Get to the root of the problem

Of course they did. The Constitution and Bill of Rights, for all its fundamental principles, was written by slave owners.

Could you be more specific

The country is run by the Keystone cops with access to nuclear weapons!

What we are witnessing here is a farce of historic proportions. This will go down in history as a dark day when worldpeace was in the hands of a band rich wannabe knights of the round table ala Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

I have no idea what the constitution has to do with education standards.

Remember that link upthread about the girl who graduated high school and was accepted into college even though she is illiterate?

That’s called anecdotal evidence. You have never reviewed the standards. You don’t seem to care what they are. You shouldn’t comment on them.

Equality under the law is a standard that applies to educational rights.

Equality is mentioned in the Constitution, but it took a few amendments much later to get to that point, so I don’t know why you bought up the founding fathers in this discussion of modern education standards.

You are dumb as fuck.

I did not bring up the founding fathers as an example of “equality under the law”.
I brought up the principles contained in the Constitution and Bill of Rights as they exist today.
Equality under the Law quarantees that all individuals are protected from discrimination in any form, including discrimination in education.

Your argument is moot in that respect. But it is the States that are responsible for education levels, with the exception of the enforcement of the Establishment Clause, which is now being broken as we speak.

Trump’s new Department of Faith, where you can buy your own personal guardian angel for $1000.00 administered from a Tax payer funded office in the White House, can you believe it?

It beggars the imagination.

Florida preparing a law to allow children to work any hours.

The idea is to substitute children to migrants.

An effective way to promote education.

I thought it was a joke

New Florida law about children work

No worry if a moderator displaces this post.

Begging to be banned. I’ll really miss our resident racist.

not

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Doesn’t really require a moderator comment, does it?

Nope, it does not. Pretty self-explanatory.

If he has not been warned, i would give a last warning., just to be fair.

Well, as I predicted, it seems we are getting to the root of the problem, namely one Donald Trump , the wannabe dictator of the Unitrd States of America, who is beginning to lose his self-assumed powers in accordance to established law.

The courts are beginning to apply its democratic tenets in accordance with Constitutional Law, by ruling Trump’s wanton dictatorial declarations and actions as being unconstitutional and invalid.

Way to go US!!! We can still be the shining light that guides humanity into an era of peace and prosperity for all mankind instead of competition for survival by the most wealthy and militant power.

Humanity is no longer subject to raw natural selection of the fittest. Humanity has the means to live as global caretakers in symbiosis with nature.
Let’s terraform Earth to make it livable for all humanity.

Trump is not the disease, he is the symptom.

As someone has said otherwhere, he is the result of 50 years of lies, fakes news, hate speech and of propaganda playing on the fears of the people, of loss of education, and religious crap.

And he is the result of 70 years of the Democrat party giving up his fundamentals, forgetting the Poors and so.

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You’re right, @morgankane01 but none of that (e.g., Fox news) would have been successful if the statistics cited in the post that started this thread were not so poor.

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Found that on FB

I am not sure what to do with that

Mariana Hernandez

the source

Let’s talk about public education.

Here’s the greatest hits playlist I keep hearing multiple times:

“Before the Department of Education, the U.S. was number one. Now we rank 31st. We spend more than anyone and 28% of grads can’t even read. The DOE failed. Let the states handle it again.”

Sounds bold, right?

Too bad most of it is dead wrong.

Let’s break it down. Slowly. Loudly.

  1. “We were number one before the Department of Education.”

Oh? Says who?

The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1980.

The PISA test (the gold standard for comparing education across countries) didn’t even exist until 2000.

There were no international rankings before that. No standardized tests between nations. No way to compare performance.

So where’s the proof we were “number one”?

There isn’t any. Because it didn’t exist.

That’s not a fact, it’s nostalgia.

You weren’t first in a race that hadn’t started yet.

  1. “Now we rank 31st.”

In what, exactly?

Because there are two kinds of education rankings, and people love to smash them together like they mean the same thing.

A. PISA = actual test scores from real kids

This tests 15-year-olds around the world in:

Reading

Math

Science

U.S. PISA 2022 ( it’s done every 3 years) results:

9th in reading

13th in science

28th in math

We’re not failing. We’re holding our own, without training our kids for it, by the way (more on that later).

And remember: in 2000, PISA had 30 countries. Now it’s 80+. So yes, the ranking shifted. That doesn’t mean we tanked. It means the field grew.

B. Education system indexes ( like WPR) how the system looks on paper

This is where the “31st” stat comes from. These rankings measure:

Enrollment

Literacy

Spending

Teacher ratios

Graduation rates

System efficiency

That’s not about how smart our students are it’s about how effective our bureaucracy is. And yeah, ours is a hot mess. But that’s a systems problem, because we are decentralized. It’s not a student problem.

  1. “We spend more than anyone!”

We do.

Because we’re massive we are the size of an entire continent, unequal, and decentralized to the point of dysfunction.

Want to compare?

Let’s look at some of those “top countries” from the WPR and match them to U.S. states by population:

South Korea (51M) = California + part of Texas

Denmark (6M) = Wisconsin

Netherlands (17.5M) = New York

Belgium (11.7M) = Ohio

Slovenia (2M) = Nebraska

Those countries are the size of states.

They have:

One national curriculum

One funding system

One set of laws

We have:

50 state systems

Over 13,000 school districts

No national standards

Local property tax funding, so rich zip codes thrive and poor ones drown

Some kids go to brand new schools with 3D printers and solar panels.

Others freeze through winter in buildings with leaking ceilings and no library.

Same country.

Same flag.

Two different worlds.

Of course we spend more.

We’re funding chaos.

  1. “28% of grads can’t read past a 5th-grade level.”

That number? Totally made up.

It’s pulled from a misused stat of adults that has no national backing.

We do have literacy issues.

But they’re not because kids are lazy or dumb.

They’re because:

Early childhood education is optional, not guaranteed

Schools in low-income areas don’t get the same resources

Reading specialists are being cut, not hired

Many children come to school hungry, sick, or scared

Let’s stop blaming kids for failing systems.

They can’t read when the school can’t even afford books.

  1. “The Department of Education is a failure.” Or maybe… you just don’t understand what it does.

Let’s be clear.

The Department of Education does not:

Choose your kid’s curriculum

Write textbooks

Approve lesson plans

Invent Common Core

Control what your school teaches

All of that? State and local control.

What the Department of Education actually does:

Enforces civil rights in education (Title IX, IDEA, disability rights, racial equity)

Sends federal funding to underfunded schools

Provides support for English learners, special ed, and rural students

Administers Pell Grants and federal student loans

Gathers data so we know what’s working (and what’s not)

You kill the DoED? You cut:

Support for kids with disabilities

Protections for non-English speakers

Funding for rural schools

Grants for low-income students

Accountability for states that are actively failing children

You hurt little kids in big ways.

  1. “Let the states decide.” Newsflash: they already do.

People scream “let the states decide!” like they’re fighting for freedom.

Buddy, the states HAVE BEEN deciding.

There is no national curriculum.

There is no federal standard for what kids learn.

That’s why:

Evolution is taught in some states and questioned in others

Black history is expanded in some districts and banned in others

Some states offer world class public education… and others? Barely the basics

So if you’re mad about what your kid is learning or not learning, don’t blame the DoED.

Blame your state. Blame your local school board.

Because that’s who’s in charge.

The problem isn’t too much federal control, it’s not enough support for the states that are failing their students.

  1. “Other countries prep for PISA. We don’t.”

Top performing countries like Singapore and South Korea train for PISA.

They build their curriculum around it. They do mock tests. They align teaching methods with the skills the test measures.

Our kids? They show up, take it cold, and go back to class like nothing happened.

No one even explains what the test is.

And guess what?

We still came in 6th in reading.

Imagine what we could do if we actually prepared.

The real issue? They want to abolish the DoED.

Not because it failed.

But because it does things they don’t like:

It protects marginalized kids

It enforces civil rights

It sends money where states don’t want to

It holds people accountable

Getting rid of it won’t hurt your wealthy district with robotics clubs and parent-funded libraries.

It will hurt:

Disabled students

Low-income schools

Rural districts with no tax base

Immigrant kids

English learners

Students who rely on someone, anyone, to fight for them

This isn’t about shrinking government.

It’s about shrinking opportunity, shrinking equity, and letting kids fall through the cracks on purpose.

So next time someone says:

“We were better off before the Department of Education…”

Ask them for data.

They won’t have it.

But now you do.

(Everything in this post is based on real data: PISA 2022, Department of Education records, NCES, and education policy research. You want receipts? I have them.)

Edited to clarify: DOE refers to the Department of Energy, while DoED (or ED) refers to the Department of Education.

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Ask your comrades what is their solution, what is to be done.

Hire better educators by raising salaries, but also demandng higher teacher certification standards.