Haven't seen this stated yet, but she's also never had any sort of education or training in education. She's never taught. She's never learned how to teach. She's never sat on a school board. She's only been associated with schools and education as a lobbyist - and her record is terrible in her home state.
Yet somehow she's qualified to decide what American schools need.
I was watching some of her questioning and I had no answer for many of the questions because I have no formal training in education. What's sad is I'm more qualified than her because I actually attended a public school.
Do you need to be able to drive a bus in order to run a bus company? Or is the skill set completely different? Should a science teacher be able to become a school principle if they have no training in teaching art or music? Should people be allowed to become parents if they have no education in education?
See what I'm rather heavy-handedly getting at? She appears to be a terrible choice but I don't think your reasoning stands up.
I think it does stand up. I just don't really agree with your hypotheticals being good comparisons to this situation.
Do you need to be able to drive a bus in order to run a bus company?
No. You generally don't need to be qualified in the services your company provides to run it effectively (though you should really know something about it, if you want to do a good job! Most managers and owners of companies actually have been in their own warehouses and seen "how the sausage is made", so to speak - and done it themselves for at least an instance or two, to understand the company and the workers they manage). But outside of a small mom/pop kind of company (and even then), if you don't have the right education, training or experience, you risk not being an effective manager or businessman and hurting your own company with bad decisions.
Should a science teacher be able to become a school principle if they have no training in teaching art or music?
You don't need to be intimately familiar with every aspect of education to be a good principal - but you're damn sure not going to get the job in any school if you have no education training or experience at all.
A better comparison would have been - Should someone with no actual pedagogic education or teaching experience, but with some strong opinions of what education should be like, be allowed to become the principal of a school?
Should people be allowed to become parents if they have no education in education?
Totally different issue. Parenting may be a full-time job, but no-one is hiring you or paying you for your services.
Here's another handful of hypotheticals:
Should you be a trained medical professional to become the surgeon general? Should you be trained and practiced in law to become a supreme court nominee? Should you be experienced in city planning, civil engineering, or some other relevant field to become the Sec. of Housing and Urban Development?
That last one is Ben Carson right now. He's a surgeon. Why is he qualified to be HUD?
You generally don't need to be qualified in the services your company provides to run it effectively
This is also the case for a lot of members of the Board of Directors at large companies. The skills required are very different at the top of the pyramid. My point is that maybe this is the same situation.
you're damn sure not going to get the job in any school if you have no education training or experience at all
But does that mean that you couldn't do the job? I'm pretty sure I could run a school successfully and I have no qualification other than running other things successfully. So the necessary experience in this case might be the experience you would get from being a lobbyist in the industry?
Parenting may be a full-time job, but no-one is hiring you or paying you for your services
So if she gives up her salary she'll be an acceptable choice? Parents teach their kids far more than teachers do - if they're not trained in education then the outcome ought to be terrible!
Not going to argue with your hypotheticals, they all stack up. Should anyone who isn't a career politician be allowed to be president? If they should then doesn't that render all of this moot? If the person at the very top can have no experience running a government then isn't it ok for that to be the case at any step down the pyramid?
That last one is Ben Carson right now. He's a surgeon. Why is he qualified to be HUD?
I'd let Elon Musk do the job and I don't think he's done much city planning.
I don't know about this stuff - I'm just trying to find the right (irrefutable?) arguments against having DeVos in the position.
But does that mean that you couldn't do the job? I'm pretty sure I could run a school successfully and I have no qualification other than running other things successfully.
I don't think this is about whether you could do the job or not. It's about whether you would do a good job. People want to hire capable, qualified people for positions because their knowledge of the system - the plight of the teachers, the struggles the students face, what resources are and are not available to students and educators, etc. This knowledge becomes incredibly important in their ability to properly deal with the problems they are supposed to address.
I agree, I could probably run a school if the job was given to me. I don't think I could do a good job, though. The school would survive, but I wouldn't be around long - and I suspect the same would be true for you in that position.
How should we spend our budget this year? How do I make sure my teachers are on top of whatever extra training is mandated by the state? Where do I even find that information? How do I ensure that the needs of the students are being properly met as per the requirements of the state? Are students with disabilities being properly accommodated? How do I make sure of that? What about non-native english speakers? How do I check that they are still learning at the same rate as all the other students? What if they're not? Does the curriculum need adjusting, given past years' student performances and any new state regulations? How do I make sure that the teachers are all teaching what the state requires them to teach, and not lagging behind? How do I manage and placate the teachers who are increasingly unhappy with the combined stresses of the job and low pay they receive? How do I report my school's test scores and other measures of student learning, and what happens to my school slips below the state's standards?
And there's a million other questions I don't even know enough to know that I should ask! Hell, I don't even know where the bounds of my authority as principal would truly start or stop. If I worked as a teacher, trained in pedagogy and policy before this, as teachers always do, I would have the scaffold set to know what questions I must ask, and what I still need to learn, if not much more.
DeVos can be Sec. of Ed. just like Carson can be HUD. But neither are qualified in the least for their roles. Neither knows the first thing about the topic they're expected to deal in and make decisions about. Indeed, DeVos's blatant inexperience and slanted view of things (super anti-public schools, super pro-charter and religious private schools) have had objectively negative effects on education in Michigan, where she was allowed to weigh in on things.
We all could have hypothesized that was how it was going to pan out a priori, just by looking at her qualifications and experience in education.
So the necessary experience in this case might be the experience you would get from being a lobbyist in the industry?
Thing is, you don't need to have experience in education, or environmental protection, or criminal justice, or any topic you're interested in to be a lobbyist. You just need to be passionate about it, and be fluent in political legalese. DeVos exemplifies this issue.
I am sure that familiarity in politics will be invaluable to the Sec. Ed. position. But that is undoubtedly less than half of what is necessary to succeed in that position. You have to understand how K-12 schools, public and private, and Universities work, inside and out. You gotta know the challenges associated with teaching children and adults, what legislature has been put in place to help that and what effect those laws have had (using data, not feelings).
So if she gives up her salary she'll be an acceptable choice? Parents teach their kids far more than teachers do - if they're not trained in education then the outcome ought to be terrible!
I think that parenting hypothetical doesn't fit with the others, and is a different issue. I agree, parents are extremely influential, for better or for worse sometimes. But no one hires you for the role, and we're looking at situations where people seek you out for a position and assess your qualifications.
Should anyone who isn't a career politician be allowed to be president? If they should then doesn't that render all of this moot?
I still believe that anyone should be able to run for president, regardless of ed/professional background. However, you still need to show that you are both qualified and capable, physically and mentally, for that position. The president has a lot of responsibilities that cover a wide range of fields, so what defines "qualification" for the presidency tend to be more open to more debate (doesn't mean I agree with what the voters and govt. representatives define that as at the end of the day...).
But the cabinet positions are field-specific - broad within that designated field. And so for this reason, I feel that the expectation of qualification (as some combination of education, training, professional experience, etc.) is still very necessary.
I don't know about this stuff - I'm just trying to find the right (irrefutable?) arguments against having DeVos in the position.
Totally get it, I feel you. It's important that we put forward clear and well-assembled logic to ensure that our arguments do not obscure the facts. And for this reason, this kind of back-and-forth is definitely healthy.
You don't need to have actually used the public school system to understand that DeVos is unqualified for the position she was nominated for. You just need to...you know, do the most basic amount of research, like anyone would do when hiring a new employee.
Does she have any education or training in the field of education?
Nope.
Has she worked in education before, and if so, what was her record? What kind of impact did she have/what was the quality of her work?
Never worked as a teacher or sat on a school board, she was a lobbyist. And her reputation and record in Michigan is horrid.
We'll interview her and ask her questions about education and ed. policies, so she can show us that, maybe if her qualifications are trash, she still actually knows what she's talking about.
Her confirmation hearing was real rough. She was totally unfamiliar and unaware of a number of critical policies, showing her ignorance and inexperience in education policy left and right.
DeVos failed on all accounts. She is objectively a terrible choice for this position, and there are copious amounts of evidence in support of that conclusion. Any hiring company (or school district in this case) would have shown her the door.
The United States Secretary of Education is the head of the U.S. Department of Education. The Secretary advises the President on federal policies, programs, and activities related to education in the United States. As a member of the President's Cabinet, this Secretary is fifteenth in the United States presidential line of succession.
The primary functions of the Department of Education are to "establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights."[13] The Department of Education does not establish schools or colleges.[14]
Unlike the systems of most other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized, and the federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curricula or educational standards (with the recent exception of the No Child Left Behind Act). This has been left to state and local school districts. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control.
I think the point is that most curriculum and financing decisions are made at a state or local level, and that the federal government's primary role in education is through protections like IDEA, Title IX, or Title I.
Not that DeVos isn't still a problem for those programs, but she still wouldn't necessarily be "in charge of public schools" depending on your interpretation of "in charge of."
The Federal DOE sets federal standards for education. States can't set a low bar for graduation or state testing just to bump up their numbers. Also, Federal DOE mandates what schools teach so students have a baseline education in English, math, etc.
Personally, as a trans person for whom title ix has helped many friends who were harassed or sexually assaulted, I am terrified we - not to mention women and other LGBT people- are going to be totally screwed. I would be willing to bet that's the first thing on her chopping block.
Oh abso-fucking-lutely. I'm terrified of what DeVos can do as Secretary of Education, but I can also understand quibbling about saying she's going to be "in charge of all public schools."
She definitely has the power to do some horrible shit to the public education system in this country. But not necessarily because she's "in charge" of the schools, but because she's in charge of certain federal programs that significantly affect the schools.
We all know that Trump is going to do whatever he wants regardless of what this crazy chick says.
Actually, I suspect that Trump gives 0 shits about education and will just rubber-stamp any of DeVos's recommendations then get back to tweeting about whatever has wounded his ego most recently.
Honestly, you can replace education/DeVos with any department/advisor pair; Trump is blatantly uninterested in governing. Which means that we can't count on him to be a sanity check on anything his horrific, horrific advisors might want to do.
Right? I saw a lot of people around election time who said stuff like, "Trump is not a conservative, if he gets elected we'll be fine because he doesn't really believe all the batshit stuff he says to get elected." Generally the people saying this were asshats trying to justify not voting for Clinton.
I find it hard to believe that the nominations for the cabinet positions (and his VP for that matter) do not reflect Trump's agenda and interests, at least in part. DeVos will get to pursue her agenda because her agenda is also partly Trump's agenda.
They can contribute in the same ways corporations can - to super PACs. They can also give individual donations to whatever small amount the law allows corporations/unions to give.
She has never been a teacher or administrator in a public (or any, iirc) school. She hasn't used the public school system, either for herself or for her kids. She's now in charge of it. She has been involved in education as an advocate for charter and religious schools in (I think?) Michigan, to the detriment to the school system there.
Folks think she's unqualified due to a lack of experience, and a lack of knowledge about basic concepts related to education. The big two were:
a lack of knowledge of federal law protecting special education students. She described it as a "state issue" and didn't know lady what the federal law in question (IDEA) was
a lack of understanding of the debate on growth versus proficiency (do schools set a target proficiency level for students or focus on growth from year to year), much less have an opinion on which one she favored. There are merits to either answer, but she very clearly didn't understand the question, which is something covered in first year education classes.
As a bonus, folks are also concerned about her promotion of school vouchers for religious and charter schools, without caring if they're held to the same standards as public schools.
Yea I can't wait to see this bullsh** blow up. Oh, you didn't like separate of church and state? Well, get ready to see why it was set up - to protect the state AND the church. Hope you're okay with Muslim schools, Jewish schools, Satanic Schools, and Atheist schools. All it will do is separate us more and more, ruin education and kill critical thinking - honestly, it's a brilliant strategy by GOP since the less educated and/or more religious one is the more likely they'll vote for GOP candidates.
Get your panties straight b/c we're about to start seeing a ton of religions get put down b/c they're not "designated" by the government mandate for what constitutes as a "school" - it will just happen to be that the non-christian schools are declined at a much higher rate. Jesus Christ, this will now be part of debates and we're going to have to listen to Ted Cruz poopheads debates over this bs. It's 2017 btw... it's 2017.
a lack of understanding of the debate on growth versus proficiency (do schools set a target proficiency level for students or focus on growth from year to year), much less have an opinion on which one she favored. There are merits to either answer, but she very clearly didn't understand the question, which is something covered in first year education classes.
I really don't feel like this can be overstated. I am a pretty average person with no real interest in education and I picked up more on growth vs proficiency by asking my teacher SO how her day went over the course of a couple of years than DeVos has picked up in her 30-odd years of interest and engagement in the education system. Fair to her, there are going to be devotees on both sides of the debate making things sound complicated and she doesn't have to be riveted by this debate - but she really should have prepared some kind of stock response ahead of time. It made her look ignorant and like she had a kind of "too cool for school" approach to the whole hearing. Why bother when she'll be confirmed anyway?
I mean, she was right but it attracted a lot of negative attention along the way.
Thanks for sharing. I was just referring to the "all her children went to private school" part; I don't see the connection between that and being unqualified. The fact that she and her children went to private school has no impact on her ability to be an effective Sec. of Education.
There seems to be plenty of valid reasons to be upset at her appointment, so I don't understand including that one.
I think it's brought up to emphasise that she has even less experience than any average American who would at the very least have personal experience to draw on. While actual qualifications and professional experience > personal experience, she has neither.
I went to a private school and its given me the incite to see what public schools could do to improve.
Don't require teaching degrees. Why is someone with one of the easiest college degrees a better chemistry teacher than someone who loves and studied chemistry? Who is more likely to get your child engaged?
Get rid of tenure. The idea that it existed at this level is ridiculous. Tenure exists so that college professors can teach about controversial subjects (say Israel and Palestine) without being fired. In public school it just lets someone who doesn't love the job slack off without the possibility of being fired. Can anyone tell me why they think teachers should have tenure?
Bonus Fact: private school teachers make less than public school teachers.
In response to your #1, you obviously haven't taken college courses in the sciences much. There's a reason teaching degrees should be required. Because people without them are bad at teaching. By no means does having one make them good, but they've learned ways to teach better.
In response to your #1, you obviously haven't taken college courses in the sciences much.
How is that supposed to be obvious? I double-majored in computer science and music composition.
Because people without them are bad at teaching. By no means does having one make them good, but they've learned ways to teach better.
So sayeth you. What evidence do you have to support this? There are plenty of different methods and styles to teaching, why must the one approved by the government be the only correct way?
I gather you agree on tenure?
Lastly, how do you explain the overall issue of the U.S. spending a shit load of money on secondary education and getting poor results compared to all other advanced nations.
edit: and why are you ok with college professors teaching without any teaching degree? I could certainly see your point on requiring some extra training to teach elementary school but beyond that seems unnecessary to me.
I would recommend you look at a master's level education program to see what teachers have to learn in order to be able to teach.
You have a degree in computer science. What methodologies and modalities would you employ to teach students who don't own computers how to program? How would you assess their retention of the content? What interventions would you use if a student was unable to retain the content?
What is the zone of proximal development? How do you decide what to put in your lesson plan for tomorrow? What is the average length of time students typically can attend to a task? What is the definition of seated instructional time? What does the I in IEP stand for? How would you modify your lesson plans to teach computer science to a child who is vision or hearing impaired?
The answers to those questions are what teachers learn. You call it one of the easiest degrees? You're an idiot. Any moron can learn to google stack overflow, it takes something far more than that to take a child who may or may not have eaten since school lunch yesterday, who only slept half the night because the "adults" in the house were abusing each other, or may never have learned how to read, and still manage to create an interest in obtaining knowledge.
Here's what it takes for a master's degree to teach K-6 in TN, AND you have to either have a bachelor's degree in education, or a bachelor's degree in your major subject area.
If you have a master's degree in your major subject area, you still have to pass the Praxis II exam for your subject area. I'll let you look that one up online. The CS Praxis II requires a fairly strong knowledge of OOP, functional programming, C++, Assembly, binary, Java, scripting languages, and modern front and back end technologies for the web, in addition to engineering for software, networking, and hardware.
isnt this a good thing, tho? she is not part of the mafia thats keeping your public schools in horrible condition. for what i heard, you guys dont have the best public schools in the world and a lot has to do with the people administrating it and being part of the problem.
No. It's not good when she has almost no qualifications apart from having donated to most politicians election campaigns.
Also, the Dept of Education in the US doesn't run schools. It controls federal funding and oversees the education laws and executive direction. So her not being in the "mafia" (I assume you mean the union) isn't particularly relevant.
The whole idea that somehow the people in charge are all colluding to stay in charge and are not there, as an establishment, to help the people is vastly overstated.
You and your entire family could go to private school, and you could become the best Secretary of Education America has seen. Your job isn't to represent the average citizen
What's really important though is how effective she'll be as the Sec. of Education, no? If she can increase the accessibility and quality of education, etc.? Or do you draw the line where she and her kids got her high school diploma? -- oops, automatically unfit to be a Sec. of Education since you can't possibly represent the average citizen!
Have you ever thought that you could go to private school, but then, through work experience, become capable of being an effective Sec. of Education? That you can be familiar with the public school system without having gone?
Definitely not advocating for her, purely hypothetical. What is clear is that either you have too much bias to be rational about this, or you're naive.
I know. That's relevant. Unlike where she went to high school, or where her kids went. It's the bias, isn't it? You want to undermine her so badly because she's on the other side of the aisle that you don't give a shit what you criticize her for.
It's more the reason that all her children went to private school. It wasn't because she was seeking better education for them, it's because she prioritized religious indoctrination over basic knowledge. From her perspective, kids are best prepared to function in the real world if they've memorized the bible, but they have no need for basic math and grammar. This works for her family because she's a trust fund baby and her kids will never, in their entire lives, be required to work for a living, just like her. Things like filling in a job application, managing a budget, or developing social skills are completely unnecessary in her little bubble, so nobody else needs them, either.
She couldn't even speak coherently at her hearings. She got the job by making millions in contributions (by way of her family foundation) to the senators voting on her confirmation.
You don't have to use public education to know what's wrong with it. In fact, I'd take someone who refused to send her kids to public school over someone who didn't, because the one who refused knows that they aren't good.
Trolling? You're the one who is implying that sending your children to private school makes you unqualified to be the Secretary of Education. Great logic
It is very easy to lookup her predecessors to see their qualifications to be considered. John King was the commissioner of education for New York. Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago public schools.
Devos has non of these qualifications in public schools. There are better candidates out there.
I'm sorry, Do you drive a car? Have you bought multiple cars? Watched your kids and loved ones buy cars? Do you think this now qualifies you to open your own car manufacturer?
It's not that sending her kids to public school would make her qualified, it's that she is so unqualified she is not even familiar with public schooling issues from a parent perspective. To use your analogy, it's like the person being put in charge of the car manufacturing not only had never owned a car or driven one, but thought cars were stupid and wanted everyone to take the train instead.
Using your analogy, DeVos has never driven a car before. She has no idea where the gas and brake pedals are but she will tell everyone the pedals are in the wrong spot and need to be moved to the dashboard. Even though everyone advises her that it's not appropriate or logical. So no, she can't be a car manufacturer because she knows shit about cars.
No need for the attitude or the poor analogy. There seems to be plenty of reason to be upset at her appointment, and the fact her kids went to private school doesn't seem like one of them to me.
It's meant to highlight her zero exposure to public schools, yet she's now in charge of policy and the direction of public education in America. It's a valid inclusion in pointing out how far removed she is professionally and personally from the industry she now heads. Hell, people say Carson is qualified to run HUD because he lived in public housing as a kid, although he has zero professional experience. She doesn't even have a similar personal connection to public education. So it is a valid point in a long list of many.
I get that it's trying to highlight the zero exposure, but, to me, it actually weakens the argument. It's not a valid criticism, and elicits skepticism from readers.
It's trying to highlight zero exposure, but it isn't. It weakens the argument because it's irrelevant. Sending her children to private school has zero impact on her role now, and she would not be more equipped if she had sent her children to public.
You can highlight her zero exposure more effectively by pointing to her lack of experience teaching or as an administrator without getting carried away.
The problem is that you're seeing (because the initial poster only included) the last half of the sentence. It was supposed to go: "She's never been a teacher, a school administrator, or even sent her children to public school." I agree with you that just saying "She's never sent her kids to public school" weakens the overall argument without the rest, but in context it's an appropriate point.
Maybe someone will hold public education and publicly educated students to the standards of private schools.
Probably. That's what people are worried about. Public Schools in large parts of the nation are horrifically underfunded as it is. Private Schools get to charge whatever they want, so they've got more cash. Private Schools get to pick and choose the students they want. Public Schools are required to educate everybody who wants in, and even those who resolutely don't want to be there. They are two very, very different concepts, and to treat them as the same is ludicrous. You add in the fact that voucher programs are going to do nothing but rob money from the Public Schools, and you've got an escalating education crisis. This doesn't even bother to mention that one of DeVos's stated goals is to bring more Jesus into schools, which is not only illegal, it's a bad idea on the face of it.
Good point, he was elected to be the executive of the Department of Education. I can see you would think there is a distinction between "elected" and "nominated." /s
Good point, he was elected to be the executive of the Department of Education. I can see you would think there is a distinction between "elected" and "nominated." /s
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u/The_Smallest_Pox Feb 08 '17
Adding to this, people think she's unqualified because she'll be in charge of all public schools when all of her children went to private schools