So How Would Candidates For NC State Super Respond To Betsy DeVos’s Recent Claim About Teaching Colleges Using “Junk Science?”

/ caffeinatedrage

From the current Secretary of Education who has no degree in education, no teaching experience, never attended a public school or state supported university or sent her children to one, is totally anti-union, and believes that teachers are paid too much:

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“Nearly half of teaching colleges are preparing future educators with what amounts to junk science. No wonder nearly 1/2 of our low-income 8th graders are functionally illiterate. We know how to teach kids how to read. Teachers need the tools to teach it.”

That’s a hell of an assertion coming from a woman whose policies on student debt, predatory student loaners, and social services are trying to keep those same 8th graders in the world of poverty.

It’s also a hell of an assertion to claim that schools of education are teaching “junk science” when she herself is so enamored with intelligent design.

And it’s incredibly dense of her to think that maybe low-income 8th graders don’t suffer academically because they live in poverty.

Oh, and to quote a study by the National Council on Teacher Quality when it’s reputation as an actual non-partisan research entity is next to nothing? Read page 46 of Dr. Diane Ravitch’s newest book, Slaying Goliath. There she talks about how some of their “ranking” methods do not even include visiting campuses but just reviewing catalogs.

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Then go to the page on the biggest donors to the NCTQ and you see a Who’s Who of privatizers – Gates, Broad, Walton….

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But it would be nice to hear what current candidates for NC State Superintendent have to say about what the top public education official in America tweeted today, especially Rep. Craig Horn and Catherine Truitt.

Do they believe that half of our teacher prep programs in our colleges and universities are teaching junk science?

 

2 thoughts on “So How Would Candidates For NC State Super Respond To Betsy DeVos’s Recent Claim About Teaching Colleges Using “Junk Science?””

  1. Stu,
    When I started my teaching career at age 21, I was so excited to be part of this profession because I was going to have an impact on students’ lives. I started teaching in the fall of 1987 and at the same time I went to school at night to earn my Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education. Becoming the best teacher I could be was important to me. I wanted to give back to the community who had guided me through a difficult time in my adolescence. I was naive and unaware that education had just been hijacked by our federal government and the faulty, sketchy research in “A Nation At Risk”. Betsy DeVos is the 21st century tool in an intentional, historical assault on public education.

    Why would DeVos, the Waltons, the Koch Brothers, and others want us to believe that schools are failing and teachers are to blame? If they convince America that we don’t know how to educate our children, then it becomes an invented political crisis and they can step in and save us from ourselves. While they are at it, they can make money, generate power and push their religious agendas in the public schools.

    How do you convince America teachers are to blame? You ignore what’s at the core of the problem- poverty. Instead of providing our most vulnerable children with proper nutrition, healthcare, and opportunities to develop healthy minds and bodies, we narrow the curriculum, put them in front of computers for hours, and test them repeatedly. Those scores PROVE it’s the teacher’s fault. If that isn’t enough, blame those who prepare teachers. It’s their fault too!

    It’s time to WAKE UP! When teachers in North Carolina marched in Raleigh, rallied in the Halifax Mall, voted, met and organized and ran for office, the pendulum started swinging towards sanity! Please consider voting for me beginning Feb. 13th (early voting) and through November 2020. I promise to do what’s best for our children and North Carolina’s educators and educator support personnel.

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  2. Thanks for another great article.

    I have regularly spoken out about this organization in my role at NC State and have done so as the vice chair of the PEPSC (http://bit.ly/PEPSC).

    We discussed NCTQ on 9/12/19 and you can hear my comments at the 14:17 mark (http://bit.ly/NCTQPEPSC).

    You can also read Policy Watch’s piece here: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2019/09/27/does-nc-adequately-prepare-and-test-its-teachers/

    This is what happens when individuals are placed in positions for which they are unqualified.

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