Slash, slash, slash

I read that a bookkeeping change at the Department of Education would cut off financing to rural schools. 800 schools will lose thousands in Federal dollars. Why would we do that?

The people that will bear the brunt of this are people barely keeping their heads above water. They can’t afford to live in an area where their children can go to school. It isn’t like we have a wonderful transportation system where their kids can hop on the train and commute to a school.

Shame on any of us who support this kind of legislation. Talk about supporting a bigger divide. Fred was telling me about Out School, a USV portfolio company that he happened to write about yesterday. A site where teachers are teaching classes for not that much. An elementary, junior high school and high school all rolled up with multiple curriculums, online vs in a brick and mortar facility. It changes the game.

Obviously this particular Government could not give a shit about education for anyone without money. Out School could be the educators for a cost that those rural areas can afford. The social piece is obviously not the same but everyone should be educated period through twelfth grade, particularly the stragglers.

Isn’t education for all what America used to believe?

Comments (Archived):

  1. JLM

    .OK, so let’s let a little truth bear on the subject, shall we. It is not even remotely as you suggest. Here are the facts:1. The program you note is something called the Rural and Low-Income School Program which has strict eligibility criteria. It has since 2002 when it was initiated.2. The schools were using the wrong eligibility criteria. They were supposed to be using the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. To receive assistance, 20% of students had to come from families who were below the poverty line.3. In fact, they were using the wrong criteria — they were using the percentage of students who qualified for subsidized school lunches. This was a mistake made because these stats were easier to get to and they had to do it anyway. The error was made by the schools, not the Feds.4. The schools now argue that it is easier for them to use the subsidized school lunch program stats because they work with them all the time. Some claim that they are more accurate than the Census numbers.5. The gov’t bean counters have called a “foot fault” on the schools, but the people who know the numbers say that they will both arrive at the same conclusions and NO schools will be denied funding.6. The Dept of Ed, which promulgated both the Rural and Low-Income School Program and the school lunch subsidy program is working on a legislative solution to clarify the situation. The second this came to the attention of the Dept of Ed, the Dept of Ed went to work to fix the problem.7. Senator Lamar Smith (R-Tenn) and head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor Committee is already formulating legislation IAW the Dept of Ed. The fix is underway.8. There is no loss of funding while this work goes on and there is no incremental money being sought. This is purely a pencil whipping exercise.9. The Dept of Ed is on the record saying, “When you discover you’re not following the law Congress wrote, you don’t double down; you fix it.” It is up to Congress to fix the problem, but in the meantime nobody is being denied funds.If you want a controversy that is real, focus on the Rural Education Achievement Program which is a fund created by Congress that is being mishandled and I believe the Dept of Ed is wrong on their interpretation. This also requires a fix.Education in America is funded primarily by property taxes. This use of grants and funds by the Feds is a bad idea from the very beginning. Nonetheless, it is not accurate to blame this on the Trump admin. Lamar Alexander will get this sorted out.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  2. Erin

    Lack of education is how we ended up with a president like this.

    1. Gotham Gal

      Slow chopping away on this from the GOP

    2. JLM

      .Low brow, gratuitous insult unworthy of a serious person.We ended up with this President because the smartest woman in the world couldn’t get off her grandiose ass and campaign in the Upper Midwest. [I will even give her some James Comey props. He did her wrong.]Even better — we’re going to end up with him for another 4 years shortly, plus a Rep House and Senate.Is this a great country or what?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. Erin

        What? When you don’t have education, you get racism, disrespect for others, and dumb, anti-science, religious thinking (I can say that cause I came from there…and then went to university). How is that low-brow? I’m not defending Hillary Clinton.

    3. awaldstein

      You might enjoy this read. https://www.twelvebooks.com…Dan is a smart guy and does a good job articulating this broader topic.Listen to his conversation with Kara Swisher this week as well.

      1. Erin

        Hi Arnold (and GG), in return, I’ll forward on this article about champagne prices. My friend is doing his MBA at Yale and is super excited about this one prof. She is the first author listed in this article. She did a study comparing majority CEO’s champagne prices (ie. white men) vs. minority CEO’s champagne prices (ie people of color and women). Women actually, due to their networking amongst themselves make a tad bit more than men, not something that happens too often! https://hbr.org/2017/07/a-s

        1. Gotham Gal

          Please forward

  3. LE

    From my reading of this article here I am not sure your take is correct. It sounds to me that ‘feet are simply being held to the flame’ in order to get things with how they should have been with the law in the first place. To me this is akin to the IRS enforcing some rule that they had overlooked for years and now are checking up on. The timing as detailed was bad but plenty of things the government do aren’t fair in the same way (ask anyone who has been on the bad side of the government for proof of that).Isn’t that what we want the government to do so that money is not wasted? Or do we want them to look the other way because ‘that is the way it’s always been done’.There is plenty of government waste in programs and spending.https://www.nytimes.com/202…As always I will back up what I am saying with a personal example. There are several cities, school districts and governments that I deal with for small purchases. In many cases they aren’t able to use a credit card to purchase. They need elaborate paperwork, approvals and purchase orders (once again small dollar amounts). We are one of the few places that will do that (accept purchase orders). Guess what? We charge for that. Not only is our product more expensive than many competitors (in some cases we are worth it and in other cases we aren’t) but we actually are also able to get money for simply allowing people to use a purchase order (because honestly it does take work but that said it does have profit built in).Now imagine there are plenty of things wrong with how government works (as you know) and multiply that by millions of events. My point is quite possible that the right direction is happening here not the wrong thing. Make sense?

  4. jason wright

    What exactly does ‘America’ actually mean (with any credibility) these days? From afar it looks more and more like the nasty nation.

    1. Tom Labus

      we’ll right the ship in November. It’s worse from inside!

      1. Gotham Gal

        Let’s hope so