the thursday buzz: PUBLIC EDUCATION IS DYING

Sorry folks, today is a pause in the regularly scheduled program of 25 cents on womanhood and money. BECAUSE THE U.S. PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM IS DYING.

Did I catch your attention? Was that one of many clickbait titles that you saw today? I’m sorry for that; welcome to a slightly more serious thursday buzz, where I write a stream of consciousness around about the state of the U.S. public education system while demonstrating the visceral and potentially detrimental power of sensational media 🐝🍯 

Yesterday morning, I read the TIME article above around Project 2025’s plan to eliminate public education in America. For those of you not familiar with Project 2025, it’s an initiative organized by the Heritage Foundation with the aim of promoting a collection of conservative and right-wing policy. Their agenda includes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, in addition to federal education funding and any civil rights protections, to funnel that money to private school voucher programs instead.

My initial reaction to reading the article was shock and sadness. Public education is something I’ve been a devout believer in since I was young (reference to when I thought private school was “bad”). My emotional reaction was heightened because I recently learned that my high school started charging students to take the bus to school, a service that used to be free when I was in high school. As someone whose north star is financial empowerment for all communities, I view education and knowledge sharing as the first step towards that mission and truly the access card to the world.

I talked to at least ten different people about it, friends, coworkers, old high school teachers, and college classmates. This gave me the time and space to regulate my nervous system (as one naturally does when they’re exposed to sensory overload every waking moment 🤪).

friendly reminders before we continue…

There is an intentional emotional provocation news article titles because both political parties & news outlets need to grab our attention. With this new age of and the democratization of media, people are fighting for screen time. Which means how can I best get someone’s attention, and that means having a good hook. Within five seconds, can I convince someone to keep reading and watching? And tying into humans negativity bias, this does mean punchy, catastrophic titles will get our attention more easily.

but, is that entirely a bad thing, to want to evoke reactions of care and empathy? there are so many terrible things happening in this world sneha, people need to care.

> no! nothing is black and white in my eyes, and I think it can allow people to get out of their heads and use this passion to act on issues. But it’s overwhelming to live in a time where we have access to news that’s happening more than 3000 miles away.

Our world has been and continues to be in a chaotic state. There are devastating genocides happening and the world is watching from their mobile devices. This doesn’t mean we stop reading the news, engaging in civic discourse, donating to charities, and signing petitions. News, civic engagement, and donations are all valuable. However, there are a lot of scary things happening around us, and ingesting sensational media can make a lot of us feel powerless. But that’s not true, you as an individual can enact change. Instead, let's focus on facts and understanding the issues that matter most to us.

Take a break from the constant stream and process information critically, especially on platforms like TikTok and Instagram reels. While social media keeps us informed, it can be overwhelming to find concrete ways to make a difference. It's like getting sucked into a black hole of information overload.

Don't just stay informed, get involved! Find ways to contribute to solutions for the causes you care about. Think about how we can all work as a team contribute to solve issues we feel personally connected to and make this world a better place. Take that social media break, talk to people face-to-face, cold-email representatives in office, and figure out what action you need to take in real life.

so what’s going on with the public education system?

Here’s my partially informed understanding of what’s been going on with the public education system in the past few years.

• School districts have been going through budget crises / being underinvested in.

  • Reason 1: “Schools in many states lost funding in the early days of the pandemic — and they may not fully recover for years to come, especially as federal relief aid goes away.” (source)

  • Reason 2: “During recessions, the first budget cuts begin with cutting education spending.” (source)

  • Reason 3: Anecdotally heard from education startups, there is a higher investment going towards private education because it’s believed there is a higher ROI (aka education as a for-profit business).

• Thus, they’ve been hiring consultants to determine which schools are being “under utilized". to have a “data-driven” approach to close a school.

  • This 2017 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes showed that these same schools disproportionately serve Black and Latin students, English Learner students, students with disabilities, and students living in poverty.

  • The consultants are just validating what districts already wanted to do: close the schools they value least, relying on metrics that target symptoms of their systemic neglect, and playing into the conservative agenda to make public schools obsolete.

• Instead, Project 2025 is advocating to funnel that money to a system of charter and private schools, where “students and families are forced to compete for a limited pool of high quality resources for a select few.”

How can you act

I’ll be honest, I learned about this news today, so I haven’t had the time to provide concrete actions you all can take to reform our public education system. But don’t worry, I’ll be back with that in these coming weeks. That being said, I urge you all to vote in this upcoming presidential election and keep the discourse going. I understand the fatigue and ennui masked as hopelessness. But the election hasn’t happened yet, so encourage folks who don’t think their vote will make a difference. People always talk about impact as reaching billions of people, but not enough people understand that impact starts right at home. Turns out word of mouth is pretty powerful 😉 So take pauses when you need to, but we’re not done yet folks. Let’s get that young voter turnout up.

Before I end today’s piece, I got a book recommendation How School Works by Arne Duncan, the former United States Secretary of Education (thanks Meera 😀). I’m going to start book clubbing that with my roommate soon, let me know if you want to join :)

Until the next 🐝 , and with 💛 ,

Sneha