Trump’s Dystopian Vision for Schools
I frankly was shocked that Donald Trump finally mentioned children and schooling in a speech Tuesday night; these days, educators are used to dealing with the toxic climate he has created with his bullying and bigotry. So I stopped what I was doing and listened to his speech.
Imagine my surprise that Trump recognized — or someone noted it for him — that too many kids don’t get a fair shot to pursue their dreams, especially in poor urban and rural communities.
Unfortunately, the things he proposed would just make the situation worse.
Trump is dead wrong on the root causes of some kids’ failure to succeed. And rather than propose even one proven strategy that would help kids, he dusted off the status quo Republican playbook of worn-out establishment ideas that simply would destabilize neighborhoods and schools and make it harder and harder to attract, retain and support great teachers.
We have a shared responsibility to ensure all children can receive a high-quality public education, regardless of their ZIP code or background. But nearly two decades of the market-based solutions Trump peddles have overpromised and underdelivered, and in places like Detroit they’ve left kids even worse off.
Trump calls for “school choice” — marketer code for private charters, vouchers and selling off our schools to private firms. While there are some exceptional charters, charters on average perform about the same as traditional public schools, and the sector is rife with fraud and corruption, often discriminates against high-needs students, and has undermined public districts in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago.
That’s part of why social justice groups like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter are speaking out against charter school proliferation and the privatization of our public schools, going so far as to propose a moratorium on charters in a recent NAACP resolution.
And Trump’s other big “choice” idea — vouchers? Voucher programs simply don’t work. They’ve been ruled unconstitutional in multiple states, including Colorado and Florida. Students who attend schools using vouchers often do worse than those who stayed in their neighborhood public schools.
Real school choice is a public system with options that give kids multiple pathways to pursue their passions and learn critical skills like creativity, problem solving and teamwork. We need thriving traditional public schools that anchor neighborhoods, powerful instruction that engages kids, and supports that address students’ and families’ well-being. That can include magnet schools with specialized programs; community schools that support children and families in hard-hit areas; charters that are part of — not in place of — a public district; and robust career and technical, IB, early college and other programs to prepare kids for college, trades and careers. This starts with an investment in what works, not cutting educational spending as Trump previously proposed.
Trump’s other failed solutions? Merit pay, and stripping job protections from teachers.
Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it’s no surprise. When you base teacher pay on standardized test scores, you won’t improve education, you just promote the high-stakes testing craze that’s led parents, students and educators to shout “enough” all across the country.
Instead of merit pay, maybe we could discuss paying teachers fairly as professionals. Just last week, the Economic Policy Institute showed that teachers earn 17 percent less than comparable professionals, and the gap is getting worse. If we want to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, it starts with a fair wage, adequate working conditions, and the resources and support to succeed. Remember teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.
And while Trump and his pals like to rail about tenure, what he doesn’t get — predictably, despite his claims that he’ll “be your voice” — is that tenure gives teachers a voice and a fair disciplinary process. While tenure should never be a cloak for incompetence, an excuse for managers not to manage or a job for life, the most recent data bears out that districts with strong tenure protections both fire more teachers who shouldn’t be in the classroom and retain more high-quality teachers.
While Trump is repeating old attack lines and pushing disproven ideology, he conveniently ignores the real reasons many kids are struggling. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has slashed education funding by 14 percent, nearly $1.5 billion, and his cuts have had especially devastating results for kids in poor neighborhoods. Instead of investing in kids and communities, Walker hands out hundreds of millions in tax cuts to corporations and his wealthy pals.
Trump claimed that Milwaukee’s $10,000 per pupil is “very, very, very high.” It’s actually almost exactly the average and, unfortunately, much too low. In high-poverty places like Milwaukee, we need community schools where students receive wraparound services — like laundry facilities, mental health services, healthcare, mentoring and tutoring — to ensure they can focus on learning. Wisconsin spends nearly $38,000 per prisoner; maybe if we invested early in students we’d need fewer cells.
Meanwhile, just across the border in Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton has shown the path we should be on. On taking office, he raised taxes on the wealthy and invested in schools, public services and infrastructure. Now, Minnesota’s economy is booming. Its budget deficit has become a $900 million surplus. Unemployment is low and wages are growing. While there’s still work to do, Dayton’s policies are making real, positive change in people’s lives.
Trump has said he would slash the Department of Education and cut education spending “way, way, way down” on the way to a $30 trillion tax cut for the richest Americans. His vision of America is like Walker’s — helping his friends take home the whole cake and leaving a few crumbs for the rest of us.
Trump had the audacity to frame his case as a fight for racial justice — at a rally in a Wisconsin suburb that’s 94 percent white and 1 percent black. He tells African-Americans that he’ll be their champion and asks for their vote, just two weeks after a federal court struck down the state’s voter ID law — forced through by Republicans in Madison — finding the law was “specifically targeted to curtail voting in Milwaukee without any other legitimate purpose.” It takes a special kind of hypocrisy to ask for someone’s vote while actively trying to make sure they can’t cast one in the first place.
Like so many of his other speeches and actions, Donald Trump’s speech in West Bend was chock-full of divisive slogans and sound bites. Worse, it repeated dangerous and disproven ideas, ignored the root causes of big problems, echoed disproven ideas and once again set up straw-man arguments to blame teachers.
That’s not the kind of leadership we need.
