Biden and Democrats Turn Away from Two Decades of Test-Based Public School Accountability and Privatization
Joe Biden’s education plan and the Democratic Platform on education this year should be recognized as a significant development. Biden’s plan embodies something new for Democrats—a turn away from two decades when Democrats bought into neoliberal experimentation in education. Biden supports expanding opportunity for children through better federal funding of public schools and at the same time curtailing abuses in charter schools.
This blog will take a short end of summer break. Look for a new post Wednesday, September 9.
Donald Trump’s stance on education has not changed. For four years, the President has been endorsing marketplace school choice—code language for the expansion of school privatization at public expense. As a candidate for reelection, Trump merely says he will go on trying to expand marketplace school choice if he wins a second term. He and Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos endorse the continuation of the federal Charter Schools Program. Trump and DeVos are also pushing a $5 billion federal tuition tax credit program they got got someone to introduce into both the House and Senate as “The School Choice Now Act.” This is the same Education Freedom Scholarship Program DeVos has inserted year after year into the President’s proposed federal budget. Every year Congress has made sure that it didn’t make it into the final appropriations bill as passed. While the President says he will push school choice—more charters and an expansion of tuition tax credit school vouchers to pay for private school tuition—he never mentions the public schools except for demanding that they reopen as the vehicle for getting parents back to work.
But for Democrats, the direction of education policy seems finally to have shifted. Shifted in a very positive direction.
Some History: Two Decades of Education “Reform”
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted by Congress with bipartisan support in 2001 and CONTINUE READING: Biden and Democrats Turn Away from Two Decades of Test-Based Public School Accountability and Privatization | janresseger
