs. empirical evidence from research or literature review) before determining how heavily to weigh it.

Different research may yield different results, and correlation does not mean causation. It is good, I think, on a forum like this one, to exchange experiences and sources of information which inform various views... in a manner which seeks to understand both common ground and differences.

One worthy agenda may be to shed light that there is good and bad in everything. Tradeoffs. Opportunity costs.

We cannot presume to have a common knowledge base simply by virtue of being gifted individuals. This is why some people choose to share experiences and/or sources which inform their view, and to ask others to do the same. If one believes a fact or set of facts to be "fake", one might choose to discuss that... for example: budgeted/estimated/projected vs. actual; outdated data replaced by more recent data; more comprehensive study with more subjects and/or a longer time period, etc. This may facilitate conversation amongst gifted individuals in a way that simply claiming "fake" unfortunately cannot.

Seeking context, sources, or delving deeper with questions for clarification are not attack. However accusations and allegations, casting aspersions on individual's motivations is an attack. Ad Hominem.

This statement sounds like relational aggression, also known as girl-bullying. I know the considerable talents of members can be put to better use on the forum.

For example, discussing DeVos and the US Department of Education which she is inheriting... how much might she change its direction... how much might it change her?

LOL, thank you! I find I often have more questions than answers... and every answer (which others may hope would bring closure) leads to more questions...

I'm behind on this convo, but I'd like to add to this list:


At the charter my DD attended briefly:
--Required tour of the school held only a few times, the JANUARY before your child enrolled, not announced anywhere so you had to be "in the know," with limited spots
--Mandatory volunteer hours (I believe it was 40/year)
--No afterschool care (selects for wealthy families with SAH parents)
--"Art fee" of $100+/year
--Hours not the same as other public schools--again, selects for families with a SAH parent because this is very hard to deal with if you have another child at a public school who is not on the same schedule and you work

A few interesting takes on this:

1.Betsy DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary
by Anya Kamenetz
NPR
February 7, 2017
Read the article for info on upcoming legislation.

2.The job of the Education Secretary...
by Mark Bauerlein
Vox
February 7, 2017
Lots of facts, figures, and statistics in this article.

3.Betsy DeVos is qualified to be Education Secretary
by Michael Petrilli
Fordham Institute
February 8, 2017

Personally I think Davos is exposing the long standing dogma which has permeated public education in many regards. A perfect microcosm has presented itself if you will. From my view point the responses from the NEA say it all:

http://www.nea.org/home/69582.htm

http://www.nea.org/home/69641.htm

Vouchers create competition between schools and give children opportunities which they otherwise would not receive in a public setting. Yet people are unanimously disparaging Devos simply because she does not hold the same views as they do- saying the exact opposite of what would happen under a voucher program. What they really want is another education secretary who can peddle the same old failing views. Maybe I am biased; but in my state magnet, charter and the like schools seem to be doing well with students. Many parent actually prefer them for the better.

Sorry but from where I am standing, Americans by and large do not care about their schools one iota.

(Almost) Every H1(b) printed is a searing indictment of the American public schools.

Were American actually concerned with their schools they would be asking the most obvious question:

How is that American schools cannot produce adults with the skills needed to fill the spaces purportedly unfillable to such an extent that thousands of H1(b) visas need to be stamped every year?

Worse still, many of those H1(b) visa go to foreign born graduates of US tertiary education institutions. So the failure must rest with the US primary and secondary educational institutions.

While I can see that niche technologies will always need to freely hire from a global pool so there should always be H1(b) visas issued I cannot help thinking that the current system is way abused and that healthy public school systems around the country should be producing high school graduates of the right calibre to render them obsolete for the most part.

Given what we actually do have in our public schools - a system where the people with the most potential are the most underserved . It should not be too surprising that employment agencies and their Washington lobbyists can claim that often borderline competent people (there are, of course outliers who are fantastically competent and awesome to work with as I know from personal experience) from half way around the world speaking almost unintelligible English show more promise than American candidates.

I cannot help but conclude that Americans as a nation, irrespective of the Secretary of Education du jour, must not really care about their public schools.

I agree with madeinuk that our education system is partially the problem. I also think that kids are not getting to do enough problem solving on their own and are not allowed to make mistakes.

Our educational system does not tolerate failure-there is not enough growth mindset. The schools are under pressure to teach to the test, so they do not have time to allow the kids to learn from failure. Parents are worried if their kid fails that they will fail at life- there are no second chances. Add in a nation dependent on media for entertainment and you have a lot of passivity and adversity to risk.

The problem with DeVos is not really about charter or public - it is that she has no background and no ideas on what our educational system needs. She is woefully ignorant, and if you don't even know what is broken you can't fix it. Plus her solution did not work in the area where she applied it. I have charters, magnets, privates, online school, etc. in my area and we do not feel like we don't have choice. Private schools in our area have financial aid and reduced tuition to help students with less funding to attend.

All just my opinion though- I am not qualified to lecture any time soon

@madinuk,

I regret to say you are spot on and I fully agree 100% having seen it first hand. Schools in this country paint high potential as those students which can fulfill the given standard curriculum with success (which is really based on average to slightly above average IQ). Yes there is advanced level and honors in some public schools, but it still does not challenge high, very high and profoundly high IQ. Anything outside of that narrow conformity is not taken into consideration, or cared for.

@LAF, Id say you are more qualified to lecture then I am However, IMHO, having an educational secretary with no experience can either be really bad, or really good. A person with an open mind, and with the right skills, is more likely to see the problem at hand then educators with set-in-stone, pre biased thinking. My point is- how many educators even grasp what gifted really is? How many educators recognize US schools do not teach enough STEM? I may be wrong, and my opinions are strictly limited to my own experience, but the well educated educators we have thus far have not produced results that rival schooling in other countries.

Since the subject of other countries' excellence came up--


https://www.theatlantic.com/nationa...ng-about-finlands-school-success/250564/


Maybe the secret sauce isn't what we Yankees keep thinking it is. Pretty sure that DeVos isn't all that interested in what Finland has discovered works, though.

Edward, you assume that American educators are well-educated. In my experience, a dreadful percentage of them are not-- and they may wind up in education majors in college because they aren't well-suited to other things, and not because they are impassioned, smart, and well-suited to education in particular. That's not to say that those educators don't exist-- they do, and they always have-- but that they are rare, always have been, and are in fact often driven out of the profession by the misguided pressures placed upon them in actual classrooms.

Privatization isn't going to fix this.