Education

Education is one of the most essential parts for a functioning democracy and for people to find a job. If you don’t want democracy, don’t teach people to think or learn. This attitude makes for people that doesn’t think about what have been done to them by their elected people in the past, or they believe that they can’t understand what they are talking about. This group of people will have a very short memory and be easy to manipulate by fear mongering people or news stations. Yes, I know there are highly educated people that are voting for the Republicans. You should ask

For students getting bad teachers or schools is severe. Education is absolutely necessary for the younger generation in the future and they need to have steady and good education and learning. For a society it can be totally devastating. We have groups of people that are only listening to people they perceive as “being of the people”. Talkers that will only talk in metaphors, but with no commitments or substance to what they say. When they are elected, their incompetence will shine through and it will hurt the community. Kansas and Wisconsin are now two states that we can look at. I hope the U.S. will not be an example too.

Education has been under attack from GOP for several years.

One issue with private companies is that they doesn’t necessarily provide the same quality of service or products as we would like them to. At the moment it is up to each state to create laws and regulations about what level of service the private companies should provide. This can be seen in Detroit, Michigan where Betsy DeVos ran through regulation without any quality check at all.

How can we ensure that these private schools will give us quality?

  • Test their students every six months to make sure they are at the same level as public schools.
  • If the school doesn’t meet the levels expected, they loose funding immediately.
  • The persons/organizations owning the school that didn’t perform well, would be banned from starting another school for 2 years. It is called quarantine. Used in Europe with good results. It will keep out those that are only running after money.

Background and stories

A senator having some difficulties explaining private schools to some students.

Students videotape Texas Sen. berating them about school vouchers after he gets called out on his BS

In the video below you can see Texas Republican State Sen. Don Huffines getting himself into a bit of a huff during an argument he was having with a group of students he met during their visit to the Capitol. Like most Republicans-and some Democrats…


Education Dept. caves, restores website for disabled kids

Washington senators demanded Trump education chief restore IDEA site.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on Friday announced that her department is restoring and “updating” a resource website for parents and teachers of students with disabilities, which has been down almost three weeks.

IDEA.ed.gov has been repaired and moved to a new server to ensure it’s available to parents and educators who rely on it,” DeVos said in one of a series of tweets.


Unequal public-sector pay in Connecticut? Yes—taxpayers are getting a bargain!

Chuck Schumer: Trump’s Education Pick Would ‘Single-Handedly Decimate’ Public Schools


Measuring Loan Outcomes at Postsecondary Institutions: Cohort Repayment Rates as an Indicator of Student Success and Institutional Accountability

Tiffany Chou, Adam Looney, Tara Watson

NBER Working Paper No. 23118
Issued in February 2017
NBER Program(s):   CH   ED   LS   PE

Low- and middle-income college borrowers often struggle with economic opportunity and loan burdens after leaving school. However, some institutions, including some non-selective schools, do a good job of providing economic mobility to low-income students. This implies that there is scope for a policy to redirect loan dollars – and therefore students – from low-performing schools to higher-performing ones. Here we define a particular metric of institutional loan performance, the cohort repayment rate, and describe its distribution. We demonstrate that the cohort repayment rate is correlated with other institutional outcomes of interest, and thus could be used as an institutional accountability tool.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.