KOA Headlines
11 21 24 UNC Professor Michael Cohen discusses Trump's pick for education secretary
But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Remember FDIC? How do you feel when you switch to Geico and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself, "just one more day until Friday." But then somebody in the elevator says, "Happy Friday!" Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday. So yes, "Happy Friday" random stranger in the elevator? Happy Friday indeed! Yep, switching and saving with Geico feels just like that. Get more with Geico! Linda McMahon has been nominated by President-elect Trump to head the Department of Education, a department that Trump has recently said he'd like to abolish McMahon serving on the Connecticut Board of Education for a year beginning in 2009 and spent years on the Board of Trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. While she may not be known to many, she is well known to Donald Trump having served as his first administration and his first administration as leader of the Small Business Administration. Michael Cohen is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Northern Colorado and he joins us now here on Colorado's Morning News. Professor, welcome back. I want to get your initial reaction to the Linda McMahon nomination for a department that Donald Trump says he'd like to abolish. All right, well thanks for having me. I think at this point we don't know a ton about Linda McMahon, at least as it relates to education and education policy. But I think what seems clear is that based on the President-elect's statement, she is going to be a fierce advocate for expanding private school choice and by that I mean school vouchers that students can use for tuition at private schools, religious or otherwise. Professor, last time we had you on, we talked a little bit about how you believe eliminating the Department of Education could be realistic, however you said that President-elect Trump may not be a big priority for him, he'll be focusing on immigration and the border and things like that. Now since we have Linda McMahon as his potential nominee as pick as Education Secretary, is the idea even more realistic. You know what, I think actually possibly the opposite, my sense is no that he hasn't chosen her to lead the dismantling of the Department which would be a pretty heavy lift requiring Congress's approval and it would be subject to filibuster in the Senate which would require 60 votes and I don't think that any Democrats are going to support the dismantling of the Department. I think more along the lines of what the President-elect did with his original Secretary of Education in his first term, Bessie DeVos, is that he's putting someone in who is going to us, he puts it, send education back to the states, so perhaps, you know, reduce the federal footprint when it comes to education and expand private school choice, so I think he seems to be more of an advocate for the kinds of policies that Project 2025, Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation and also from the America First Policy Institute which Linda McMahon has been leading, she seems to be an advocate more for those kinds of policies and putting them into place rather than dismantling the Department. Professor, we talk all the time about disruptors in this space and maybe a need for disruption when it comes to education, the philosophy of it, but do you think that is needed and if that is the case as a Linda McMahon, somebody who doesn't have a background really in education outside of sitting on board, is she the right person to disrupt and isn't disrupting easy but building hard? That's a great question. We've had lots of talk of that in the last 20 years or so, let's bring people in from different fields, from business in particular to try to, you know, run educational agencies or educational organizations, schools, districts and so on. And I think it's a legitimate concern to say that a lack of experience in education is an issue because it means, you know, she's unlikely to have a sense of what some of the key issues are beyond her particular policy preferences or perhaps, you know, she hasn't spent much time thinking about the fundamental purposes of a public education. When you're in a field for a long time and you're a leader in that field, you tend to think about the fundamental purposes of it. I don't know that she's done that but, you know, I can't speak to it either way. I think I'm even more concerned really that, you know, like her predecessor in the first Donald Trump administration, Betsy DeVos, that she'll probably focus only on a couple of policies and, you know, again, back to reducing federal spending on public schooling and expanding private school choice. Do we need disruptors? Sure, we certainly do. And I would say we need disruptors in order to promote equity, in order to continue to support special education students, perhaps in new ways and not necessarily by bringing somebody in who doesn't have a background in public ed. Professor Cohen, we use the phrase "sending education back to the states" often when we discuss what we could see with this. Do we compare this similarly to what we saw with the overturning of Roe v. Wade? What is actually the breakdown of what it could look like sending it back to the states? I think what the president elect means by that is that instead of telling states, "Okay, here's the funding that we provide," and by the way, the federal government provides about 10 percent on average of the funding in a given school district, instead of saying you have to use the funding on this, this, this, and this, we'll switch more to something like block grants where the states can decide, based on the philosophy that you're closer to the students, decide where you believe it's needed and allocated that way, rather than the federal government having oversight and saying, "Okay, this money is for students living in poverty and for helping to equalize the funding for them," or, "This money is for supporting students with disabilities," and so on. I think it's more about evolving the control of public education funding. Professor, if you had a magic wand, what is the one, number one thing you would do in overall education, whether it's under the auspices of the Department of Education, but what ails the space right now that you traverse, that needs to be fixed and could be fixed immediately if you had the power to do so? Right now we've got some serious issues in the profession, and we've got a major teacher shortage that's been going on for a while. We have chronic absenteeism, we have more and more money being funneled into private schools, and so I think the absolute—you know, the fundamental thing that we need right now is to be adequately resourced. We've heard a lot about, "Okay, let's do something to improve outcomes. Student outcomes, test scores, people usually mean by that," and it's impossible to do that without the right resources, and there's plenty of research that shows that the resources do matter, especially in areas that are impoverished. And so I think the focus really should be on supporting public schools, on raising the status of the profession, on attracting more people into the profession, rather than trying to fragment a system that really is a bedrock of a democratic republic. Professor, with the minute we have left, we're going to do a complete pivot here, but it's a story that's in our newscast this morning of the Boulder Valley School District's policy prohibiting high school students from using phones during the entire school day. I know you obviously teach older than high school, but when it comes to that, what is just your overall opinion of phones in the classroom nowadays? I think they are a tremendous distraction, and if you're asking for my opinion, I do support the banning of cell phones in the classroom. It's a tough thing as a teacher to try to, even before phones existed, to really motivate students to get their attention, and what students have in their pocket is really an addictive little device, so I think we all know it. It's hard for us to put down our phones. How much harder is it for a teenager to regulate that phone use? I think if we can do something to get students, get rid of some distractions in the classroom by all means, I'm supportive of that. Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Northern Colorado. It's Michael Cohen. Thank you, Professor. Thanks so much. There's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one member FDIC. How do you feel when you switch to Geico and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself just one more day until Friday. But then somebody in the elevator says, "Happy Friday!" Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday. So yes, happy Friday, random stranger in the elevator. Happy Friday, indeed. Yep, switching and saving with Geico feels just like that. Get more with Geico.