Trump: DeVos is ‘highly respected’; U.S. education is ‘so sad’; Common Core must ‘end’; and much more
President Trump was asked Tuesday about his education priorities and how he would address “the disconnect” between skills that companies are looking for and what young people entering the workforce are able to offer. This is what he said:
- “If you look at so many elements of education, and it is so sad to see what is coming, happening in the country.”
- He really likes charter schools and doesn’t think they are “an experiment” anymore.
- The Common Core State Standards has “to end” because “we have to bring education local.”
- Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is “doing a terrific job,” is “highly respected” and has “a tremendous track record.”
At the town hall event in Washington, Catherine Engelbert, chief executive of Deloitte, asked him about his priorities “around education” and around “the work of the future.”
She noted that the New York City public high school graduation rate is 70 percent, but the readiness of students for college and career is assessed at 37 percent, and she asked him to explain his education priorities given the extraordinary pace of change in the workplace and the “disconnect between what employers need and what are our students coming into the workforce are prepared to deliver.”
He responded: “Why are the numbers so horrific in terms of education and what happens when somebody goes through school and then they can’t read?”
She then noted that New York has made “enormous progress” with education in the past decade, but said “we have a lot of work to do” and suggested looking anew at funding projects and program consolidation and public-private partnerships.
Trump said he knows New York City has made progress, but noted that public education in cities is “rough.” He didn’t directly address any of the issues she mentioned but went into a somewhat rambling explanation of his education priorities.
Here is the bulk of his response:
“Charter schools are another thing people are talking about, a lot, and some of the charter schools in New York have been amazing. They’ve done incredibly well. People can’t get in, you can’t get in. It’s been, I don’t call it an experiment any more. It’s far beyond an experiment. If you look at so many elements of education and it is so sad to see what is coming, what’s happening in the country. … The cities. It’s a very rough situation.”“Common Core. I mean, we have to bring education more local. We can’t be managing education from Washington. When I go out to Iowa, when I go out to the different states and I talk, they want to run their school programs locally. And they’ll do a much better job than somebody, and, look, these are some very good people in Washington. But you also have bureaucrats that make a lot of money and don’t really care that much about what they are doing or about the community that they have never seen and they’ll never meet and they never will see…. You know Common Core to me is, we have to end it. We have to bringTrump: DeVos is ‘highly respected’; U.S. education is ‘so sad’; Common Core must ‘end’; and much more - The Washington Post:
