What Would a President Trump Mean for Education?
Over the past couple weeks, I've been asked with increasing frequency what it would mean for education if Donald Trump actually won the presidency. (The question is usually asked with equal parts foreboding and disbelief.) I'll swallow my nausea and just try to offer a few thoughts. First, does Trump have a serious chance of winning the election? At the moment, while anything could still happen, he's the favorite to win the Republican nomination. If Trump does claim the nomination, the RealClearPolitics average has him currently trailing Clinton by less than three points. That means, however disconcerting it may be, that there's a real chance that Donald Trump could be the next president.
If Trump were to win, what might it mean for education? Here are five thoughts.
Personalities will matter more than policy. Trump gives no indication he's thought deeply about policy or has any especially strong convictions. As former president Jimmy Carter told Britain's House of Lords, "Trump has proven already that he's completely malleable. I don't think he has any fixed opinions that he would really go to the White House and fight for." Trump appears far more intrigued by personalities than by policy proposals, suggesting that his education agenda would be largely a product of which education persona happened to catch his fancy. Given that Trump seems to favor big, public personalities or individuals he's met through his commercial activities, I tend to think he'd wind up latching onto a colorful character he encountered in New York circles, was turned onto by friend, or spotted on CNN. Who that might turn out to be is anybody's guess.
Probably not a conservative agenda. In addition to lacking any obvious ideological guiderails, Trump is at daggers drawn with prominent conservative thinkers and think tanks. Contrary to the notion I've heard from some educators that Trump is a frighteningly ardent conservative, the truth is that he has mocked conservative thinking on 9/11, entitlements, Planned Parenthood, and much more. There's no reason to expect he'd suddenly be interested in hearing what scholars or policy wonks at traditional conservative outfits would have to say. Who he might listen to, which policies he might embrace, and how seriously he might embrace them is truly anyone's guess.
Don't take his pronouncements at face value. There's no reason to believe that Trump necessarily means what he's said on any issue. In truth, he seems to regard policy declarations as performance art. He's said that he would "outlaw" the Common Core, but it's not at all clear he knows what the Common Core is or how he'd try to do that. He's said that he would slash the U.S. Department of Education, but he's also the only What Would a President Trump Mean for Education? :: Frederick M. Hess: