The Demolition of American Education

Donald Trump and the budget proposed by Betsy DeVos to the US Department of Education are a great help for privatization and a disaster for public schools and low-income college students. They want to reduce federal spending on education by 13.6%. Some programs would be eliminated altogether; Others will face deep cuts. They want to cut $ 10.6 billion from existing programs and divert $ 1.4 billion toward charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools. This budget reflects Trump and DeVos' deep hostility to public education and their desire to reduce the Department of Education, with the ultimate goal of getting rid of it altogether.

The proposed budget would reduce aid programs that now allow 12 million students to go to college: college curricula and finance are cut in half, saving $ 490 million. This would eliminate a program of pardon for students, promulgated in 2007, encouraging university graduates to enter a career in public service - such as social work, teaching or working in medicine in rural areas - in the The relief of his debt to the university at the end of ten years of work. Some 550 000 young people have joined the program over the last decade; The first wave is due to his debts forgiven in 2017, but it is unclear whether the administration will follow the promise to cancel the debt.

The proposed budget would maintain funding for Pell scholarships for students from needy families, but would eliminate more than 700 million Perkins loans for disadvantaged students. No attempt was made to reduce the burden of rising university costs for students, whether poor or middle-income. Current student debt is around $ 1.4 trillion, and many students, graduates or not, spend years, even decades, to repay their loans. These cuts will reduce the number of students who can afford to go to college.

The most devastating cuts are directed programs for public schools. It supposes almost two dozen programs that have been removed on the basis that they have "reached their initial destination, duplicate other programs focus exclusively or can not prove their effectiveness." In many cases, the budget document states that these programs must be funded by someone else - not the US Department of Education, but "federal, state, local, and private funds." These programs include summer and summer programs that currently serve about two million students and protect children and engage in sports, arts, clubs and college when there is no school. They have never been judged by test results, but the budget says they do not improve student achievement and their goal is to save the government a billion dollars, ending their support. The budget assumes that another person will take over the account, but most states have reduced their education budgets since the recession of 2008 does not mention how the other sources will be able to offer this funding.

The administration wants to end many programs aimed especially at the poorest and disadvantaged minority students, while canceling vital improvements in public education such as arts and foreign language finance. These include additional educational services for Alaskan and Alaska Native Aboriginal students ($ 66 million); Art Education ($ 27 million); American History and Citizenship Academies ($ 1.8 million); Academic community schools provide all social and comprehensive health services to students and their families ($ 10 million); Literacy programs based libraries ($ 27 million); "Impact Aid" to districts that lose income due to federal facilities, such as military bases ($ 66 million); Education International and Foreign Language Studies ($ 73 million); The Javits program for gifted and talented students ($ 12 million); Preschool development grants to help states create or develop high-quality preschool services ($ 250 million); Special Olympics programs for students with disabilities ($ 10 million); And support for the entry into force of state subsidies, the funds used to form

With billions of existing programs in education, the only area to increase the budget for education would be a subsidy for school choice. Title I program of the ministry includes billions of dollars distributed to states and districts to assist the education of poor children, providing smaller classes, additional classroom or other assistance. Trump would set aside $ 1 billion in Title I dollars as a reward for states creating the open enrollment policy, which allows parents to choose schools that are not neighborhood schools and allow federal, state, and Local students follow the public school of their choice. In the configuration of "reform", called the school funding method "backpack full of cash". The money goes where the student goes.

Another Trump DeVos initiative amounts to $ 400 million to "create, develop, implement, replicate or adopt business-based, evidence-based and ground-based innovations to improve student performance ... and rigorously evaluate these innovations." By booking funds to purchase vouchers for use in private and religious schools, and researching the effectiveness of these programs.

Ironically, the Trump administration models a part of their approach to the race with the top program of the Obama administration, which held a race for states in 2009 and 2010. According to race to the top, to be eligible for 4.35 billion in federal funds, states should agree to increase the number of charter schools in the state; Evaluate teachers based on student outcomes; They adopt "college and professional standards", as everyone knew, they were the common basic standards freshly made (never tested in the field); And I agree to take drastic measures to restructure or close schools with the lowest scores on the tests consistently. There was no evidence of effectiveness to support one of these policies, but most states have changed their laws so that they can compete with the necessary funds. A recent evaluation by the Department of Education found that these policies were ineffective: "Overall, in all categories, we found ... no significant impact on math or reading scores, high school diploma or college enrollment." However, the race was a success One way to attract states to "voluntarily" that the federal government wanted them to do, but was prohibited by law to order them to do so.

Likewise, Trump offers states the opportunity to win a share of the $ 1 billion title pot if they agree to meet DeVos DeVos' demand and for more school choice: more cards, more coupons, More online schools, more alternatives to public schools. Even though they do not offer as much money as they race to the top, nearly two-thirds of states are now in the hands of Republicans, and most are likely to jump at the opportunity to introduce choice of school and vouchers for religious schools.

Since the enactment of No Child Left Behind Bush, it has become customary for every federal education law to insist on "evidence-based policy" and, in fact, to impose a policy based on speculation, with no evidence behind them. NCLB refers to "evidence based on" more than a hundred times. NCLB requires that every public school in the country to test all children from grades 3 through 8 each year and punish or reward schools based on their test scores, despite evidence that this federal intrusion was missing bold. The "Texas miracle" is supposed to be proof of this strategy; Bush said that if everyone is tested every year, tens do increase, graduation rates and increase yield gap between races begin to close. Unfortunately, this was not supported by actual results; There was no miracle, simply - as we say in Texas - "Texas counts," an empty toilet.

And now the Trump administration says it wants school choice policies to be "evidence-based ... to improve student performance." But since 1990, we had schools and voucher programs and there is more and more data showing that they do not improve student performance. Milwaukee opened charter schools and a voucher program for poor children in 1990. There are currently three competing sectors: public schools, charter schools, and school vouchers. The last two sectors select their students and prefer to avoid students with deep disabilities or who are learning English. Public schools take all competitors. However, there is little or no difference in test results across the three sectors. And Milwaukee is one of the worst-performing urban districts in the nation in the federal test called the National Assessment of Progress in Education. There is no tide.

There are good programs in several states, such as Louisiana, Ohio and Indiana. Recent assessments have revealed that good students in those states were not as academic as their peers in public schools. Earlier this year, an assessment by the federal voucher government program in the District of Columbia, established by Republican-led Congress in 2004 found that on average, students using the right had harder test scores Than his peers who remained public schools.

DeVos, who spent decades defending school vouchers, responded to poor results by saying, "When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should be no difference in performance between different types of schools." But if the goal is to "improve student achievement," this seems to be an admission of failure.

The state of Michigan DeVos has embraced the ideology of the election, but it is not good because the public massively rejected them in a referendum in 2000 (funded by DeVos and her husband). Michigan has hundreds of charter schools. Eighty percent of them operate for profit. Charter schools exert more serious results than public schools. During the past fifteen years, while Michigan continued its election as a reform strategy, state scores on the national assessment of educational progress have declined significantly.

Therefore, we have a budget for federal education policy that places a powerful weakness, primarily on programs that serve middle-income and low-income students. Its main innovation is a proven failure. DeVos has no idea how to use or improve public schools. Your only idea is the choice. But we already know how it will happen.