Reporters at the Washington Post asked both major party candidates what they would do in the area of K-12 education.
Trump gave a brief reply and ignored the questions.
Clinton (or her staff) answered all the questions.
Donald Trump’s answer was, go to my website, and he (or his staff) added this:
“As your president, I will be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice. I want every single inner city child in America who is today trapped in a failing school to have the freedom – the civil right – to attend the school of their choice. I understand many stale old politicians will resist. But it’s time for our country to start thinking big once again. We spend too much time quibbling over the smallest words, when we should spend our time dreaming about the great adventures that lie ahead.”
Clinton’s answers were ambiguous; she is for testing, but not too much testing. She is for charter schools, but only good charter schools.
She opposes for-profit charter schools, but doesn’t seem to realize that many allegedly nonprofit charters outsource their management to for-profit companies.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To be honest, I am not at all optimistic about HRC’s educational policies. I think it will be more of the same, maybe less extreme and maybe not. Almost all the politicians of whatever party have been captured by the rheeformers.
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I am going to remain optimistic that HRC’s policies will be better than Obama’s. That’s not saying much, I agree.
But I didn’t see any evidence at all during the campaign that Bernie Sanders was going to be any better. He just seemed disinterested, which I suspect was the real problem with Obama, too. If you don’t take the time to examine what is going on closely, it’s easy to believe the rhetoric about how many poor kids trapped in failing schools are “saved” by charters.
I think Hillary Clinton will at least listen to the issues and not be quite as lazy as Sanders and Obama were on this issue.
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I have virtually no optimism about HRC’s educational policies, given this headline:
“Mayor Rahm Emanuel surfaces on presidential campaign trail”
Color me cynical.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/rahm-makes-rare-campaign-stop-to-denounce-trump/
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Rahm is the last Democrat I would be pulling out of the closet. He closed fifty
schools in Chicago primarily in African American neighborhoods. As someone recently said in Newark, it is not possible to return to a system of neighborhood schools because many neighborhoods no longer have schools.
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Thanks for the link, Eleanor. Very telling article on Rahm.
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“And Clinton called for a federal civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department.
And even after Clinton won the nomination, Emanuel remained a punching bag. Her campaign essentially threw him under the bus at the Democratic National Convention. On the night the president spoke, a video introduction portrayed Emanuel as a calculating naysayer as Barack Obama tried to push through Obamacare.”
I hope Hillary is enough of a policy wonk to understand what works and what doesn’t in education. It doesn’t sound as if she feels any need to do Emanuel’s bidding. Presumably if Hillary Clinton throws public education under the bus, it will be her own doing. I will remain optimistic until I have reason to feel otherwise.
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Clinton specializes in obfuscation. No, I do not want to hear about Trump and the dangers of third party candidates. This election turns my stomach. I overheard a conversation in a bagel shop the other day. The guy was saying, “There is no one to vote for and I am not going to vote.” Do not tell me about Supreme Court justices either. I am racking my brains to recall a Supreme Court decision that affected me personally. Yes, I am selfish, but I am not aware of any candidate championing causes dear to my heart. For the record folks, I am in favor of vaccinations despite the possible risks. It may be time to abdicate my civic responsibilities.
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I think that the SCOTUS decision in the 2,000 election affected us personally with two wars, two occupations. The SCOTUS decision on Citizens United really does affect us personally. The SCOTUS is a biggie and will affect us for decades.
I get that there are no great choices but the GOP is the radical far right wing nut party that will screw the environment, limit women’s reproductive rights and push for privatizing the schools even worse than HRC.
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Both Trump and Clinton supported the Iraq War. Yes, Gore would have worked to slow climate change and I voted for him. Although Clinton recently ressurected him to boost her street cred on environmental issues, the effort was largely unconvincing due to its lack of congruence with her views. Despite claims to the contrary, Clinton does not advocate for ordinary American women like myself who are blindsided by the War on Teachers and the disdain for public workers prevalent in common discource. The likelihood of reducing the role of big money in politics is roughly equivalent to my chances of turning into a pumpkin.
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I live in NJ, too, and I am painfully aware of the war on teachers and the absolute revilement of public sector workers in general. Christie never passes up an opportunity to vilify and demonize teachers, the real public schools and especially teacher unions. It’s appalling. Abigail, I enjoy your comments at Bob Braun’s blog site. I wish Bob could be as prolific as Diane but I value his voice no matter what. It’s so rare to have anyone defending public schools and their teachers.
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You surprise me Abigail with your statement that you cannot think of a SCOTUS decision that has affected you personally. Surely Citizens United, and follow up McCutcheon have affected us all. And maybe Roe v. Wade has not affected you and many women personally, but it has helped endless women, particularly those who are low income and rely on Planned Parenthood, not only with birth choice, but with mammograms and other health services. And Lily Ledbetter, and on and on. This highest court of the land has many decisions that may seem obscure but do affect every American. Take a course on the great SCOTUS trials. U of C Extension surely offers these courses.
Your vote is not only a privilege of citizenship, it is an OBLIGATION.
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My favorite Supreme Court decision of all time is Brown versus Board of Education. Would you like to update us on the current status of poor children living in disenfranchised communities? My state New Jersey is one of the most segregated in the nation. My district is cutting, cutting, cutting to keep pace with the ravenous charter sector and Christie’s hatred of public school teachers. All the deceased Civil Rights leaders must be turning in their graves.
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I too love the Brown decision. Over the past 40 years, the Court has diminished it, starting with the Milliken decision of 1973.
A Trump court would finish it off.
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I agree Abigail that Brown v. Bd.of Ed has been eaten away, piece by piece, and NJ is the lead example, but my state, California, is also prime in this new vast national segregation. In NJ, we see Cory Booker as a big supporter of charters (ostensibly based on “civil rights”, but pragmatically separate and UNEQUAL), and his collusion with Christie is disgusting. In California, we also see many if not most Latino legislators supporting charters rather then public schools. It is alarming and shocking to me and to other educators here, that second generation Latinos who got public school educations and advanced to be leaders of our communities, would now desert us and join with Broad and Rhee/Johnson, and push for privatizing our schools.
However, I still have hope for the power of the vote. It is our only hope.
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Abigail,
I am surprised that you don’t care who is on the Supreme Court. You don’t care about Row v. Wade? You don’t care about civil rights for blacks, women, gays, religious minorities, and dissidents? You don’t care about Citizens United, which allows corporations and the rich to donate obscene amounts of money to campaigns? You don’t care about regulations to control climate change? You don’t care about restricting access to guns? You don’t care about a court that would give a green light to vouchers? You don’t care about the future of collective bargaining?
What do you care about?
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How about the Citizens United decision? It has undermined democracy at every level of elected democracy, & even given free reign to foreign influence on US elections. That effects each citizen daily.
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Who has her ear from the education world? Why aren’t our union leaders keeping her up to date?
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Both so called teachers unions endorsed Clinton carte blanche. We have our union leadership to thank for their ineptitude.
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and too many union members who have elected to put on blinders and know little to nothing about union activity
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Both NEA and AFT leaders were on board with Hillary from the moment she declared her candidacy. These leaders, Lilly and Randi, obligated their unions to support her without input from the rank and file, most of whom were Bernie Sanders supporters. Look up the many discussions in the archives of this blog for more info.
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Not only that, Randi was a Clinton Super Delegate, and delivered accordingly.
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It is imperative that voters, especially progressive voters, have LONG MEMORIES, and in the next election shout out loudly to keep the DNC from doing any more skullduggery like this year where they maneuvered to keep Bernie from getting votes to be the candidate.
We have such short recall each election season (this year which presents the soap opera sex-capades diverting attention from issues), but those of us who function as historians and public policy mavens, MUST keep the true and valuable email leaks alive and say to those like Debbie WS…NEVER AGAIN.
In California, it is also incumbent upon the media (Howard Blume, etc.) to see to it that the voting populace is informed that if they register as any other than Dem or Rep, they lose their chance to vote for Prez in the primary. Bernie was royally shafted here and probably would have won in the California primary had it not been for this little known rule.
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I hope she is listening to Randi and Lily. I fear she is surrounded by Center for American Progress.
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I agree. She shows in her carefully crafted answers that she understands many of the issues, but her answers are vague and intended to offend no one. She has high hopes for ESSA, but it is designed to be a huge pay to play scheme for corporations. She seems to feel that the alternative testing in ESSA will make big changes in testing, but my understanding is that only seven states are eligible for alternative accountability.
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It won’t matter if she indeed does listen to Lily and Randi. They have no clue what is happening in schools today. Randi taught for all of a semester. Lily taught for longer, but that was 20 years ago.
And it’s willful blindness. They refuse to listen to teachers. All they do is get their information from “yes men” and “yes women.” They have no idea what is being done to teachers, and yet support the very things that are destroying schools.
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Here are some musings from five days ago about people at the K-12 policy table under Clinton.
I think it unlikely that there will be any major changes during her term. ESSA is in place and funding for ed tech is soaring aided by USDE’s Office of Technology and huge investments from venture investors and philanthropies. USDE is a collaborator and funder of education by-proxy with computers, the internet, and entrepreneurs the “innovators.” Who cares if many are indifferent to education other than as a profit center and “service.” Education’s purpose is being reduced to supplying the entrepreneurs with students, who are treated as if expendable guinea pigs in a host of “let’s accelerate learning” experiments marketed as “personalized” learning.
http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2016/10/10/will-k-12-reform-funders-have-friends-in-a-clinton-administr.html
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Clinton mentioned access to computer technology as a priority. We all know that may mean a myriad of things, some good, and many not so good like CBE and testing. The devil is in the details that Clinton or her people dared not discuss.
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Dear retired t….”dared not discuss” or simply, purposefully, avoid discussing?
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A little off topic here:
The kids movie Middle School Years, in theaters right now, has a great hidden message. The movie opens with a mother threatening to take her son’s book of drawings away because he is drawing during the night. She sends him to a no excuses charter school, ranked number one in the state. The assistant principal jokes “We teach to the test, not to kids.” The school has eliminate art programs and field trips because they are unproductive. The massive trophy case is untouchable. The whole school is preparing for the big standardized test. The school counts down the days to the big day. The boy does have a safe place in his homeroom with a very progressive and thoughtful teacher who tries to encourage his art. The principal plots to suspend this class because his students might bring down the the school ranking with lower test scores.
This movie is otherwise light and funny. I highly recommend it.
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RaiserheBar,
That is a must-see!
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Many of us were, are not great Hillary supporters for many reasons but consider the alternative. Listen to Michelle Obama’s speech. One of the best speeches I have heard in some time.
Also, There are MANY issues which affect children. Sorry, but on this blog I sometimes feel that the complexity of issues are sometimes overlooked and charters and tests are the only items affecting our children’s education. These are vitally important issues to be sure but items like the health of our planet, whether to go to war or continue warring etc etc etc ALL affect the education of our children.
There has never been ANY person that I have ever met, and I doubt if any of you have either that will agree on every issue under the sun and that includes education also. Sometimes our alternatives are not good ones that we would cheerfully choose but we have to make the best choice of bad alternatives.
Yes, Bernie was my choice too, hands down but he said from the beginning that he could not do everything by himself. He needed the backing of the American people. If we really want a better environment, a complete environment including schools, we have to work for it and work long and hard for it just as in the classroom our work is never finished. There is always something new to learn and in the political situation the same is true. We need desperately to educate ourselves on the totality of what is going on and work hard to implement the things we learn.
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Well, maybe HRC will get a little clarity from the NAACP, (Journey for Justice and #Black Lives Matters) this weekend.
As a public school supporter I have a clear idea from the candidates what we have to work with.
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Jill Stein on the issue of education is far superior to the current promoting of charters and corporatized/privatization neoliberal crap that hillary will perpetuate or the ridiculous vouchers that tRump would promote! Check out a true progressive, Jill Stein and her Pro-Public Education platform: http://ontheissues.org/2016/Jill_Stein_Education.htm
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Jill Stein is polling at 2%.
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Jill Stein says what many of us believe…but she is NOT a viable candidate.
To make a protest vote is unwise when we see the alternative, Donald tRump, who is close to Putin and is an aspiring oligarch like his Russian investors. He would wreak havoc as Prez, and we would lose what is left of our democratic republic. It is frightening to contemplate him and his male supporters going around assaulting women, and his Mafia friends guarding his hen house aka The White House.
Hillary is the only choice we have…but with the admonition that all voters stay focused on her administration, and shout out to keep her as above board as our flawed system can offer.
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PS…she must get rid of Podesta and his ilk…and elevate to positions of authority Elizabeth Warren to head either the FED or the SEC. former Governor Granville and Russ Feingold she be in her Cabinet…Feingold as head of Treasury, and Granville perhaps Sect. of State. So disappointed in others like Sherrod Brown whom I used to admire. Perhaps when she has Kamala Harris as the Senator from California, she can elevate her to AG.
I am happier looking forward in my own fantasy world.
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If she has Dems in the Senate Like Kemala Harris and Russ Feingold, she will want to keep them there
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Stein may be polling low, but if people voted for her, instead of staying home or voting for the lesser of 2 evils (Johnson hates education too) what if? What if Stein actually won?
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The sad part is that Mr. Trump, as terribly wrong that he is , is being honest while Mrs. Clinton hedges her words.
The system is broken.
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The difference is that Trump is a fascist and a sexual predator and she is not. Also she is intelligent and can learn, while he is an ignorant buffoon.
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Honest??? How many lies has he told? How often has he changed his views? A demagogue, fascist ad nauseum.
Yes, I would have LOVED to see Bernie face Trump but that did not happen and we must as I noted above keep our noses to the grindstone to force Hillary to do at least what she has promised to do and hopefully much more that Bernie would have done for us.
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Yes, honest. I was replying to the post, where Mr. Trump says “As your president, I will be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice. ” That’s what he intends to do. I don’t like it. I think he is dreadfully wrong. But it is honest.
Mrs. Clinton, whom I believe will be “less bad” for public education is, as the post says, “ambiguous”.
Over the course of the entire campaign Mr. Trump has certainly been a massive liar. Mrs. Clinton can hold her own in that department, but she is not even close to her current rival.
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Politicians hedge words. With the possible exception of Carter, every president in my memory has been a huge word-hedger & occasional liar. Our democracy has been undermined by 35 yrs of actions, executive & legislative, which have opened the spigot of private influence on public policy ever wider, rendering the word ‘corruption’ almost meaningless. This has been done mostly ‘honestly’, i.e., w/ voter support. Just me, but I think the dishonesty underlying this phase of our history is shared by leaders & voting supporters: it’s the lie, motivated by fear during economic decline, that it’s viable– even economically healthy– for each to grab the biggest piece of a shrinking pie.
The only virtue of Trump’s ‘honesty’ ( = impulsive ad libs) is regular revelation of his personal habits of thinking.
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Trump is never honest. He pretends to be. When he says it’s good to be against political correctness, what he means is that it is okay to be openly racist, sexist, and xenophobic. It’s okay to ridicule people with disabilities. When caught on tape praising himself for sexually assaulring women, he said he never did it. Either he lied when he boasted or he lied when he said it never happened.
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To Abigail Shure:
Being intelligent and critical would not be helpful whereas being realistic, practical and wise would help people to unite and to rise up to be the formidable force so that people can achieve what they aim for.
If all educators can be wise at the same level, then the millions votes from educators can earn their voice in all levels of election time.
Speaking of third party, please people, who support the third party, should advise the leader of the third party to groom and nurture all ground or grassroots candidates from local Councillor level all the way up to Mayor, Congressmen/women, Governors and Senators.
There is no shortcut, no lip-service, no empty promise, no power to issue and pass any meaningful piece of legislative Bill or Act because of the POWERFUL opposite parties in both houses of congress and senators. That is the PAINFUL reality!
Abigail, I have lived through literature and through reality from both ideologies of Capitalism and Communism. Your expression represents for all intelligent people who cannot escape Communism and must accept to live with it because there are many reasons like lack of resources and supports = money + love + courage + health + age + education + skills…
Please note that I was young, healthy, intelligent, rich, strong, talented in both academe and labor. Most of all, it is the support from my siblings. I cannot survive and succeed in Canada if I am lack of some or all of those conditions.
In short, people can sympathize, but they can ONLY empathize with the unfortunate whenever they have been through the same conditions as the unfortunate has been. You cannot understand the cruelty of those predators with power to abuse.
IMHO, God knows exactly what evils think and do, but evils never fathom God’s unconditional love. In the same vein, teachers knows exactly what naughty students try to do, but naughty students never fathom their teachers’unconditional love for them. Constructional penalty is different from hatred punishment. In God’s love, we have a chance to redeem to be better. In evils’ revenge, we will be ensured to be suffered or terminated.
I sincerely hope that you will reconsider a chance to nurture the stronger democracy for all from Clinton’s policy as compared to from Trump’s. May
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