Mercedes Schneider here assembles the themes and details of President-elect Trump’s plans for education, or at least the federal role in education.
It is a nightmare vision, a dystopian vision. It is a vision of privatization, a concept I have been highlighting and exposing day after day as a source of inequity, fraud, graft, and bad education.
Please someone tell Mr. Trump that no high-performing nation in the world has charters and vouchers and for-profit schools and public tuition for home-schooling. Tell him that the two nations that embraced privatization–Sweden and Chile–now regret it. They saw increased segregation, not better education.
In Trump world, school choice is the answer to every education issue.
Too bad there is no evidence for his vision. Too bad for our public schools. Too bad for our kids. Too bad for our future.
We can’t let this happen. Parents, students, teachers, administrators, local school boards, state school boards: we have to stand together to defend what belongs to us. We must protect the commons.
Public schools under democratic control are part of our heritage as Americans. Conservatives don’t destroy traditional institutions. Conservatives conserve. Anarchists blow up neighborhood schools. Not conservatives. Nihilists destroy what belongs to all of us. Stand and argue. Resist.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Anarchists do not blow up neighborhood schools. Capitalists do. Once you strip away the negative/false connotation assigned to anarchism, you will find anarchist thought, theory, and practice has traditionally been on the side of what public schools should be. In fact, what most of us have claimed as progressive ideals have origins in the anarchist writings and advocacy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Anarchists continue to stand in solidarity with you as they resist fascism and the privateers.
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For those wishing to learn a little more on anarchism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
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Some how again, I am reminded of the scene in “Predator 2” where Danny Glover runs past the old lady in the hallway .
Diane, I am afraid that your “last thoughts on this election” will not be till 2020 unless we have a small meteor strike on inauguration day to ” drain the swamp ”
My millennial son said to me last night ;where were these demonstrators before the election. I had always counted on having to fight Hillary on many issues from education and trade to foreign policy. Once Trump defeated the establishment Republicans whose agenda was and is the same . Who would have though the American people would elect an unqualified low life.
He should be welcomed on inauguration day with the largest demonstrations the Nation has ever seen. To reinforce the fact to those Republicans that “they have awoken a sleeping giant “. Even with that I am taken back to that scene from Predator 2.
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thought
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in the past, conservatives cared about history. Will history really matter anymore in the hyper-celebrity Trump era? Or, has fake-news and so-called reality-based TV won out?
Stay tuned, as they used to say.
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America: Trump’s Dump. But here’s the most telling double-speak part of his plan: “It is time for school choice to help free children from failing government schools and close the achievement gap. School choice is the civil rights issue of our time.”
I blend into hyperbole sometimes; however, this is not that: As we speak, Trump is turning the USA into a quasi-fascist “empire.” Evidence (just three points), his blithe dismissal of the common protocols and laws about (1) nepotism and (2) setting a blind-wall between his and his family’s government and private interests. And (3), his statement, in an interview when questioned about his firing up of racism and several phobias among his followers, and the violence that follows. To that he said (paraphrasing), Well, I won, didn’t I.
Now there’s a man who will do anything to get what he wants (the fascist easily separates means from ends. And when they get complete power, feel no need to explain–right now we are in a bit of a honeymoon time where he still feels he needs to account for himself or, as Michael Moore says, the next step of fascism comes with a smiling face.
I doubt Trump knows what a fascist is by name–doesn’t matter. His many personality disorders writ-small, that are so obvious to most if not all of us (including to many psychologists who are generally mum on the issue in the name of their professionalism), raised to the writ-large level of governmental power, are the seed bed of a blooming totalitarianism. And I don’t think all of his followers are fascist (they never are), but I know some are, and many are willing to accept what’s going on now without realizing the enormous implications of it. A fully mature (so to speak) fascism is not a given yet; but the Trump situation has all the makings in place for us to become one.
As an aside, re: the note about anarchy being on the side of the commons: any of those names and theories, including fascism, communism, democracy, socialist, etc., historically have their different implications and concrete expressions. The relationship between the ideas and the concrete expressions are always different so beware of saying any one of them is necessarily good or even the best one for our time.
But for education, the battle has many locations–perhaps it’s shifted pragmatically now to the state and local arenas. I frankly don’t know what I can do about it.
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The New York Post just published an editorial bashing teachers’ unions and saying vouchers are a panacea. It cites Canada as a place where tax-payer money supports parochial schools and implies that it’s the competition between public and parochial makes Canada’s PISA scores higher than ours. It says failing public schools in Canada get extra help to “pull themselves up by their shoestrings”. It neglects to mention the failed voucher experiment in Milwaukee, and the fact that all high performing countries have strong teachers unions.
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Link, please.
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If Mr. Trump wants to make America great again, he needs to support great public schools. Currently the lobbyists and establishment elites have his ear. Instead of “draining the swamp” of these creatures, he is letting them have free range. With that said, we have to move past talk and into action.
The first is to make contact with Mr. Trump as there is nothing to lose and everything to gain. He doesn’t know teachers and he doesn’t know education. If we just sit here, he never will. Comments are invited and I suggest we respond (in large numbers) https://apply.ptt.gov/yourstory/ I would strongly urge that NPE make contact because it’s likely every carpet bagger and purveyor of education snake oil already has an appointment. In that contact, frame the issue as he sees it. Use his words to create an image of how great public schools make for great communities.
Second, plan for 2018 as all of the House and one-third of the Senate are up for election.
But most important, is the message in this blog and that is this paragraph: “We can’t let this happen. Parents, students, teachers, administrators, local school boards, state school boards: we have to stand together to defend what belongs to us. We must protect the commons.”
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If anyone wants to “enlighten” Trump on education issues, I suggest trying to forge a relationship with Ivanka. She is by far the sharpest tool in the Trump shed, and she may actually care about issues important to women and children. She is the only member of the clan capable of comprehending the issues, and she is Trump’s most trusted adviser.
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The Trump family has lived in a golden bubble for decades.
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To my knowledge, no member of the Trump family, other than Donald, has ever set foot in a public school. Donald was principal for a day in a NYC public school and held a lottery for sneakers.
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Diane: I posted this book notice in another note, but here it is again. It’s comprehensive, but it refers to a formal group of millionaires (250 or so) who understand (apparently) the problems of the wealthy-oligarch tendencies and want to be effective in supporting democracy and “the commons” (to say it too briefly):
AUTHOR: Chuck Collins
TITLE: “Born on Third Base”
VIDEO of book presentation by author: http://WWW.booktv.org
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I don’t think Trump cares, because the Trump family business is probably poised to jump on the bandwagon of profit through choice in education. Trump’s long life up to 70 shows us that everything he has ever done eventually benefits him even through bankruptcies and not paying money he owed to lenders, partners and workers.
Trump is out for Trump and as president, he is poised to send his family business/fortune to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Our only defense will be if states also have a choice to accept choice or not without federal intervention forcing them to do it or else.
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Drain the swamp was, obviously, a sales pitch to be swallowed by the gullible like so much saccharine snake oil. To drain the swamp requires that first, the pipeline of money constantly filling it be shut off, a thing not mentioned and indeed opposed in the GOP platform. Overturn Citizens United & McCutcheon? CRICKETS…..Trumps is not draining anything, he is just picking the scum he wants to use off of the swamps surface and plucking some floaters off of the adjacent media cesspool to add to his collection. The only fragment of good news that can be extracted from this fetid mess is that a large number of those who voted for him did so primarily because they thought he would “fix” things in DC, not understanding or believing what he meant by “fix”. The betrayal of that promise is the best tool available to America to strip away support from both him and the status quo of the GOP that has been reinvigorated by his victory and the democrats implosion.
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Jon,
An old Dem theme song comes to mind:
“They’ll promise you the sky, they’ll promise you the earth, but what’s a Republican promise worth?”
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