this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025

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373

Elon Musk says Department of Education no longer ‘exists’ (www.msnbc.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Elon's latest crusade against the Department of Education plays like a Silicon Valley remix of Atlas Shrugged – all disruption theater masking a fundamental disdain for public infrastructure. Dissolving federal oversight would turbocharge the existing educational caste system, where zip codes determine destiny and critical thinking gets outsourced to charter school grifters.

The student loan rage reeks of survivorship bias from someone who cashed out an emerald mine privilege card. Decrying "bureaucracy" while building rocket empires on government contracts is peak hypercapitalist cognitive dissonance. Local control sounds quaint until you realize which local oligarchs get to rewrite history textbooks.

This isn't innovation – it's demolition derby governance. The rubble left behind would make great feedstock for AI training data, though.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

My right wing college prof was ecstatic about this. Wanted bibles in schools and paddles for spanking too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Oklahoma just introduced a bill to ban corporal punishment for children on IEPs. It’s currently entirely legal to paddle any child - disabled or not.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

...

Something tells me he hasn't looked at how his college pays the bills.

Or who runs student loans.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

Kinda weird for a teacher to want to be spanked but I'm not gonna yuck his yum

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Eeewwwhh leave the sex stuff at home please. Sir this is a wendys

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Sir, this is a Weimar.

(Pronunciation makes the meme not work as well as it should.)

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago

yeah because the last thing America needs is an education

[+] [email protected] -19 points 1 week ago (4 children)

The department of education do have a lot to answer for. If Americans were properly educated and able to parse opinions and bullshit out of Fox News articles Trump and Musk wouldn't be running the country in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Are you aware that Education is mostly a state and local thing? Federal Education money helps in places where money is lacking but they can’t really do much besides put strings on that money

If Americans were properly educated and able to parse opinions and bullshit out of Fox News

You’ll find many Americans who do fit this. They’re from locales that take education seriously and they do tend to be Liberal since that has turned into a code word about caring for anyone beside yourself

Federal money has helped a lot despite its very limited authority. Kids with disabilities are required to be able to get some kind of education, schools must offer some sort of girls sports, schools must support federal school lunch program, schools must be accredited, kids who can’t afford college can get help, etc

More effective ways to fix education might include

make state level departments of education a professional position not beholden to politics
ban Texas from customizing textbooks to teach its own “science”
expand national standardized testing like SAT to happen at more levels, and focus on grading the schools, not the kids

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

expand national standardized testing like SAT to happen at more levels, and focus on grading the schools, not the kids

No - this is part of the problem. We aren’t allowed to teach anymore. I taught chemistry, but I was told that I needed to focus on the ACT - like, I needed to regularly incorporate entirely unrelated material for test prep.

Elementary school is even worse. Science and social studies are deprioritized because the big testing is on reading and math.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Yeah I know standardized tests aren’t popular with a lot of people, especially teachers. Teaching to the test is a failure of your administration but I have no idea how to fix that.

But the much bigger problem is how uneven the quality of education is across different schools, different states, different regions. There needs to be a way to set the bar: every school needs to at least teach the kids x, or the school needs attention.

My state does standardized testing and there’s certainly resistance, but I think they’ve generally succeeded in using it to grade the school, not the kid. And yes they’ve succeeded in identifying schools for more attention and I believe this has helped improve our education level. Then again, education is a priority here so everyone might be a little more motivated than in many other places

How else do you find where a school, a district, an entire state is lacking? If you don’t know, how can you do something about it? I understand this is the type of interference from the federal government that certain areas don’t like but if you’re not teaching your kids then your local priorities are crap and need to be reconsidered. Or your local funding is crap and needs to be reconsidered. Or you need additional help. It’s ok for a school or a district to have a problem but it’s not ok to just leave it like that and that’s where a higher level Department of Education can make a difference. There’s a limit to your local preferences and it’s not ok to harm your kids’ future

My state’s education system is generally ranked at the top in the US but your kids deserve that too

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The thing is, standardized tests don’t measure learning. They measure the ability to take standardized tests. It’s not an “education” to teach students “make sure to fill out every question! make sure to use process of elimination to improve your odds!” There’s a reason that the kids who can afford test prep do better - because they learn to take the test, not the material.

Its a system that creates perverse incentives.

And yes, it’s not popular with teachers because the test results don’t match the students. The way you ensure quality is standards, and hiring qualified teachers. The problem at this point is that the pay and work conditions are not commensurate with the education and work required - so states are hiring “adjuncts” as baby sitters.

ACT/SAT are private companies, that determine what those test scores should be and represent. Stakeholders like teachers, students and parents are entirely removed from the equation.

These tests also do not match the standards. The ACT science section (which at least is supposed to be optional soon) does not align with NGSS.

The things that are impacting education are the climbing class sizes, the teacher “shortage” (eg, unqualified adjuncts are cheaper and don’t join unions) and the fact that we basically stopped teaching children to read for several years (eg, “whole reading”/guessing what words mean from context replacing phonics instruction.)Testing more does nothing to address these issues, and actually incentivizes these problems.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The difference is testing to grade the schools and defining tests to measure a standard that all schools must meet. That doesn’t make all of what you said disappear (and that’s an administrative issue) but changing the focus can make standardized tests useful. Regardless of any shortcomings there’s a bigger problem in quality of education in different schools, districts, regions, states and we can’t fix what we can’t identify.

pay and work conditions are not commensurate climbing class sizes, the teacher “shortage” stopped teaching children to read

Those are indeed very likely to be some of the root causes. However if you can’t measure the results you can’t demonstrate you’ve succeeded, addressing all of these doesn’t mean you’ve succeeded, there are most likely other issues to be addressed as well. Standardized testing to measure schools gives a way to identify where things are falling short, gives a way to demonstrate the success in correcting these issues, and gives a way to identify where that is not happening or where that is not enough

As a teacher, you probably can’t do anything about class sizes. As a teacher, if there were anything you could do to increase teacher pay, you’d already be doing it. There need a to be a way to hold a school, a community, a district accountable for a school that can reach a standard bar. That starts with a way to measure whether they are.

You may also argue there are better ways, such as professional audits or evaluations but those aren’t scalable and have not been working.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

The trap of observing that Americans are poorly educated and poorly informed generally? Well I am sorry

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

Congrats, you fell into the trap.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

GOP once again

They've been doing everything they can to degrade the department of education for 40 years.

Something George Carlin kept warning us about for nearly his entire life and now it's here

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The cons in that sub believe the department should be gone as it steals money and indoctrinates kids. They say test scores haven’t gone up so what’s the point.

They also say America went to the moon in 69 and the doe was invented in the 70s. Therefore it’s not needed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They never really say this exactly but I believe they are fine with getting the money but want it no strings attached. This is an old objection, such as from Title IX and the ADA.

You should pull yourself up by your bootstraps and walk right in even if you’re mobility impaired. Only boys want to play sports: why waste money on girls? Our priority is a new stadium at this top school: why do we have to put money into this failing school? Why can’t we use education money for religious indoctrination and just leave us public school for the poors? /s

Then you’ll see some sort of contorted logic about divisive inclusiveness and unfair equity

Or at least this new attempt to destroy Education looks a lot like those older complaints

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For what’s worth, DoE was established in 1979.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

A federally managed DoE goes all the way back to 1867 - it became a cabinet-level department with a specified 'Secretary of Education' in 1979.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"They also say America went to the moon in 69 and the doe was invented in the 70s. Therefore it’s not needed."

Maybe if they were actually educated, they'd realize an anecdote aint worth shit 🤷‍♀️

[–] [email protected] 108 points 1 week ago

A safe, healthy, and broadly educated population is incompatible with, and toxic to, conservative ideologies.

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