Bill Mathis Reflects on Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost?
Bill Mathis understands public education from his experience as an award winning local school superintendent, a member of a state board of education and an academic expert on education policy. Bill is the Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder and the former superintendent of schools for the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union in Brandon, Vermont. He was a National Superintendent of the Year finalist and a Vermont Superintendent of the Year. He currently serves on the Vermont State Board of Education and chairs the legislative committee.
Mathis condemns President Donald Trump’s miserly 2018 federal education budget that undermines our nation’s principles: “In 1965, the federal government, driven by the obligation to provide equal opportunities to the least fortunate of our citizens, passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was intended to lift the nation by strengthening our poorest children and schools, improving the quality of teaching, opening the doors of higher education, and providing skills to adults… And the emphasis was on building the common good. By widely investing in our citizens, we invest in the health of our society. Those principles have found no refuge in the work of President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos; all that remains of these great purposes is a confusion of empty words….”
Mathis has given me permission to print his reflection on the meaning of the President’s federal budget proposal, released last week.
Bill Mathis
Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost?
“But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropp’d manna and could make the worse appear the better reason. — John Milton, Paradise Lost, II.I.112
We had a vision of a more perfect nation where democracy and equality were more than aspirations. We believed we could make this piece of paradise real with the unity of the people and the purposefulness of our governments. But this has been reduced to an endless series of false and hollow incantations whose life-span is as transient as its denial in the next morning’s news cycle.
In 1965, the federal government, driven by the obligation to provide equal opportunities to the least fortunate of our citizens, passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was intended to lift the nation by strengthening our poorest children and schools, improving the quality of teaching, opening the doors of higher education, and providing skills to adults. It embraced the ideal voiced by the late President Kennedy that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” And the emphasis was on building the common good. By widely investing in our citizens, we invest in the health of our society and economy.
Those principles have found no refuge in the work of President Trump and Education Secretary DeVos; all that remains of these great purposes is a confusion of empty words made to appear as if the worst were the better. Larded with phrases like “commitment to improving Bill Mathis Reflects on Trump’s Education Budget: A Paradise Lost? | janresseger:
