Donald Trump gave a big education policy speech Thursday afternoon, choosing to deliver it at an appropriate location: a poorly performing charter school with a lot of lobbying money in its background. Trump offered up the usual Republican privatization wish list of vouchers, charter schools, and online charter schools bleeding money from public schools, with the centerpiece being to take all of the federal money currently allocated to schools and districts with the most low-income students and allow it to bleed out to charter and private schools. As education reporter Dana Goldstein tweeted, “I could write something about Trump's ‘plan’ but all there is to say is that it's warmed over early '00s stuff.”
Trump touted merit pay for teachers, which research shows does not improve educational outcomes. He called for vouchers, which haven’t done especially well by students in Milwaukee or Louisiana or, for that matter, Ohio:
Ohio has a state program that supplies taxpayer-funded vouchers to more than 18,000 students. A recent study of that program, released in July by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, found that students who used the vouchers to attend private schools actually performed worse on standardized tests than similar students who stayed in public schools.
And then there are the charters, which John Oliver had a thing or two to say about, including a significant focus on, yes, Ohio.
The Clinton campaign released a statement responding to Trump’s education plans:
"It's no surprise that Donald Trump—whose only experience when it comes to education is his fraudulent 'Trump University'—offered education policies that would prove disastrous for our public schools, our educators, and most importantly, our kids. Let's be clear: Trump's proposal to apparently gut nearly 30 percent of the federal education budget and turn it into private school vouchers would decimate public schools across America and deprive our most vulnerable students of the education they deserve.
"Hillary Clinton believes that the public school system is one of the pillars of our democracy. As president she will fight to strengthen our public schools to ensure every student receives a world-class education, regardless of their ZIP code."
Donald Trump believes in private profit and in destroying public education as a public good.
