Charter School Support Fades: the Network for Public Education Deserves Much of the Credit
Earlier this week, this blog explored what Betsy DeVos hopes will be a major restructure in the U.S. Department of Education. That she is considering the restructure of the department became clear in the President’s FY21 budget proposal, which collapses Title I into a huge block grant with 28 other programs, and cuts funding for these combined programs by $4.7 billion. Title I is the Department’s largest program and the centerpiece of the federal government’s primary role in public education—ensuring that whatever happens in the states, the federal government will supplement programming to assist schools serving concentrations of very poor children. In a related responsibility (through the Department’s Office for Civil Rights), the U.S. Department of Education’s mission is also to protect the educational rights of children our society has historically marginalized. These programs, begun in the 1960s, grew out of the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty.
Congressional failure to enact President Trump’s budgets over the past three years suggests that passage of the President’s proposed federal budget for the 2021 fiscal year is also unlikely. However, a budget proposal is a statement of an administration’s priorities. The idea that Trump and DeVos want to mess with Title I should alert Congress to be very careful.
There is another shocker in Trump’s federal FY21 federal budget proposal that we ought to notice: The President and the Secretary of Education propose to end the federal Charter Schools Program as a stand alone funding line. Since 1994, the Department of Education has spent billions of dollars to startup and expand the number of charter schools across the states. Why is an Education Secretary who insistently promotes school choice proposing a budget that phases out the Charter Schools Program? Some are speculating that DeVos prefers vouchers, and she is putting all of her effort in the fourth year of this administration into CONTINUE READING: Charter School Support Fades: the Network for Public Education Deserves Much of the Credit | janresseger
