Donald Trump has finally told us what he thinks about education, making it abundantly clear he hasn’t thought much about the subject. Before this, he’s made general pronouncements about wanting guns, not Common Core, in schools, and being for school choice. And of course, “I want the parents, and I want all of the teachers, and I want everybody to get together around a school and to make education great.” Most of his current proposals are nothing new, a restatement of the standard “education reform”/privatization agenda, including an emphasis on vouchers. His advisors wrote him a speech, he read it, and now he’ll be able to return to what he really cares about, which is TRUMP MAKING AMERICA (and Trump)GREAT AGAIN!
“School Choice,” which Trump says will lead to “Increased Student Performance,” is the uniting theme in his proposals. There’s no solid evidence that charter schools or private schools increase student achievement—most studies come out as a wash, with little difference in achievement between district, charter and private schools when they compare similar students—but never mind. Facts never have never stood in the way of Trump’s runaway assertions before.
Here is Trump’s vision of school choice.
As President, Mr. Trump will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child living in poverty. That means that we want every disadvantaged child to be able to choose the local public, private, charter or magnet school that is best for them and their family. Each state will develop its own formula, but the dollars should follow the student.
It’s all about poor children, according to Trump’s statement. No mention of the rich children whose parents will be able to send their children to toney private schools on the taxpayers’ dime, though they’re clearly included in the plan. Later the proposal says he wants school choice “to bring hope to every child in every city in this land.”
Trump is in favor of portable funding, where federal money follows the child. It’s another conservative educational standard, which would gut Title 1 programs in schools with a majority of low income students and transfer money to schools with more high income students. And of course, he’s for teacher merit pay and ending teacher tenure laws.
Trump only deviates from conservative educational orthodoxy with his plan to add $20 billion in federal dollars to promote school choice. Where will the money come from? He doesn’t say, except to state, “This will be done by reprioritizing existing federal dollars.” Which federal dollars? Will they come from current federal education money or elsewhere? I have no idea, and neither, I imagine, does Trump, nor does he much care at this point, so long as it helps TRUMP MAKE AMERICA (and the federal budget) GREAT AGAIN!
He wants to distribute the money as “a block grant for the 11 million school age kids living in poverty. Individual states will be given the option as to how these funds will be used.” I’m not sure how you give money to the states as a block grant with states having the option of how it’s spent and at the same time assure it’s going to be spent on school choice for poor children. Like most conservatives, Trump is against federal mandates on grants to states, but he also wants to mandate how the money will be spent while giving states the option of how to spend it. If that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, well, we’re not supposed to get too hung up on the details. All that matters is TRUMP IS GOING TO MAKE AMERICA (and its schools) GREAT AGAIN!
This Just In: During his speech at the Value Voters Summit, Trump repeated his commitment to school choice and upped the ante. In addition to the $20 billion Trump wants to pull from the federal government’s . . . wherever, he said as president he would push the states to add $110 billion of their own to increase school choice for the poor and disadvantaged. Of course, he didn’t say where the money would come from.
I can think of a good way (cough, taxtherich, cough) Arizona could come up with a billion or two to supplement education for disadvantaged students. I wouldn’t target the money for charters and private schools, but the idea that students from low income families actually need more money for their educations than students with all kinds of financial and educational advantages at home, well, Mr. Trump, I have to say, I couldn’t agree more.
This article appears in Sep 8-14, 2016.
David, your passing judgement on Trumps level of thought on the issue of education, carries about as much wait as your solution to increased funding to public schools. By the way how much have you thought about ways to improve the charter school experience for the student?
Debra L, that would be “Trump’s” and “weight”.
Students from low income families do need more money APPLIED (not just granted) in support of their educations.
So get rid of all the mechanisms in troubled districts like TUSD for getting funds applied to inflated central administrative compensation packages instead of to valid student-support programs and you might see more of that happening locally. Has it really not yet become apparent to you that people seek to provide poor children with “choice” because getting poor urban districts to the point where they make meeting student needs (rather than meeting the needs of the political machines that have become entrenched in some of these settings) the priority has proved, in some cases, impossible?
Why do people talk about giving kids in districts like TUSD choices but not kids in districts like Catalina Foothills choices? Gee, I wonder. Might it have something to do with the fact that, even when you factor in the influence of kids having high-SES parents, schools in affluent districts are, by in large, actually functioning at a level where “escaping” them is not as compelling a need as it is to escape the rodent-infested, crumbling, insufficiently staffed and under-professionalized schools which, in districts like our largest local one, may be run by administrators who, in exchange for mismanaging a troubled, underfunded school system, get cushy benefits like 40-50 vacation days they can exchange for compensation at the rate of $1,000 per day? And are reputed, according to information provided in public records requests, to charge the district for $500 per night hotel suites when they travel to attend the school boards’ association conference? And award overpaid members of central admin $10K BONUSES in a district where sadly underpaid faculty go for years without raises, don’t get paid the (small) bonuses they should receive, and, when they finally do receive a raise, it is 1/5 the size of a central admin annual BONUS?
Let’s see your endorsements in the upcoming TUSD board elections. That should give us a pretty good perspective on to what degree your real concern is about the fates of poor students…or about the fates of people who have time and again rubber stamped steep increases in funds going to central admin rather than to the support of students while, bizarrely, at the same time, agreeing to give millions in deseg funds that could be applied in support of poor students back to the taxpayers. Do they think taxpayers are that stupid – that if they get a 16-cent discount on their tax rate, they won’t notice that the compensation package this year for a young, under-qualified and underperforming Superintendent will be close to $500K?
You’re saying, “Trump this,” and “Trump that,” but you’ve given no evidence to support that Mr. Trump has ever said any of that. All of Mr. Trumps adult children are well educated & performed quite well in private school, & in major universities. If education wasn’t important to their Dad, why would he pay millions for his own children’s education, encourage them to work hard, & to always excel in their studies?
Granny, Trump spending lots of money on his children’s education has no bearing on how he feels about education for disadvantaged children. Any insinuation that it does is ridiculous.
No evidence Granny. Other than Trump’s published and televised remarks and speeches, simply none at all. And as HSL says, comparing the educational experience of Trump’s children to that of an average American, that is simply ludicrous to begin with.
Yes we should really talk about Chelsea Clinton and her educational choices. But David is a partisan hack and he isn’t able to.
What has destroyed education is the introduction of partisan politics into the system, but then what do you expect – politicians smell money to be made in education the same way sharks smell blood in the water, and they have for years. I remember having Arizona history books that were provided by the Central Arizona Project before they actually started working on the CAP brick and mortar projects. Fortunately, even as a 4th grader, my B.S. detector was already finally tuned. Instead of working to influence future voters, how about teaching children reading, writing and arithmetic, and then let them figure out their politics on their own (hint: nowadays, it doesn’t matter, since both parties are part of the problem now that the idea of compromise is a political career killer).
Seems like the so-called progressives in “leadership” positions in TUSD know how to compromise with Ducey and the 1% policy agenda pretty well. But this is not the kind of constructive compromise (working together for the COMMON good) that this country needs. Instead, these people have compromised any number of progressive policy priorities as they outsourced labor, undermined subs’ ability to qualify for benefits, worked in support of 123, outrageously overpaid central administrators while keeping teachers on poverty-level wages, made a move towards reducing teacher credentialing requirements, gave deseg funds back to taxpayers, picked fights with and disparaged federal deseg authorities…I could go on, but I won’t.
As for Safier’s disparagement of education policy that includes support of “choice” programs for people residing in low functioning public school districts: it is partisan hackery and / or delusional utopian fantasy, not a pragmatic interest in sound education policy or genuine concern for the fate of the poor that motivates people like Safier when they continue to imply that the poor do not need to escape districts like TUSD, or Newark. They do.
In that not everyone is in a position that enables them to transfer kids out of districts like this, we need to keep working to improve them. But the Safier-style education policy white-wash job that attempts to reduce access to alternatives while giving an inaccurate impression of how low functioning these districts actually are is dishonest and morally irresponsible.
David
Your take on comparison of schools is correct but incomplere. Similar students get similar score gains – on average. But that average is beginning to migrate as parents get more choices and become more sophisticated consumers.
That average is also relative to other ststes. In 2015, our 8th grade African Americans rankednumber one jn the nation in math. Our Hispanics ranked 11th, up from 35th in 2011 and our white kids ranked 6th, up from 20th. Our combined math and reading gains from 2011 4th grade to2015 8th grade were the highest in the nation.
Its not just academics. Murders by juveniles in1992 were 70 per year by 2012 that had dropped to 7.
Teenage abortions dropped from over1500 to less than 500. This all happened while our at risk population tripled.
You cant blame money. From 2011 to 2015, school expenses fell by $400 million as our schools became the most cost effective in the nation.