The Education Implications of an Election When Education Isn’t Mentioned
This blog will be back with a new post on Thursday, November 10. I will be taking off Tuesday to help get out the vote and taking off Wednesday to consider the election results.
When a public education system that serves 50 million children is not even really discussed in a national election, that says something about the problems in this political season, doesn’t it?
And this is at a time when rapid growth of school privatization has been extremely controversial, when we have been punishing the schools in our poorest communities and their teachers but when at the same time we have neglected to increase support for the public schools that serve communities where poverty is concentrated. I’ll just remind you—in case Donald Trump’s misogyny, racism, xenophobia, failure to pay his taxes, and propensity to cheat the people who have provided services for his businesses aren’t enough to turn you off—that Trump has announced his education plan would expand vouchers and charters—nothing beyond that. Trump came to a very low-performing charter school in Cleveland, Ohio in early September to announce his plan: “The Republican presidential nominee used his appearance at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy to announce that his first budget would redirect $20 billion in federal funding to create a state-run block grant that he said he hoped would help poor children in low-performing public schools to enroll at charter and private schools. ‘I’m proposing a plan to provide school choice to every disadvantaged student in America.'”
Hillary Clinton was endorsed early on by both of the teachers unions and she has consistently described education-related priorities including expanded child care and preschool, and relief from college debt. Clinton has been a little vague about plans for K-12 schooling, but she has promised that “(E)ducators will have a partner in the White House, and… always have a seat at the table.” That in itself is pretty radical language in these days when many people agree that current public education accountability has been done to, not done with, school teachers. Neither the federal No Child Left Behind Act nor its replacement, the Every Student Succeeds Act, has added significant funding to help schools in the poorest communities. In fact the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently explained that between 2010 and 2016, the federal government reduced the Title I program by 8.3 percent; federal funding for programs under the Individuals with Disability Education Act fell by 6.4 percent (both The Education Implications of an Election When Education Isn’t Mentioned | janresseger:
