#WeirdEd Week 89- Education Politics

Let's talk politics. 

Great way to end Christmas dinner early, right? But Christmas is over and I have a few questions.

I want to talk expectations. What are we expecting from politicians regarding education this cycle? Remember, pot came up in the Democratic debates before education did. That's where it is on a national scale of importance.

Do I think education is important for politicians to talk about? Sure I do, it's my job. But at the same time I spend a lot of time being irritated that non-teachers are trying to tell me how to do my job. Do you see the imbalance there? I want a presidential nominee to say something about education, but he or she better not say ignorant stuff. Education policy is a wonky thing to talk about. I don't mean wonky as in weird, I mean it in the way pols mean it- policy dense and specific. Obama is a wonky president, dude loves talking policy. But in a debate what kind of questions do we want asked and what kind of answers are we expecting? 

I'm serious here. 

I think I might barely write any questions for this chat because I want to have a conversation about what we want presidents to be able to do in regard to education, what we want them to be able to say, and how versed we expect them to be. 

Should every nominee have their own education plan? Is, "We just implemented ESSA, move along," a good answer? Are we expecting them to say, "Testing and data is awful and we must completely stop them." Obama has basically said that about testing. He's hosted a White House MakerFaire. You think Trump has a thought in his head about education? He probably wants us to stop teaching Muslim students (and probably the girls too). And that's the extent of his plan. Do we need to know Ted Cruz's thoughts on textbooks and science, because I'm pretty sure the dude ain't all that pro-science. Hillary recently made a comment about closing low performing schools and because it's the only thing any of them have said it got to be a 48 hour news cycle thing. Sanders is getting a lot of love but do we know where he stands on Common Core? I bet he'd manage to make his answer about income inequality (which education is a factor in to be sure), because that's a dude who stays on message. Jeb! probably feels ways about education. I assume. He's still running, right?

Anyway, I don't want to get contentious about who's voting for who during the chat. #WeirdEd is always a cool group of people so I think we can disagree and keep it civil. If we can't I could always write a chat about being connected.