Public Schools Are a “Pillar of our Democracy.” Trump and DeVos Declare Them “Antiquated and Oppressive.”
If you are going to read one article about public education this week, I recommend Derek Black’s commentary in last Friday’s USA Today, Trump’s ‘Education Freedom’ Plan Is an Attack on Public Schools. That’s Un-American. Derek Black is a professor of law at the University of South Carolina.
Black begins by challenging what he calls the coded language being used by President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to pitch DeVos’s one program idea—the one she has pitched unsuccessfully to Congress now for three years running and the program she is pitching again this year. This is, of course, her idea for a kind of federal private school vouchers at public expense, a $5 billion plan for tuition-tax-credits.
Black explains: “‘Education freedom’—the Trump administration’s new buzzwords—is not about good education for the public. It’s about ending all that public education stands for. The administration won’t claim that precise goal because it’s politically toxic, including with a huge chunk of its own base. Instead, President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have carefully aimed at core aspects of public education without ever formally declaring war. But peel away the coded language and convoluted tax schemes, and the only thing left is an agenda incompatible with public education.”
In his State of the Union message, Trump described “American children trapped in government schools.”
Black responds: “‘Government schools’ refers to public schools in general… (T)he point is to equate public schools with all the negative connotations government conjures—waste, CONTINUE READING: Public Schools Are a “Pillar of our Democracy.” Trump and DeVos Declare Them “Antiquated and Oppressive.” | janresseger