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NPR
Donald Trump's
Plan For America's Schools
Cory Turner
"I'm a tremendous believer in education."
So begins a campaign ad for Republican presidential nominee Donald J.
Trump.
But what does that mean?
What does Trump believe about how we should fund and fix our schools,
train and pay our teachers, and, most importantly, educate every child
whether they're rich or poor, fluent in English or anything but,
learning disabled or two grades ahead?
To these questions the candidate has offered few clear answers.
"Donald Trump's policy positions are performance art." That criticism
comes not from the left but from Rick Hess, who studies education
policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. And, Hess
says, "it is an immense mistake to take any of it all that seriously."
Hoping to flesh out Trump's education ideas ahead of tomorrow's big
presidential debate, we asked his campaign for help. They never got
back to us.
We also reached out to the two men who, as reported by Education Week,
have been named to the candidate's presidential transition team for
education. Both said they could not talk without permission from the
Trump campaign, permission that was not granted.
And so, in trying to get a picture of his education platform, we're
left mostly with the candidate's own words.
Let's start with the rest of that campaign ad:
Local Control
"I'm a tremendous believer in education. But education has to be at a
local level," Trump says from his leather office chair, looking
directly into the camera. "We cannot have the bureaucrats in Washington
telling you how to manage your child's education."
This is a common theme for Trump: Washington needs to butt out of our
schools.
"There's no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our
government-run education monopoly," he said earlier this month at a
campaign stop in Cleveland.
In this story line, schools are the business of the local community —
of the district — and the U.S. Department of Education is Public Enemy
No. 1, pushing down onerous rules that make life harder for educators,
students and parents.
While this may sound more like a feeling than a policy position, stay
tuned:
On Oct. 18, 2015, Trump told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace that,
if elected President, he would consider cutting the Education
Department entirely.
That would be a profound policy shift from past presidents and one
worth reckoning with briefly here.
It's not clear if Trump, in cutting the Department, would also cut the
services that it provides, but, since his conversation with Wallace was
in the context of broader spending cuts it's reasonable to assume he
would.
Those services include providing roughly $15 billion in Title I funds
to help schools that educate at-risk students, more than $12 billion
for students with special needs, and some $29 billion in Pell Grants to
help low-income students pay for college (all according to 2016
Congressional appropriations).
Common Core
On February 10, 2016, Trump tweeted: "I have been consistent in my
opposition to Common Core. Get rid of Common Core — keep education
local!"
In that campaign ad on his website, Trump is even more colorful:
"Common Core is a total disaster. We can't let it continue."
The Common Core are learning standards in math and English language
arts that were developed through a collaboration between the National
Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.
According to the Core's website, they're being used in 42 states and
the District of Columbia.
Trump's loathing for the Core needs unpacking — because you have to
understand how the standards were created to understand how schools can
be "rid of" them.
The Core were adopted by states at the state level. There was no
top-down vote from Congress, no presidential signature. Yes, President
Obama and his Education Department dangled money in front of states who
agreed to do many things, including adopt rigorous new standards. But
Washington could not, and did not, force the Core on states. As such,
if states want to repeal the standards, they can and have. But a
President Trump ... couldn't.
Besides, if he tried, it might feel an awful lot like "the bureaucrats
in Washington telling you how to manage your child's education."
School Choice
Earlier this month, in Cleveland, Trump unveiled perhaps the most
specific education proposal of his campaign.
"As president, I will establish the national goal of providing school
choice to every American child living in poverty," Trump said. "If we
can put a man on the moon, dig out the Panama Canal and win two world
wars, then I have no doubt that we as a nation can provide school
choice to every disadvantaged child in America."
The plan would involve a $20 billion government investment,
"reprioritizing existing federal dollars." The money would go to states
as block grants and follow disadvantaged students wherever they go: to
a traditional public school in their neighborhood or elsewhere, a
charter school or even a private school.
While Trump made clear the $20 billion would not be new money, he did
not say where he would find that much old money to reprioritize.
This idea, known as portability, is popular in conservative circles
because, it is assumed, the competition that comes with choice would
force struggling public schools to improve or close. But it worries
many student advocates because, they say, it would also drain money
from the schools that need it most and send taxpayer dollars to
well-resourced private schools.
Higher Education
As with K-12, Trump has said little in detail about planned policies
for higher education.
In May, a senior Trump policy advisor, Sam Clovis, did tell Inside
Higher Ed that a Trump administration would work to get the government
out of the student loan business and restore lending to private banks.
The debt issue has gotten a fair amount of attention, as we've covered
here, here and here, among other stories.
"We think it (student loans) should be marketplace and market driven,"
Clovis told Inside Higher Ed. He also said Trump rejects President
Obama's proposals to make community college free for new high school
graduates.
Would a push to privatize student lending work?
"I just don't think that's realistic," says Eric Hanushek, a Senior
Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative-leaning think tank at
Stanford University. The government has historically played a key
lending role and is likely to continue, Hanushek says. "Private lenders
are not about to enter into that market sufficiently to make loans to
all students. It would be wise not to get the government out of student
loans altogether."
The basic mechanics of implementing that kind of public-to-private
switch, says Deborah Seymour with the American Council on Education,
"would require such a complicated plan that making that happen might
take longer than he's probably currently projecting."
Hanushek adds that many of Trump's statements on education and other
topics "are vague, and you could interpret them in many ways."
Child Care
Finally, Trump's take on childcare. The pitch, on his website, tells us
what most parents know all-too-well: "Raising a child is now the single
greatest expense for most American families — even exceeding the cost
of housing in much of the country."
What would President Trump do about that?
He's proposed making all childcare costs tax-deductible for kids up to
13 years old — and for up to four children per household. Deductions
would be limited to a state's average childcare cost and to families
earning less than $500,000 a year.
Returning to a common theme for Trump — choice — the proposal would
cover "a variety of different kinds of childcare—institutional,
private, nursery school, afterschool care, and enrichment activities."
Trump's proposal, which he unveiled earlier this month, would also
provide six weeks of unemployment benefits to all new mothers. While
states cap those benefits, the proposal would be an improvement for
many new moms and a big change from current federal policy (which pays
them nothing). That said, the plan did raise eyebrows for one word
conspicuously missing: Dads.
A lot to digest — but still surprisingly few classroom specifics.
Both candidates, Eric Hanushek says, have largely side-stepped
specifics about K-12 education. Clinton talks about universal pre-K and
Trump a little about student loans, he says, "but there's this gaping
hole in the middle called K-12 education." It's troubling, Hanushek
says, as education is "second only to national security" in national
importance.
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