President Donald J. Trump has never been a fan of education. Part of it may stem from his botched experience trying to run an institution of higher learning. It was definitely in place by the time he announced he loved the poorly educated. This week, however, Trump’s run against education and educators has been in absolute overdrive. It is easy to focus on a tweet here or there, but the Trump summer F- You tour to education began a few months ago, when Trump’s Secretary of Education continued her war on Title IX. This morning on Fox News Sunday, Devos laid out the next real goal: ending public education as we know it.
DeVos added on Fox News Sunday that the Trump administration was looking at “all the options” for pulling federal funding from schools that don’t open in the fall. “American investment in education is a promise to students and their families,” she said. “If schools aren’t going to reopen… they shouldn’t get the funds,” she said.
School policies are mostly set locally, with the largest slice of funding coming from a mix of local property taxes, school levies, state funding, or sales taxes. The state of California is a good example of the mix, with 58% of funding coming from the state, 22% from local property tax, 9% from the Federal government, and the rest a mix of everything else. Over the last decade, as funding has failed to keep up with the needs of the classroom, we’ve had debates regarding overcrowded classrooms and better special education. From Education Week:
That plea has gotten the attention of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, many of whom have included pledges to "fully fund" IDEA in their education plans alongside calls to dramatically expand federal education spending across the board.
"We believe in treating these, the least of thy brethren, as people of value," Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a December debate in Los Angeles, referring to a Bible verse that calls for protections for the most vulnerable people in society.
The candidate, who frequently touts her year as a special education teacher, has pledged $20 billion in additional annual funding for IDEA.
The administration has only one plan. It’s a simple one. It is to work every day to devalue, ridicule, and mock educators. To attack education in general. To mock those who need assistance. To crowd up classrooms for the wealthy. To create a gigantic divide between the have and have nots in terms of educational access.
It’s OK. Let’s cram kids into classrooms in the middle of a pandemic without a plan and hope educators go along with it, we all know they are being paid incredible salaries to be a high school teacher.
PS, Betsy, my oldest son with disabilities attends a Catholic school that specifically handles persons with complex disabilities. Guess what? They aren’t allowing students in because many of those students — special needs students in lower population classrooms — are still high-risk spreaders and at risk of more illness due to the medications they take. Have you even talked to, you know, a real educator recently? Or just cronies? And no, former teachers from Trump University do not count.