How Conservatives Set Up Education To Fail

Neil Kraus, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls, to discuss his recent book The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement.

Neil Kraus then joins, diving right into the fantasy of the neoliberal consensus that has reshaped the economy, and our education system, in the interests of corporations and the wealthy, exploring, in particular, how it has manufactured an antagonistic relationship between the public and our education system. Expanding on this, Professor Kraus tackles the myths that the political class has perpetrated against education, pinning the blame on the system for everything from employment and wages to failing industry, before stepping back to tackle the failures of these myths, and how they obscure the role of general economic conditions.

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[flyingbicycles]

1. Cut funding to schools
2. Schools do worse
3. We can solve this with privatization, right?
4. Repeat

[auto]

A couple of things…
1. Public Education should not be funded through property taxes.
2. All State colleges and junior college should be free
3. There should be a program for free meals and housing for students who perform work for the school, city, county or state government. This should promote more civic engagement

Personally, I would ban private schools. Rich ppl would fight to improve education if they had to send their students to the same schools as poor people. There is too much of a disconnect between the rich and the poor where they barely see the poor as human.

[lil-g]

It is not in a Conservative’s best interest to have a good education system.

[make_me]

Most parents didn’t show up to school board meetings regarding the lack of public school funding. But they sure as hell show up when Tucker Carlson starts fear mongering about “CRT.”

[mrgresick]

I’m a K-12 public school teacher & the pointed irrational attacks on public education are ratcheting up.

[merriemelodiesfan]

Of course they did. They have dismantled public education for many years and still are even now. Republicans in Florida is a prime example recently banning "pornographic" dictionaries.

[kcolonelx]

After the catastrophe of for-profit colleges, they have decided to apply the same model to k-12.
What could possibly go wrong?

[gabrielmaroto]

We live in opposite land When they said “leave no child behind they” left behind millions I remember hearing that and thinking we’re in trouble

[rocknrollanp]

I’m a faculty member currently teaching 5 college courses… these guys nailed. 👏🏻

[gabrielmccray]

I love my son's teachers. He has a 7th grade reading level in 3rd grade. He's almost testing into higher math from his cogat test. I love my public school. I wish teaching was a 6 figure job.

[Jin]

Take away funding & add religion..

Then give $ to the religious organizations. 💯


Only the rich will have decent education at that point. 💯

[davidsamuelson]

You can add that that people expect teachers not to be babysitters, security guards and the entirety of a child’s educational system, because parents have somehow decided that they do not need to play any role except for complaining about the schools & curricula.

[jso]

I did my dissertation on this, studying Rod Paige's 2001 speeches for No Child Left Behind. Among the major themes of his speeches was a clear sense that the Federal government should do little or nothing for education, that parents needed to be pitted AGAINST the Teachers, especially the Teacher's Unions (which funnel a lot of money into the labor movement), and that historically under-served people were being under-served by the Federal government intervention, rather than acknowledging that the Federal government intervened because of Jim Crow and racism in the distribution of education, and made great strides until Reagan.

There was also a WILLFUL misrepresentation of the data, indicating that "test scores were declining, " when in reality the phenomenon is called "regressing to the mean" because ever growing percentages of students were being tested, or were taking the SATs and ACTs. Testing 10 rich kids is going to give a much higher score than testing 1000 kids, 10 of whom are rich, 200 are middle class and the rest are working or poor. Also, standardized tests are garbage, and Bush considered "education" to be SOLELY what a test score said, and nothing else. His so-called "Texas Miracle" was the race gap disappearing in the Texas Academic Achievement Standard, a test paid for by Ross Perot, but the students passing the TAAS did not significant increase their participation in higher education, nor close the gaps, and Texas students struggled to gain admittance to schools outside of Texas. Also, it turned out, Rod Paige, as Superintendent of Houston schools, falsified the numbers.

[fity_]

Reagan's job was to shrink the middle class. Thos is documented.

[cloudofthought]

The same people who want to defund public schooling will, in the same breath, complain about (perceived) poor results of those schools. It's amazingly dumb.

[davidpayant]

You need to differentiate between “training” and “education”. Training is strictly meant supply employment skills. Education should broaden the person to prepare them for leadership.
As to k-12, the right wants to create a two tiered system. Public schools will be starved for funds since they are failing. The upper classes will get vouchers and throw in some of their own money to create a system of higher quality schools for the wealthy.🐝🐝

[elisawhitman]

Improving K-12 education requires lifting children out of poverty. Of course, other steps are also needed, but this one must come first… because it’s pretty damn difficult for children to learn if they’re poor and hungry. After this, we should invest in changing the curricula to focus more heavily on critical thinking and logical reasoning- courses like informal logic, media literacy, social dynamics, political philosophy and/or rights theory (and hiring experts to teach these subjects). These courses aren’t even offered in most public schools, and they are vital. Critical thinking/logical reasoning provides the foundation for all learning. We also need to change the way prospective teachers are educated in college to prepare them for their future roles as facilitators of logical reasoning. And obviously, certain states must STOP muzzling teachers, as well as pay them fairly. People keep blaming underpaid and overworked teachers for deficiencies in public education while at the same time prohibiting those teachers from imparting facts and expanding minds. It’s absurd and counterproductive to education. Suffice to say, the U.S. education system is in much need of repair. There’s a LOT to fix.

[jenna]

The bible belt has the lowest high school graduation rates in the country.

[stvinney]

I was told about a time when colleges used to pay professors to work there. They had a pretty good paying job that Id imagine would be more rewarding than most people's jobs. And they'd leave with a pension.
They did this when men like my Dad got a bachelor's for very little money, certainly no debt. In fact he somehow worked a pt job and had his own apartment a mile away from the college. Btw that college is now a university that'll run you close to 300K for a degree.
Now Dad wouldn't be able to afford it. If he somehow made it in, most or all of his teachers would be adjunct professors or aides.
In fact i went to college in the early 2000s and i remember giving my teacher a ride to his other class a couple of times. He taught at the junior college i attended for a year AND at the State University about 10 miles up the highway. I don't remember his exact situation but for awhile i remember he was hitchhiking from school to school or getting one of his students to bring him.
Btw i got an A in that class so...there's always the silver lining i guess

[chrispoe]

Conservatives haven’t been in charge of education for 😂😂😂. But, tell YOUR TRUTH!!!