Around the Public Education Horn
Look what's on the DOGE Dopey Boys list, Head Start and Pell Grants. I would bet they get rid of some of the Department of Education in a piecemeal fashion before they do away with it for good.
Blaming Dems for pandemic outcomes due to closing schools and leaving them closed. I have seen this argument in several places and I think it will long be debated.
From Education Next:
Just when it seemed those in power no longer cared about the nation’s K–12 education system, schools are generating earthquakes. Classrooms and playgrounds are not shaking—yet. Instead, the epicenters are located below public health departments and university research centers.
Yet schools must take credit—or blame, if you prefer—for November’s earth-rattling events.
When many schools did not open the following fall, a growing group of public health experts, led by Bhattacharya, signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which warned that “[c]urrent lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health . . . leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.”
Fauci attacked the Declaration, saying, “Quite frankly that is nonsense, and anybody who knows anything about epidemiology will tell you that that is nonsense and very dangerous.” Similarly, Francis Collins, director of the NIH at the time of the Declaration, also called it “dangerous” and its signers a “fringe component of epidemiology” who were outside the scientific “mainstream.
When schools finally returned to normal, teachers and parents encountered a more emotionally distressed, socially awkward, academically struggling generation of young people, just as the Great Barrington Declaration had anticipated.
In summary:
The voters spat. Democrats felt the sting. Now Trump is recruiting the most disruptive health policy team the country has ever seen. School closures turned into political earthquakes. It remains to be seen how large they will register on the Richter scale and just how close to the schoolhouse the fissures will reach.
And just as you thought there could NOT be a pick for Education Secretary worse than Betsy Devon - please let me introduce Linda McMahon. Who is she? From CNN:
McMahon, a major Republican donor and a former pro-wrestling executive, served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. She was appointed in 2017 and resigned in 2019 to become the chair of America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC.
She is the board chair of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank that was formed in 2021 by McMahon, Larry Kudlow and other advisers from the first Trump administration.
But what about her real experience?
McMahon is also the former CEO of the WWE, which she co-founded with her husband, Vince McMahon. As head of the WWE, Linda McMahon oversaw its transformation from a small wrestling entertainment company into a publicly traded media empire. She stepped down as CEO in 2009.
WWE is the World Wrestling Entertainment. Oh. But wait, there's more:
As McMahon — who co-chairs Trump’s transition team — vies to be confirmed as Education secretary, a recent lawsuit raises questions about her care for children’s safety at the WWE.
The suit alleges McMahon, her husband, the WWE and TKO Group Holdings, the league’s parent company, knowingly allowed employee Melvin Phillips Jr. to use his position as ringside announcer to sexually exploit children.
The filing alleges Phillips would recruit children to work as “Ring Boys,” helping him set up and take down wrestling rings at WWE events. However, the job was a guise for sexually exploiting the children, which Phillips would do even in front of wrestlers and executives in the locker area, the lawsuit alleges. He also would often film his sexual abuse, according to the filing.
Both Linda and Vince McMahon were aware of Phillips’ abuse, the lawsuit alleges. Vince McMahon admitted that he and Linda were aware as early as the early to mid-1980s that Phillips had a “peculiar and unnatural interest” in young boys, according to the filing.
As well as this:
Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, falsely claiming that she had a degree in education is "disqualifying," according to former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.
McMahon's limited experience was immediately seized on after Trump announced he has chosen her to lead the Department of Education on Tuesday, with educators decrying her as "unqualified."
McMahon is now facing fresh scrutiny for incorrectly claiming in a vetting questionnaire before being nominated to serve on the state Board of Education in early 2009 that she had earned a degree in education from East Carolina University in 1969; it was actually in French.
She claims because she did student teaching for a year that her degree was in Education.
On getting rid of the Department of Education (CNN)
It would be difficult to get rid of the entire department, which delivers federal funding to nearly every public K-12 school in the country and manages the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. And shutting it down would require an act of Congress.
It may be more likely that some programs are moved to other federal agencies. The overarching goal for many Republicans is to reduce the federal government’s role in local education, which could be achieved by retaining funding programs but delivering money to states and schools with fewer strings attached.
There was a shooting at a small, religious private K-8 school in Northern California yesterday that saw two students hit and the gunman dead from a self-inflicted shot on the playground.
Investigators on Thursday were trying to determine if a gunman was specifically targeting a tiny religious school in Northern California when he opened fire and critically wounded two kindergartners before killing himself. The sheriff’s office said in a statement Thursday that the two children, boys ages 5 and 6, were in “critical but stable condition” after being shot.
The shooting occurred shortly after 1 p.m. at the private K-8 Christian school with fewer than three dozen students in Oroville, on the edge of the tiny community of Palermo, about 65 miles (104 kilometers) north of Sacramento.
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