5mo ago

Elon Musk’s Team Decimates Education Department Arm That Tracks National School Performance.

www.propublica.org

Elon Musk’s Team Decimates Education Department Arm That Tracks National School Performance

The Trump administration canceled $900 million in contracts overseen by the Institute of Education Sciences, which partners with scientists and education companies to compile and make public data about schools each year.

politics @lemmy.world

return2ozma @lemmy.world

5mo ago

Elon Musk’s Team Decimates Education Department Arm That Tracks National School Performance

www.propublica.org /article/department-of-education-institute-education-science-contracts-doge

63 comments

Imagine being the richest person in history and going full Nazi instead of doing literally anything else with your billions.
If you ever needed proof that wealth and ease of life doesn't equate to happiness or satisfaction with yourself...
- I hate how people think Elon isn’t happy. He’s probably having the time of his life. Imagine owning the government because some retard with an orange peel for skin addict just gave you full control over the budget.
  Edit: in a system where the economy is tied down to everything
  
  I hate how people think Elon isn’t happy. He’s probably having the time of his life.
  I don't think so. Did you see how he joined that chat room with a voice changer to talk about how good of a guy he was? That's not something a regular, happy person does.
- I just honestly cannot comprehend what the end game is at this point... like, how does this even benefit anyone at all?
  
  It benefits wealthy oligarchs.
  Someone get me a blue shell. angry_luigi.jpg
- Right?
  Imagine what positive progress you could bring about with that kind of wealth and how cemented your name could become as a historical legendary figure. Instead we got a petulant man-child who thinks being a Nazi is edgy. What a shit reality.
This is domestic terrorism.
Make Americans Dumb Again
- Make Americans Dumber ~~Again~~
  
  Honestly hard to imagine them being any dumber
  
  Americans, Still Dumb.
Assuming we don't end up with an actual authoritarian government, which is definitely on the table, we're going to spend the rest of our lives watching our system be rebuilt after this, instead of getting actual progress. Just rebuilding. Because traitorous Republicans will continue to obstruct.
That's what Trump supporting dipshits have really done to this country. Set our progress back an entire generation. Which will allow other countries to replace us as world leaders.
We will not see the level of American influence we've always known again in our lifetimes.
- It’s so comically over the top and they’re so incompetent I’m still holding out for a real revolution.
  Somebody must be doing something.
  
  "Somebody must be doing something." - everyone lol. The US is cooked, maybe not immediately but say goodbye to hegemony, goodbye to whatever shred of upward mobility remained, and goodbye to the possibility of retirement.
It's okay, as long as they're taught about Jesus and how to type prompts into an LLM's text box, what else do they need to learn?
- New rules for homeschooling include mandatory 10 minute hate against the enemy of the day, pledge of allegiance to a photo of Trump, and a once a year field trip to throw rotten tomatoes at homeless people.
  
  Should also be a visit to a cemetery to get a photo at a soldier's grave, and while there also disparage said soldiers as "suckers". Learn to commit white color crimes, which of course aren't crimes at all if your white/wealthy, and should be called out as "political witch hunts". And the most important item of all, is to learn to "deny everything!".
  
  Once a year?
- Don’t even have to type or even talk, just install a neurolink and interface with the LLM directly via your thoughts
  
  Just ignore that massive infection.
Can't be last in first world education stats if you don't track them
- The US has had a department of education since 1979. If it were worth it's 80B dollar budget, we'd have better academic outcomes. Their budget works out to $26,000 per year for every public school teacher. Dismantle it, pay teachers well and let them decide how best to educate their pupils.
  
  A very large chunk of that budget pays for college education. In terms of academic outcomes, the US university system is second to none in the world.
  
  That just sounds like indoctrination.
  No extra steps needed, it's just facilitating indoctrination
Lol. I hate how much this is like 1984 because I dislike people using it as an example all of the time. But between this and the "America First" shit, wherein tariffs are being levied against everyone, the logical conclusion is that Trump wants to close down the US, go self-reliant, and have citizens be too placated by propaganda to do anything about it.
However, this is a shitty idea and it won't go to plan, so he'll just end up with stupid people who can't even work the factories needed to not have this culminate in a mass economic disaster. Anyone smart enough to care should leave the country ASAP because it won't get better. Other countries should be revamping their refugee programs to benefit from the brain drain.
- We're passing 1984 and moving into Idiocracy territory.
  
  Cyberpunk X Idiorcracy mashup.
- every country is either out of reach financially, or also swerving far right, or just doesn't want americans. or all the above
- the logical conclusion is that Trump wants to close down the US, go self-reliant, and have citizens be too placated by propaganda to do anything about it.
  Bingo.
  Except replace Trump with his enablers. That shitstain excuse for a man is nowhere near intelligent enough for a long term agenda. Nor will he live long enough to enact any long term agenda. More intelligent and nefarious actors are placating his endless narcissism by letting him do things like rename Gulfs while they get him to sign what they've drawn up, which is the outline for making the U.S. an isolationist nation of easily controlled simpletons that act as their servants.
- Because 'anyone smart enough' has a bank account that would allow this and is able to jump the immigration hurdles set up by countries
  
  It takes effort
“Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.” - George Carlin
- the funny thing about this quote is that you can post it under anything mildly outrageous and tons of people will go "mhmmm yes that's me the critical thinker" regardless of their actual mental faculties.
They don't want educated people. They want large numbers of the uneducated because it keeps labor costs low.
There is reason that birthrate and education are always top of the list (after tax cuts for the rich).
Isn’t school funding linked to test scores and performance? Is this how they are defunding education?
- Maybe they will just give schools money based on student count instead, which may be better
Mississippi and Alabama will be happy to not have a list to punctuate anymore.
- Damn
Him destroying Twitter for the Saudis benefit, turned out to be the test run for destroying America.
Deployed the smoke grenade
I don't like Musk, but this is good. School performance tracking is voodoo math. Everyone knows that good schools are in good neighborhoods and bad schools are in bad neighborhoods. You don't need $900,000,000 in research, and the yearly publication of random lists. This just hurts individual teachers.
- Do you work in an industry that deals with the data they collect and report? If not, then your opinion is even less useful here than Musk's
  
  I work with school data, I've worked with University, high school and primary school data. it is indeed all bullshit I'm large part because test scores are just noise and behaviours metrics are subjective and non standard.
  I've never been able to develop a model with any predictive capacity whatsoever at all. Moreover, visualisations only ever show correlation and often do more harm than good as staff assume their actions are causing improvement when typically advantaged students simply take advantage of more activities etc.
  The post above is certainly more insightful than Elon musk's opinion and this is coming from somebody who works with this type of data.
  Again, I wouldn't suggest pulling it all apart. I would look deeply into the problem but this is really not the worst thing they've done.
  
  Don't live in an political bubble. For years lefty teachers fought rankings, standardized testing, and the standardized testing industry. It doesn't help schools, or teachers. Don't be a knee-jerk reactionary, automatically saying that everything Musk does is wrong is counterproductive.

63 comments