To distract us from everything that’s going wrong under Trump, Senator Mike Rounds is reviving one of his most laughable 2014 campaign lines. He’s once again trumpeting his purported desire to eliminate the federal Department of Education:
“What we’re trying to do is expedite the transfer of power and the decision making away from the federal bureaucracy and return it to local units of government, to South Dakota,” Rounds said on The Greg Belfrage Show this morning. “That’s the goal on it.”
Rounds was referring to his A-Plus Act, which would allow local and state school officials to opt-out of federal education regulations.
He says it will have to be done incrementally. He said the elimination of national Common Core standards was one example of that approach [Todd Epp, “Sen. Rounds Wants to End the U.S. Department of Education,” KELO Radio, 2019.06.13].
It was hilarious when Rounds made this fake promise during the 2014 primary; it’s hilarious now. This is Mike Rounds, who let the South Dakota Department of Education turn the federal GEAR UP program into a cash cow for his Secretary of Education and other cronies. In 2014, Rounds’s Tea Party promise would have cost South Dakota $191.9 million in federal education funding; South Dakota’s FY2020 budget includes $188 million from Uncle Sam for the state Department of Education.
But Mike Rounds understands that the only way to save the Trump Administration from the voters’ good sense is to reduce the voters’ access to education.
The education system has turned into at least four things from its original intention – disintegrators of the atomic family unit through indoctrination of sordid and irregular sexuality, babysitters for overworked parents, indoctrination centers for the values and cultures of other countries, and a center for social engineering and social control. When the schools look and operate like prisons, it’s time to reconsider the model. I applaud the notion that they should be defunded, and a new model based on Western values using 2019 capabilities should be installed immediately.
The whole statement by Rounds is bogus. Rounds was a huge supporter of Common Core, so that part of his Trumpian in its disingenuousness. As you point out, the GEAR UP corruption surrounding federal education funds going to the state ought to teach us that handing federal dollars over to states without adequate oversight is not a good ideas. If anything, we need much tighter requirements on that federal funding, not a federal spigot running wide open to corrupt Republican officials.
The biggest bogus part of this is that A-Plus is one of those bills that is introduced for the sole purpose of mollifying the extremist right groups who want to destroy public education. It has no chance of passage. All it is is a public relations gimmick. It has been introduced before. It never got close to passage. Now it is introduced again. It is going nowhere. It will be introduced again. It will never pass. But it will give Smiling Marion a chance to put one over on the dumb crowd on the right.
When Reagan deregulated the dept. of Education the ACT scores went down. So his solution was to make the ACT easier. I know teachers do not like a lot of paper work, but they do like high standards if they are excellent teachers. Those conservatives just do not learn from their mistakes. Not exactly what you would think of a party of personal responsibility.
As governor, Rounds had no outstanding education initiatives, a huge departure from Governors Mickelson and Janklow. When asked why, he said it’s because Bush II’s “Leave no child behind” policies provided all the leadership South Dakota needed. His most memorable contribution to education was turning it into a feeding trough for his political pals as we discovered in the GEAR UP scandals.
Other than getting favorable treatment for religious schools, Rounds was a zero as a legislator for education as well. Now this. And why not?
Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos personally contributed $46,800 to Mike Rounds’ campaign. Who needs schools that prepare kids for the adult world when you’ve got a cash cow like ol’ Betsy!
South Dakota, this is the penalty we all must pay when you elect clowns like Rounds to office.
Sometimes they like local power; sometimes they don’t. It depends on which gives the SDGOP the lion’s share of it and the outcome they want.
For instance, a woman in her doctor’s office is as local as possible, but SDGOP opposes that local power.
Then there’s ordering schools to put up 10 commandments. That’s not at all local.
The biggest nonlocal example of all is accepting something like 1/3 of the state’s budget, and strings, from DC.
But they do want to push teachers deeply into poverty and institute Christian sharia education only, absolutely not local.
The SDGOP speaks with multi forked tongue.
American education is a vital security concern. It’s too important to turn over to states that are too cheap and too bigoted to turn out young scholars worthy of moving where the good jobs are.
Federal Dept. of Education is the new conservative boogie man. They must never aim to fully eliminate it, but they must continue to try and dismantle it – ever so slowly – because their legion of cross eyed idiot followers need a new boogie man to keep them strung along in politics.
South Dakota (and this whole 5 state upper Midwest region) not only significantly holds back the rest of the country but they continually sabotage their own well-being.
It’s really something to watch when you grew up elsewhere. It’s really sort of amazing.
Gotta do away with all that “socialism”! Anything that will help the big fat money makers get their hands on all those taxpayer dollars going to help the masses! The majority of South Dakotans will fall for anything the Rs want. The sad part of this is “most” South Dakotans are among the 99% and the stuff they are getting sold on comes from the 1%. Wise up anytime soon, people!