A week ago I wrote about the Democratic party’s education platform, which became significantly more progressive than the 2012 version as it moved from the first draft to its final form. The Republican party’s education platform is pretty similar to its 2012 version, with a few changes around the edges. It added a condemnation of the move to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice, and it says an understanding of the Bible is “indispensable for the development of an educated citizenry” and encourages the study of the Bible as an elective part of the literature curriculum in high schools.
This paragraph sums up the general educational view presented in the platform.
After years of trial and error, we know the policies and methods that have actually made a difference in student advancement: Choice in education; building on the basics; STEM subjects and phonics; career and technical education; ending social promotions; merit pay for good teachers; classroom discipline; parental involvement; and strong leadership by principals, superintendents, and locally elected school boards. Because technology has become an essential tool of learning, it must be a key element in our efforts to provide every child equal access and opportunity. We strongly encourage instruction in American history and civics by using the original documents of our founding fathers.
A few specific recommendations in the Republican platform are supported by many Democrats, like its condemnation of Common Core, its concern over “excessive testing and ‘teaching to the test’” and its concern about the collection and sharing of “vast amounts of personal student and family data, including the collection of social and emotional data.” The two parties differ on most other issues.
Though it doesn’t say the Department of Education should be abolished, the Republican platform calls for a smaller role for the federal government. Federal money should come in the form of block grants, it says, with fewer federal regulations “which have interfered with state and local control of public schools.”
It supports all forms of “school choice.”
We support options for learning, including home-schooling, career and technical education, private or parochial schools, magnet schools, charter schools, online learning, and early-college high schools. We especially support the innovative financing mechanisms that make options available to all children: education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tuition tax credits.
It calls for abstinence education rather than “family planning programs.” It also opposes “school-based clinics that provide referral or counseling for abortion and contraception.”
The Republican education platform echoes the stated views of most Republican officials fairly accurately, while the revised Democratic platform is more representative of the progressive wing of the party represented by Bernie Sanders’ candidacy (Hillary Clinton has gradually moved in that direction as well) than the policies advocated by the Obama administration.
This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2016.
Someday, hopefully before it is too late, education in America will be about preparing young people for the real world and all of its challenges – not some idyllic, imaginary vision of a past era that never really existed except in the pages of the all-white Dick and Jane books of old. The real world will not wait for those mired in the past to figure out that the best and the brightest, most innovative and imaginative minds will make a future worth living in. To do anything else is to doom this nation and its future to a downward slide into irrelevance and oblivion.
You forgot to mention in your list of things Republicans support which many Democrats also support, “strong leadership by principals, superintendents, and locally elected school boards.”
Democrats support that, too, right David?
Or maybe not:
http://tucson.com/news/local/columnists/steller/steller-tusd-broke-promises-with-prop-spending/article_db22aa44-bcf9-5845-bec7-89a189b53e18.html
http://tucson.com/news/local/columnists/steller/steller-tusd-should-take-judge-s-hint-stop-costly-fighting/article_058a6a68-b32f-5c10-b684-3c9f71cb0a1c.html
Perhaps if the public district enrolling almost 50,000 students in Southern Arizona were higher functioning, we wouldn’t have quite as much support for “CHOICE” in our state.
Once again, comparing all public schools districts to TUSD is not realistic. If you consider, for example, districts like Vail and Benson, conclusions are less distorted and far more meaningful. TUSD is like a piñata in a fun house mirror, bouncing about crazily while citizens strike blindly at its very existence.
Thinking_Aloud: TUSD is like a piñata in a fun house mirror that currently handles the education of 50,000 students every year, and affects the reputation of “public schools” in the minds of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands more. If, with its democratically elected boards and the “transparency” requirements it is legally subject to, it cannot be reformed, that raises questions about whether it’s the theoretical concept and legal framing of public district schools or the advocacy activities of healthy, active, empowered constituencies that make them viable. Then the valid contrast is not between valid public district and invalid charter / publicly subsidized private, but between other variables we have not yet successfully identified. With direct experience in one Arizona public district school that was improbably irresponsible (having grown up in a blue state with an extremely high functioning public school system, I never would have believed it possible if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes) and direct experience of privates and charters, some of which were very responsible and others not so, I don’t buy the argument that it’s the categories that make the difference. It’s something else, and what we need is a better regulatory and oversight system that supports high academic functioning and complete transparency in all the schools receiving public funding. (I get that we don’t have that yet and that there are currently irresponsible uses of public funds in the charter and private sector. But there are irresponsible uses of public funds in TUSD and districts like it, so again, condemnation by category doesn’t work, in my opinion.)
In any case, the local Democratic Party needs to stop promoting “leaders” in TUSD that give public district schools a bad name at the same time that they continue to condemn “choice.” Let them ensure that the district the Pima County Democrats’ darlings run is not being RUN INTO THE GROUND and then they can talk about how proper education policy should deny or severely limit “choice.” While they find it impossible to manage the district in a way that does not constantly bring discredit on the party and the form of schooling the party champions, they should not at the same time be attempting to limit the escape hatches constituents are using to exit the sinking ship they insist their designated candidates must continue to captain.
If Republicans had their way, the only subject taught would be abstinence and the bible.
they would be taught in caves.
I sort of like the idea of studying the Bible, as long as the book of Leviticus is emphasized.
Republicans use Leviticus to justify their condemnation of same-sex relationships while ignoring that Leviticus also says that if a woman commits adultery, she (never the man, of course!) shall be stoned, and if a son sasses his parents, he should also be stoned.
As for their using Leviticus to condemn same-sex relationships, they keep erroneously citing the word “abomination,” which simply means, in the ancient Hebrew, not a custom.
But try telling that to a political party that’s apparently still dominated by homophobes.
Quite a few who’ve been recently caught with their pants down.
Privatization of everything is the long term goal of the Republicans. Then we can contend with monsterous corporations (as we are doing right now) running our country. How easy is it to condem public education as non-functioning with funding cut to the bone. Education is no different then insurance. When they (charter schools) can pick which students to include, their earnings improve, as does their scores. This is no different then excluding the sick with “existing conditions” from insurance. There are plenty of very effective education models that are time tested in other countries. The gap will only grow wider with the need for technology in every child’s hands. Inner city schools will not be handing out iPads.