Billionaire-Backed Lawsuit Against Teacher Tenure Fails in Minnesota
Trump has proposed to slash funding for public education in his 2020 budget. In courts across the country, however, public schools are holding up in lawsuits brought by pro-charter interests.
President Donald Trump just released his 2020 budget, and once again, education funding is on the chopping block. Since taking office in 2017, Trump has prioritized pumping more dollars into the Defense Department while cutting funds from the Department of Education as well as health and human services.
So far, Congress has refused to enact the large-scale cuts to education that Trump has proposed. For 2020, Trump is seeking a 10 percent cut in education spending, equaling just over $7 billion. Targeted programs include a student loan forgiveness program for those who take up public-service jobs, a professional development model for teachers , and funding for student enrichment opportunities.
There are a few education programs that the Trump Administration is eager to douse with resources, however. The 2020 budget calls for an increase of $60 million for federal charter school grants to facilitate the growth of the publicly funded yet privately managed schools. Similarly, Republican lawmakers have pushed a tax-credit scholarship program—worth $5 billion annually—that would divert resources from public education and promote access to private schools.
These priorities line up with those of Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. In a statement regarding the 2020 budget, DeVos praised the Trump Administration for its “continued commitment to expanding education freedom,” and celebrated the many ways this “freedom” can be acted upon—including school choice, and a preference for “returning power education decisions to those closest to students.”
DeVos’s plans and the Trump Administration’s budget proposal reveal a solid commitment to market-based school privatization strategies as the way to manage public education in the United States. But as a recent case in Minnesota highlights, many of these plans may not work.
In Minnesota, a billionaire-funded, pro-education reform outfit, recently backed away from its behind-the-scenes effort to blame unionized teachers as the cause of unequal access to a high quality education.
The Partnership for Educational Justice has attempted to tackle teachers’ unions from a legal angle, primarily through a handful of lawsuits filed in CONTINUE READING: Billionaire-Backed Lawsuit Against Teacher Tenure Fails in Minnesota - Progressive.org
