The education thread

aj2hall said:
Long term under better circumstances all these young people, American and those from around the world, could change our world for the better. Knowing each other could make it easier....

The education system in this country still needs to be revamped which Trump is doing, because the proficiency rate for so many of the school districts is below 50% and that’s unacceptable. So let’s just make it even easier for failing students to pass. It makes no sense.

Schools will be improved for those who are allowed to attend. For those who are not allowed to go to school they will end up in the field or some factories.

I think someone is making shit up willy nilly again. 🥴🙄

I never said that in my original post that is how you construed it. or should I say misconstrued it. 

We shouldn't allow Republicans to penalize universities with massive taxes for the opinions of their employees or students.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/29/endowment-tax-colleges-universities-trump-harvard/

To see the problem with Trump’s endowment tax, look at who’s exempt

So congressional Republicans and the Trump administration wrote the initial 1.4 percent tax in 2017 in a way that hits coastal schools, such as Harvard, while exempting all public universities, even though some of them also have sizable endowments.

Eight years later, with the Republican Party having become more antagonistic to these institutions, the endowment tax is much bigger and even more targeted. It exempts religious colleges, which likely will mean it doesn’t apply to Notre Dame, whose endowment is estimated at $17 billion to $20 billion and is larger than all but eight schools across the country. Notre Dame isn’t considered as left-leaning as Ivy League colleges such as Princeton.

The bill also includes a complicated formula that rewards colleges that have more U.S.-born students. Many top-tier schools on the coasts such as Columbia University enroll large numbers of international students.

this endowment tax is part of a broader bill that cuts Medicaid and other benefits for low- and middle-income families while reducing taxes on the rich.

Why is this policy so problematic? First of all, these schools provide major benefits to U.S. society. They operate hospitals, fund groundbreaking research and often employ thousands of people in the communities where they are based. Imposing a massive tax increase will inevitably result in reducing the number of people they can educate and hire.

Secondly, in undermining these schools, Republicans are weakening a core part of America’s civil society. Democracy is not just about voting and elections. A truly democratic nation has powerful institutions not tied to the government or political parties.

Premier universities are unquestionably a critical part of American civil society.

What makes the heightened endowment tax so worrisome is that it comes in the midst of the Trump administration launching investigations into, or otherwise attacking, law firms, news organizations, activist groups and other entities that are more associated with the left and center-left.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an endowment estimated at more than $100 billion. Foundations operated by super-rich individuals often have billions in holdings. But I suspect Republicans are slapping a 21 percent tax on Yale University but not the Mormon Church because the former employs a lot of people who push views contrary to GOP orthodoxy.

This is an ominous precedent. I worry future economic policy bills from Trump and congressional Republicans will include tax provisions designed to weaken women’s rights organizations, historically Black colleges, labor unions and other organizations more aligned with America’s left.

As Ziblatt, Levitsky and the University of Toronto’s Lucan Way recently wrote, a core indication of democracy decline in a country is when there are costs (legal and financial) to taking stands contrary to the government’s views. That’s what’s happening to many colleges now, particularly Harvard.

Republicans and Trump can’t be allowed to slap institutions with hundreds of millions in new taxes because of their employees’ political views.

Absolutely! Every public school (including charter schools which are public) has federal funding. Soon, many private schools may have them through vouchers.

There are "strings" (requirements)** the Feds put on that money. These strings and how they are interpreted reflect the policy interests of whatever the administration is. For example, the current administration has made not having trans kids compete in sports outside the gender in which they were born a priority. They use Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex as the statutory basis to impose this policy interest. They have threatened states with a total cutoff of federal education funds if the state allows a kid born a boy to compete in women sports. 

There are numerous regulations (strings) on special ed, etc. 


But the law that created the Dept prohibits the Dept from ordering curriculum matters. The Dept doesn't regulate grading. it's left to State and local governments. it's important for folks to know this so that if, for example, they don't like what the grading system is they know where to complain.

** for example, cannot discriminate based on sex or race. must not reduce the amount of state funds spent on special ed. Just a couple of examples. I think the Feds get blamed for things they have nothing to do with. 

If only it would be true!!

Ya gotta love how nobody answered your question. Stinks of bullshit to me!! 🤣🤣🤣

My eyes are going to get stuck I roll them so much with this bull.

The fear mongering. The hyperbole.
🙄🙄🙄

Who are the “chosen” and who are the “lesser”, exactly?  And what are prime schools? Because you didn’t say anything about “prime” schools in your op. You said schools will be improved for those who are “allowed to attend”. Who isn’t “allowed to attend”. 

Nobody is keeping any child from attending school. It’s a basic American right to attend school. Everyone can go. 

Please elaborate. 

The administration does not care about protecting Jewish students. Trump invited crypto currency holders with Nazi ties to the White House. He’s renaming a branch of the government “remigration”, a neo-Nazi term.  He’s also nominated someone with ties to antisemitism extremists.

www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/50-trump-crypto-dinner-invitees-hold-tokens-linked-to-alt-right-symbols-and-racist-language/

Fifty of the $TRUMP memecoin dinner invitees hold crypto assets named for Pepe the Frog, which is known as an alt-right symbol, as well as swastikas, a racial slur and references to anti-semitic ideology, according to an analysis by CREW, adding to concerns raised by the dinner, which represents a naked attempt by President Donald Trump to profit from his office.


heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-30-2025

It also plans to turn the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which manages the flow of people into the U.S., into an “Office of Remigration” to “actively facilitate” the “voluntary return of migrants” to other countries and “advance the president’s immigration agenda.”

“Remigration” is a term from the global far right. As Isabela Dias of Mother Jones notes, its proponents call for the “mass expulsion of non–ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism.” Of the congressional report, a person who works closely with the State Department told Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket: “All of it is pretty awful with some pieces that definitely violate existing law and treaties. But institutionalizing neo-Nazi theory as an office in the State Department is the most blatantly horrifying.”


www.npr.org/2025/05/30/nx-s1-5417902/trump-ingrassia-antisemitism-ethics

Trump nominates official with ties to antisemitic extremists to lead ethics agency

President Trump has nominated 30-year-old conservative lawyer Paul Ingrassia, to lead the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a government ethics office, despite Ingrassia's ties to multiple antisemitic extremists.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/us/trump-international-students.html

But Harvard and others say that the administration is attacking academic freedom in violation of the First Amendment, and that it has targeted universities where faculty, administrators and students have been critical of Mr. Trump’s policies.

I love that the President of Harvard received a standing ovation at graduation when he welcomed the class of 2025, students from across the country and around the world.  

www.npr.org/2025/05/27/nx-s1-5409576/trump-harvard-lawsuit-funding-international-students

Harvard President Alan Garber told Morning Edition that he finds the measures taken by Trump to be "perplexing." While he acknowledges there is work to be done on campus, he said he struggles to see a link between funding freezes and fighting antisemitism

"Why cut off research funding? Sure, it hurts Harvard, but it hurts the country because after all, the research funding is not a gift," Garber said, adding that these dollars are awarded to efforts deemed "high-priority work" by the federal government.

Inskeep: One other thing in reading the DHS statement about Harvard, there is a line that struck me: "Let this serve as a warning." They're talking about their actions against Harvard. "Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country." I wonder if you agree with that statement that this episode is, in fact, a warning to all universities across the country.

Garber: Well, they said it and I have to believe it, and I've repeated it myself. And that is how it's understood by the other leaders of other universities that I have spoken to. It is a warning. They see this as a message that if you don't comply with what we're demanding, these will be the consequences

Inskeep: If you were going to make a warning to other universities, how would you phrase it?

Garber: I would say that we need to be firm in our commitments to what we stand for. And what we stand for – I believe I speak for other universities – is education, pursuit of the truth, helping to educate people for better futures. And hopefully our own students, after they graduate from our institutions, go out and serve the world. In the end, we're about producing and disseminating knowledge and serving our nation and our world. When we fail in that, then we can expect to be attacked. So number one, I think we all need to redouble our commitment to the good of the nation and the world. And I know my fellow leaders fully embrace that.

Cutting funding for research grants has nothing to do with fighting antisemitism either.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/30/harvard-trump-competition-china-science/

The Trump administration’s war on Harvard is bizarre in many ways. Claiming to be fighting antisemitism, the administration has demanded that the university cede control over large parts of its academic affairs and hand over private information about its international students. The administration has never explained why it has singled out Harvard (and the problems that it claims to be concerned about are not particularly egregious at Harvard). Its main weapon — the withdrawal of federal research funds to Harvard — is aimed at the parts of the university that have virtually nothing to do with the “woke ideology” to which Trump objects. More than 90 percent of the funds that the government has threatened to deny Harvard are for research in the life sciences, studying diseases, medicines and other such topics. Denying funding for cancer research will not affect people protesting for Palestinians.

America continues to lead the world in its ability to attract the best students from across the globe. China draws mainly on the talents of the brightest of its 1.4 billion people. But America has had its pick of the best of the world’s 8 billion people.

The results speak for themselves. Of America’s top 10 companies, five are run by immigrants. Bringing in international students also benefits the American economy as a whole, generating more than $40 billion and supporting nearly 380,000 jobs just last year. But the latest Trump assault has been on these very students, putting their visa processes on hold, threatening to scrutinize their social media posts, and sending a general signal that they are not welcome, will be watched and can be summarily thrown out on a whim. We are already seeing the results — internet searches for American PhDs are down between 25 and 40 percent while those for Australian and Swiss PhD programs are up by even more than that, according to the Economist.

idea of America, a truly free and open society, one that welcomed people from around the world and where, in Ronald Reagan’s words, “our origins matter less than our destinations.” In a competitive world, where other countries have caught up in so many ways, this is still America’s unique advantage — if we can cherish rather than destroy it.