Betsy DeVos statement on historically black colleges and universities

Parents Forum
141

@Postmodern -

The Department of Education implements and manages the system of subsidized students loans in this country. They disburse Pell Grants and various subsidized and unsubsidized student loans. If you really believe that the DOE has “nothing to do” with the increased amount of financial aid available since its founding, we really have nothing to discuss.

As for the second part of your response, I refer back to the first article linked in which William Bennett, then Secretary of Education, states:

The article was written in 1987, and Mr. Bennett was referring to the tuition increases for the prior six years, or between 1981 to 1986. This is immediately after the DOE was founded and amount of subsidized loans increased in the late 1970’s. One would expect the Secretary of Education to have a firm grasp on this issue.

The link you provided will not show any inflation between 1979 and 1985 because the start date of the data in the chart was in 1985.

The following page from the College Board gives a much better idea of inflationary trends during this time period.

https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1976-77_2016-17-selected-years

It shows tuition at private four year not-for-profits changed by 1% between 1977 and 1981, while between 1982 and 1986 tuition increased by 35% percent. Mr. Bennett was correct with his figures.

142

We may be going in circles, but I said before many of the vouchers were too small to pay for the better private schools. It hasn’t been setup as a fair test.

143

@zinhead :

Fine. Here’s one that goes back to 1972 and shows pretty close parity until the financial crisis of 2008

http://college-education.procon.org/files/1-college-education-images/median-income-v-college-tuition-not-inflation-adjusted.JPG

As often stated, CC is not a debate society, so I will write this and then stop. Your post #136 clearly blames college costs on the mere founding of the DOE, yet you have not shown any data to support that. In fact your follow up posts contradict it and suggest the causation is between costs and financial aid policies – only one aspect of the DOE. This is a totally different point. It had nothing to do with policy, and If the private markets had made the same credit available, the effect would have been the same.

144

With respect to federal financial aid and rising college tuitions, note that federal Pell grant amounts have increased rather slowly compared to college tuitions, and federal Stafford or direct loan amounts have been the same since 2007. So pinning the blame for the last decade’s rapid rise in college tuitions on increased federal financial aid increases misses most of the reason, whatever it is.

Pell grant amounts: https://www.lanecc.edu/sites/default/files/budget/financial_aid_award_levels.pdf
Pell grant amounts in inflation-adjusted dollars: https://trends.collegeboard.org/student-aid/figures-tables/maximum-and-average-pell-grants-over-time
Stafford or direct loan amounts: http://www.finaid.org/loans/historicallimits.phtml

145

@Zinhead , I applaud you for taking the time to post lengthy counter-arguments here, even though your viewpoints tend not to be very popular on this heavy-left leaning forum. It’s good to have both sides of the story!

146

If they eliminated the Department of Education would that eliminate federal funding to schools as well? Or would that come from somewhere else?

147

^No one is going to eliminate the Dept of Ed. But if they did, you could block grant money to states to use for education funding.

148

And then states would have greater powers to screw over marginalized groups in the areas of education without the Federal govt providing some constraints/agency oversight such as what happened with Jim Crow in the south as recently as the '60s or children with documented disabilities who weren’t covered under legal protections until the early '90s…which wasn’t very long ago.

Not to mention encouraging increasing inconsistency in the quality/pacing of K-12 curricula to the point some public school systems such as Mississippi’s have become so abysmal that even many local private schools didn’t feel the need to compete very hard on an academic basis as the Mississippi branch found after enrolling their kids for a year and finding the local private schools were so bad that they felt it necessary to send one kid to a NE elite boarding school and another to a regional Catholic private which required a 2 hour commute each way.

149

@cobrat, sure there are obvious and significant problems with not having some type of coherent national policy on education. Which is why no one.is going to eliminate the Dept of Ed. But the ability to provide funds to states is not one of those problems.

150

As someone who has personally benefited from the services provided by ED (which is the preferred acronym for the Department of Education), I can say that this department is necessary. They provide financial aid software, training for financial aid professionals (all year long), interpretation of the laws made by Congress, manuals that help financial aid professionals do their jobs, oversight that benefits borrowers, etc, etc, etc. This is just a small part of what they do, but I absolutely could not do my job without them … and students would not have certain protections without them. It sounds all well and good to say that certain departments in government should not exist, but those who say that may well sing a very different tune if they really understood what those departments do.

151

Sseamom and Cobrat, in spirit I agree with you; left to themselves some states might do a very shabby job of providing a solid education for students whose personal or family circumstances detrimentally impact their educational opportunities. But I am not sold on letting the national government dictate standards to the states. Ideally, states who fail large segments of their school-age population would remain, or eventually fall into the category of unattractive locations, places which corporations and highly educated adults do their best to avoid. States like that have to bribe corporations to relocate to their states, but the prize of cheap infrastructure and cheaper labor costs only goes so far. People with children want to reside where they believe the quality of lifestyle is high. Alabama essentially gave away the store to attract a Daimler-Benz factory. Same is true of South Carolina, where Boeing Co. now builds airplane parts. In our system of democracy, the States are free to maintain a low performing public school system no matter what the feds think. Clearly there will be a price for doing so.

152

And how often does reality end up equaling the ideal state? You are underestimating how bad this can get.

153

If your child were going to be randomly assigned to a public school in either Mississippi or Massachusetts, where would you pick?

It’s no coincidence that protections for teachers and benefits to attract them, along with tax structure that prioritizes education, and funding to reduce class size, and intellectual freedom protected by unions, has led to better outcomes.

Anyone who thinks that DeVos’s “plans” will cure the rest of the problems, ie. inequality, is also mistaken. However, again in Massachusetts, we also have beginnings of solutions there, including our METCO program and Horace Mann charters (under local control).

154

And p.s. the reason teachers’ unions, which protect teachers and ideally we need more unions not fewer for anyone who wants a real middle class - the reason unions oppose the kinds of charters suggested and supported by DeVos, is that those are directly designed to gut teacher benefits and funnel that money right out of communities and into investor pockets.

Not to mention that as rational actors, good teachers will:

  1. Choose tenured jobs if available, leaving charter jobs to less qualified teachers.
  2. Keep excellent ideas to themselves if they are competing for "merit" pay with colleagues, harming others' students
  3. Choose to teach less needy children if paid based on test scores, again leaving the unfortunate kids to less qualified teachers
  4. Leave the profession altogether if in addition to all the stresses, they're not even getting fair compensation...we already have a shortage of STEM teachers
155

If everyone is a rational actor, why is union membership only strong when it is compulsory? Why do we see union membership drop as soon as a state becomes right to work? Why the need for ludicrous “fair share” dues, even in states that require unions? If unions were the unqualified good you describe, wouldn’t people join voluntarily?

And do you really think there is that much difference between a random public school in top ranked Massachussets and a random public school in right to work Wisconsin or Virginia? Or if you want to fish at the bottom end of the rankings pool, do you think there is a ton of difference between an average school in evil Mississippi and enlightened New Mexico?

Like with everything else, there are both good and bad with teacher’s unions. But to pretend that the NEA and the AFT are some unqualified good is just wrong.

156

@Ohiodad51 - can you show me evidence that union membership drops due to personal preference in “RTW” states?

People do join voluntarily, at least in my neck of the woods - the benefits are simply too great to ignore.

(Since when is New Mexico enlightened?) But yes, professors and teachers are already leaving Wisconsin after their new disaster of anti-union, anti-intellectual policy. I don’t know anything about Virginia, so I can’t comment on their schools.

Also, of course not everyone is a rational actor; that was at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

I never said that NEA/AFT are unqualified forces of good - however, via policies, lobbying, professional development, grants, etc., NEA/AFT have done a huge amount of good for teachers, students, schools, and education in the US. More than oh, say, Walmart, or similar allies of Betsy DeVos.

When you have a profession that relies on doing difficult work with students of all levels, and where you might teach something (like evolution) that angry mobs could object to, then union protection is important. I happen to further think union protection is important for wages and working conditions in general - it’s what enabled the so-called “greatness” of middle-class America when people could raise a family on one blue collar income, for example.

The idea that a corporation could do “more with less” i.e. pay less, offer few/no benefits, etc., and somehow get “better” results for children, is laughable. Even tony private schools which set their own tuitions and exclude whatever children they want and hire all PhDs as teachers, are only “about as good to slightly better” compared with great suburban schools around where I live. If you spend less per child and in theory, aim to help mostly kids with fewer resources, there’s no way you’re doing more with less. What will happen is what already happened in a bunch of un-unionized industries, i.e. gutting of middle class salaries and benefits, and more profits to billionaires.

The whole “Prop 2” (roundly defeated in MA) business was because these billionaires smelled a nice piece of money being spent in Massachusetts on education and wanted a big bite. Too bad for them!

157

@fretfulmother – have you considered running for office? I’m serious. We need strong, WELL INFORMED leaders protecting our children’s education.

158

@fretfulmother, here is some data from Michigan reporting the drop after it became a right to work state.
http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/columnists/2015/01/23/union-membership-michigan-right-work-fall-state/22219305/

and here is similar data from Wisconsin
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wisconsin-public-sector-unions-still-losing-members/article/2551945

and here is The Hill talking about it more generally
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/316310-union-membership-hits-new-low

And honestly I’ve never seen anyone dispute that right to work leads to lower relative union membership. Everything I know and have seen kind of takes that for granted. And I grew up in a union household in a union town and live with a NEA member. Certainly the NEA thinks right to work is bad for the union. But if there is data that shows it is not, I would be interested in seeing it.

New Mexico is a union state which ranks near the bottom of most educational rankings. I just think ranking lower performing states against each other (Mississippi and New Mexico) and higher performing states (Mass and Virginia/Wisconsin) against each other is a better apples to apples comparison than taking a perennial top performing state like Mass and comparing it against a perennial bottom dweller ike Miss.

Lastly, and for what it is worth, I think teacher’s unions are positives in some ways, particularly in our current climate. Given the way we fund and handle public education, job protection in particular is crucial. Otherwise, and in the absence of any type of competition, an adminstration could fire effective teachers without consequence. On the other hand, I really struggle with some union hobby horses like no merit pay, fighting all kinds of teacher evaluations and strict seniority based systems. But all of these are a piece of the closed system that is our current public school model. This is the primary reason I would really like to see a blended approach to education reform.

And over laying all of this, the AFT and the NEA have consistently and repeatedly chosen to insert themselves in to politics in a huge and extremely preferential way. Maybe you can argue that some of that was “for the children” but it appears a lot of it was more for the teachers. Sometimes those things are linked, but sometimes they are not. Given that, it is impossible to expect that the “other” party will not do what it can to limit the power and scope of the unions, and you get someone like Betsy DeVos.

159

Thank you @katliamom :slight_smile: I’m honored! Maybe when my youngest is older…

@Ohiodad51 I take your points, in particular the thought that our current political climate led to our current officers. Thank you also for the data which I will review.

In general, “merit” pay either pits teachers against colleagues (and students lose) or relies on test scores which tell us a lot but rarely anything about instructional efficacy.

I realize that as an M educated STEM teacher (BC for Ed) that the “market” might pay me more than a K teacher, but I believe in the setup we have instead, because it protects children for these reasons. My contract pays more by education in addition to experience, which I think is common if not universal.

I told the Honors teacher a few years ago, when I’d said ok to taking on the most special needs classes, “the day we’re evaluated by test scores is the last day of your monopoly”.

Security by seniority is important to avoid firing based on age, as is common in non union industries when employees get expensive, including in some private schools.

Tenure is important as you note, in any area of scholarship or frankly when you have to continually evaluate other people’s children. At least in my district, it is hard won with years on the job, portfolio, evaluations, etc.

Pensions in Massachusetts are fully funded by teacher contributions.

So I think that “teacher unions” get a lot of flak, but when parents are asked about each piece of professional protection and educated about the reality, a lot of that falls away.

Eta: I was in an HMO a few years back and my doctor told me that she was now evaluated/paid based on “merit” which, analogous to the above, was unfair because if you took hard cases (e.g. non conforming diabetes patient or serious pediatric cancer) then you were marked down when they didn’t get better.

160

Didn’t they just introduce a Bill to do exactly that a few weeks ago? Think it is H.R. 899 and it proposes to terminate the Department of Education on December 31, 2018.