Last night we were treated to a diatribe about how awful American public schools are by a young man who never attended a public school: Donald Trump, Jr.
These days, those who know the least are likely to spout off the most.
Mr. Trump Jr. went to a fancy private school with a tuition that is about equal to the median American annual salary.
William Doyle watched the speech and dashed off a comment:
In his speech at the Republican convention last night, Donald J. Trump
Jr. managed to mix up the subject of education so badly that he stated
it completely backwards from the truth.
Trump said, “You know why other countries do better in K-through-12?
They let parents choose where to send their own children to school.
That’s called competition. It’s called the free market.”
In fact, the nations that have introduced measures of so-called
“free-market choice” in their education systems — notably Sweden,
Chile, and most recently the UK — have experienced no improvement in
overall results, and have instead seen quality and equity decline.
By contrast, the superstars of global education, including Finland,
Canada, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, have largely single-model
national delivery systems of education that stress teacher
professionalism and autonomy, equity for all students, and the regular
testing and assessment of students by experienced teachers, not by bad
data created by wasteful and low-quality standardized tests.
If we want to Make America Great Again in education, we should be
inspired by their example.
—William Doyle is a Fulbright Scholar who lectures on global education
at the University of Eastern Finland, and spends several months a year
as a public school father of an 8-year old in Finland.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trump the Chump Jr. is a chip of the old block, another liar.
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Did you know that only 55 percent of Finnish students go to high school? So to compare the USA with mandatory education for all to Finland is apples to tomatoes.
On Wednesday, July 20, 2016, Diane Ravitchs blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Last night we were treated to a diatribe about how > awful American public schools are by a young man who never attended a > public school: Donald Trump, Jr. These days, those who know the least are > likely to spout off the most. Mr. Trump Jr. went ” >
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According to the listing on Wiki — and just because it is on Wiki doesn’t make it wrong — 54 percent of students in Finland graduate from academic high schools and 45 percent graduate from vocational high schools.
Both are high schools.
Many countries have two high school tracks. For instance, China, South Korea and Japan, where about 30 percent of its high school graduates graduate from a vocational high school. It’s called choice.
Therefore, 99 percent of students in Finland graduated from a high school.
“Upper secondary education begins at 16 or 17 and lasts three to four years (roughly corresponding to the last two years of American high school plus what in the USA would be a two-year Community or Junior College). It is not compulsory. Finnish upper secondary students may choose whether to undergo occupational training to develop vocational competence and/or to prepare them for a polytechnic institute or to enter an academic upper school focusing on preparation for university studies and post-graduate professional degrees in fields such as law, medicine, science, education, and the humanities. Admissions to academic upper schools are based on GPA, and in some cases academic tests and interviews. For example, during the year 2007, 51% of the age group were enrolled in the academic upper school.[25]
“The system is not rigid, however and vocational school graduates may formally qualify for university of applied sciences or, in some cases, university education; and academic secondary school graduates may enroll into vocational education programs.[26] It is also possible to attend both vocational and academic secondary schools at the same time. Tuition is free, and vocational and academic students are entitled to school health care and a free lunch. However, they must buy their own books and materials.
“Upon graduation, vocational school graduates receive a vocational school certificate. Academic upper secondary school graduates receive both secondary school certification and undergo a nationally graded matriculation examination (Finnish: Ylioppilastutkinto). This was originally the entrance examination to the University of Helsinki, and its high prestige survives to this day. Students in special programs may receive a vocational school certificate and take the matriculation examination (kaksoistutkinto) or all of the three certifications (kolmoistutkinto). Approximately 83% of the upper academic school students, or 42% of the age group, complete the matriculation examination.[27]
“Polytechnic institutes require school certification for admission, whereas the matriculation examination is more important in university admissions. However, some tertiary education programmes have their own admission examinations, and many use a mixture of both.”
The United States graduates more than 80 percent of its students from academic high schools, because there are no public vocational high schools. U.S. high school graduates then have a choice: go to a local community college for vocational training or to a private for profit college and that is risky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland#Upper_secondary_education
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AJELLO What is your source? Finnish schools are structured different, but I’m seeing 85% completing post-secondary or tertiary for 24-35yr old group in 2005. Source http://www.stat.fi. Plus 47% attending vocational at 16 yrs. And a literacy rate of 100%(!???). Are we apples or tomatoes?
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Tracy, almost all Finnish students complete high school. Some choose the academic path, some choose the career/technical path. All get a good education, prepared for college or career. And by the way, all higher education is tuition-free, including graduate school.
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Lloyd, interesting details on Finnish school system. Sounds exactly like the structure Poland has today. You can see a chart of it if you search on google images “Polish education system”. They restructured to this model about 15 yrs ago, & have seen a sharp rise in international standing.
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This should be used as an opportunity to publicize the truth.
Luckily he was talking to the walking intellectually dead, a big herd. They don’t distinguish between lie and truth. They only vaguely understand loud noise and fire.
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Shiny things keep the conventioneers occupied.
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Those who read Harry Potter books are likely to dislike Trump:
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/4413658/donald-trump-harry-potter-study/%3fsource=dam?client=safari#
What about those who read period?
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That’s because Trump is the spitting image of Lord Voldemort but without the cotton candy peach colored hair piece. Looking at Voldemort, I think someone chopped off Trump’s nose for all of his lying. Trump’s nose grew so long, people in China were tripping on it.
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My jaw also dropped when Donnie Jr. claimed that the countries with the most successful education systems were “choice” systems — vouchers, charters, no unions, with the free market making a thousand flowers bloom, etc. — while in the U.S., the self-interested adults in unions were selfishly holding the U.S. back from doing the same
His comments are the exact opposite of the truth. What he claimed is basically the equivalent of saying,
“World War II broke out when Poland invaded Nazi Germany.”
OR
“The Confederacy won the Civil War when Grant Surrendered to Lee.”
OR
“Abraham Lincoln shot John Wilkes Booth.”
Again … a Bizarro World description of reality.
As for Chile and Sweden, imposing a free marked system in education has proven to be an unqualified and unmitigated disaster.
I realized he was just reading a script that he was given, one written by someone as ignorant as he. Having a attended a $50,000/year rich kids’ private school, Donnie Jr. knows as much about public education for the middle and working classes as he does about how to speak Sanskrit, or the workings of a nuclear reactor, or whatever.
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As for Chris Christie’s performance, both the NY Times and Rolling Stone fact-checked it and, to say the least, found it wanting when it came to actual facts:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/chris-christie-has-disqualified-himself-from-being-trumps-attorney-general-w430078
And Hilary put out some video of Christie and she hugging and acting all chummy-like, with the implied message, “If she’s so evil, why you huggin’ her and suckin’ up to her?”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hillary-clinton-trolls-chris-christie-214008473.html
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I really wish their was a law that states that any public official from (from county dog catcher to President of the UnitedStates) is REQUIRED to send their children (or grandchildren) to public school because they truly believe that public school is the ONLY WAY to build a well educated citizenry for this nation to be run democratically. Watch how all the other problems disappear overnight in terms of public schools being unsafe and underfunded.
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The speech sounded like one I had heard at the start of Christie’s tenure as governor of NJ. He too sent his children to private schools and knew nothing about the quality of public education in the state which at that time was quite good. He bashed the committed teachers and administrators. He then proceeded to take millions away from public education and force problems in the school. Afterward he gave some of it back and touted himself as giving money to education. He played a good game. We need those who work in education to speak about the needs of education. Educators are always the scapegoats. It’s easy to do that instead of addressing the important issues.
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They need a scapegoat and public schools are an easy target. It’s safer and more comfortable for wealthy people to blame public schools for the economic problems of the middle and working classes than looking at the changes in the tax code, the decline of labor unions, or the collapse of campaign finance regulation and the outright purchase of lawmakers. They don’t want to “reform” any of those other areas, because they benefit from the status quo in those areas.
It’s a shame if he’s so insulated that he actually believes all US public schools are “crumbling prisons” (to quote another wealthy ed reformer). It isn’t true. Tens of millions of people support their local public schools. The vast majority of us attended one and we make up the vast majority of the current US workforce. If all public schools are failures then we’re all failures too.
I feel Donald Trump is an indictment of the US “fancy private school system”- if he’s what inherited wealth and a private education produces, wealthy people should clean up their own side of the street before they opine on us.
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If the public schools are so great in Chicago, why did the Obama’s send their children to the University of Chicago Lab School? They had a choice!
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Because they don’t want their precious snowflakes to have to rub elbows with the unwashed masses.
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Carlene ,
Is the issue here where people with wealth send their children to School?
My children went to a terrible Public School with a graduation rate of 96%. A disappointing 80% went on to a 4year schools, an additional 12% went to a 2year schools.
Terribly disappointing as I said. Of course there were those 12% of students in the district given an opportunity to attend these terrible
schools who were on assisted lunch programs. That opertunity had a little to do with something refereed to as school desegregation. So the district overlaps two completely different towns. Enough of my sarcasm !
If the Obama’s lived in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago their children would have attended Public Schools. As Eric Holder’s nieces attended school with my daughter . We keep pretending that education is the solution to our economic problems. When it is economics that is the solution to our educational problems.
For the most part those that are the most fervent supporters of school choice ,happen to be those most responsible for the increase in economic inequality and poverty . Their influence spans both political parties. The difference being that the Republicans make no pretenses about any concern for the well being of those less fortunate. Their vision of choice is a bold faced attempt to starve Public Schools.They toss a bone to their red meat base in the form of vouchers. Vouchers to attend private and religious schools . They will not starve them in my wealthy district that can easily afford to tell both the State and Feds to take a hike. They will starve them in “Urban or suburban Ghettos” (thank you Bernie). Ghettos built with economic walls that leave little room for escape.
As Clinton advertised but never quite understood “It’s the economy stupid”.
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Why I never see it till posted eliminate (a ) twice . I so need that five minute edit button .
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Arne Duncan’s children attended Arlington (VA) public schools and Andrew Cuomo’s children went to Byrum Hills schools as well. These are public schools on the other side of the tracks.
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I just read the dispatches (I’m not watching) but is there a single GOP speaker who has anything positive to say about the schools tens of millions of children attend where millions of ordinary people work?
When did it become so fashionable to bash public schools? I live in a conservative area. We have lots of supporters of public schools who are Republicans. I would guess the majority of employees in my local schools are Republicans, just because most people here are. We actually have vouchers here and they’ve been a flop. They really don’t loathe their schools- it’d be a little nutty if they did since so many of them work there.
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Chiara, I posted the GOP education platform this morning. As you will see, there is not a single favorable mention of public schools. The platform is concentrated solely on escaping them, as if they were prisons.
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I’d like to reform US business schools. They seem to churn out people like Donald Trump with alarming regularity.
They really need to beef up the ethics courses. Not paying the people who work for you is not a “business strategy” or “model”. It’s stealing.
When does the disruption of MBA programs start? Maybe public school teachers could lead the effort.
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Chiara, the laws schools also need to beef up their ethics courses, since so many lawyers wind up as politicians, or judges.
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I have to say, I love the mixed message from politician ed reformers, too. “Stay in school! School is great! Respect your teachers!” followed by “but all the schools all of you attend suck and your teachers are lazy, stupid and wholly self-interested”.
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This is pretty wonderful. You won’t be hearing it at the GOP convention,that’s for sure.
It’s the Texas judge on the school financing case:
“Somebody ought to sit there and say, ‘Kids, pool your lunch money together and see if you can’t hire a lobbyist.’”
I would donate to the students and parents if they did that. They need a privately-retained advocate. None of the publicly-paid advocates are much interested in the existing schools they actually attend.
https://www.texasobserver.org/interview-john-dietz-school-finance/#pq=68qenK
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More baseless uninformed comments from the con artist clan, and none of us is shocked or surprised. Why would we be? Donald and his brother kill exotic animals for sport. Anyone that votes for team Trump will put the middle class in the line of fire as well as public education. We will be their next prey. We should all think long and hard about this election. The Trump family are shady vulgarians.
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Can any pro charter person provide even one shred of evidence that charter schools are providing poor minority students with an “elevator to the middle class”?
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Here it is and read the comments too.
Sent from my iPad
>
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The GOP convention and the blind, ignorant, racist and/or hating, fear filled Trump followers shows us the frighteningly large numbers of people in the United States who are easy to fool and manipulate with a continues flow of lies from an entire family, the Trumps, and by extension the Republican Party that has relied on the lies and misinformation of the huge, far right hate media machine for decades.
Count those numbers and we will know the number of Americans who will always believe the the community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public schools are failing and will always be failing no matter what evidence is put in front of them.
We have seen some of those fools appearing in the comment threads in this Blog. They refuse to even acknowledge any evidence with links to reputable sources and repeatedly twist reality back into dark fantasy world they live in that the autocratic, child abusing, opaque, often fraudulent, cherry picking facts and children, publicly funded, private sector corporate charter schools are better.
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William Doyle got free market advocates all wrong.
William Doyle, like every other leftist central planner, suffers from a fatal conceit that blinds him from seeing beyond his own preconceptions. Like most of his ideological ilk, Doyle assumes that his own estimations and judgements as to what qualifies as superior educational outcomes or results are the ones that ought to be adopted by everyone, yet **THAT** is exactly the question that free market advocates DO NOT ASSUME and who want to leave to parents and students, i.e. the ones who are most affected and interested in the results, to decide.
Doyle’s own rhetoric betrays his bias. By emphasizing only the incidental fact that a free market in education merely allows parents the freedom to choose which schools their children will attend, he misses or dismisses the more important and fundamental fact that the parent’s choice of any particular school is merely a consequence of the parent’s estimation and judgement as to which educational qualities and outcomes matter more than others.
Indeed, opponents of free markets, education or otherwise, are really opponents of an individual’s independent judgement as THAT is what all of these busy body laws and dictats are aimed at overriding, yet what exactly are they afraid of?
If it is true that Doyle’s et al. ideas about which outcomes are best then WHY do they need to force people to buy it at the point of a gun??? Decent civilized people reject as immoral any transaction or exchange of values that is forced (e.g. rape, theft, fraud, etc.). How is this different?
Moreover, isn’t it just a bit disingenuous and hypercritical when opponents of standardized tests and federalized common core standards complain that such inflexible mandates reduce teacher/school autonomy and creates methods and results that they judge to be bad?
If it is wrong for the Federal or State government to choose and to impose educational standards that override teachers and school administrators judgement then HOW is it not wrong for the teacher and administrator opponents of free markets and school choice to impose their own standards on parents and students????
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Of course he got public ed all wrong. That’s not the point. What he got right was the right wing narrative that has nothing to do with reality, but which the party faithful eat up like candy. I mean, his comment about other countries and their free market ed systems is incredibly false that I’m sure Finland is still laughing.
Junior isn’t wrong so much as he is a liar like his father.
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He’s just a “mouthpiece” for the right wing. He is reading a teleprompter, and , yes, he is as fake as his father.
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i think you should maybe compare don jr’s i q rather than he doesn’t know public school i on the other hand do know public school and have seen the deteriation from when i attended and my daughter attended and now my grandaughter she was at the top of her class in math and then was moved to another state with common core and is now struggling and no one can help her, its stupid to take 6 steps to subtract 13 from 43.
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