Mike Klonsky has a sharp post tonight critiquing Trump’s meaningless blather about education.
Of course, he repeatsArne Duncan’s favorite line about education being the civil rights issue of our time (so long as it does not involve “forced” racial integration).
“But if Duncan’s civil rights phrase mongering was tragedy, hearing it again from Trump, an open racist and rabid opponent of civil rights, was farce. Especially, coming as it did, a day after he and Ed Sec. Betsy DeVos held up Historic Black Colleges and Universities as their model of “choice” without once mentioning HBCUs’ history as a response to Jim Crow and racial segregation policies which prevented black and other minority students from attending many white-only universities.
In other words, a throw-back to Plessy v. Ferguson kind of choice.
DT presented an image of children growing up in “a nation of miracles”, as in, it will take a miracle for many of them to grow up. But as we have learned, there are no miracles in successful schooling. Just the hard work of teachers, parents and communities in a supportive and well-funded system of public education.”
Klonsky points out that many millions of federal dollars are already supporting charter schools, with no regard for quality.
But Trump has a larger goal:
“…families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them'” said Trump.
Klonsky asks:
“Are students really going to be able to choose a home school that’s right for them?
“The inanity of the statement didn’t escape Stephen Colbert who said he would pick Trump’s home for his kids. “It seems very nice.”
Funny, if I could choose any home in America, it would not be Trump’s. With all the gold and glitter, it feels cold, empty, mirthless, unloving.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That line and “the soft bigotry of low expectations” are in the running for most cynical lines in the history of education politics. The people who say them have done more damage to education and students in our country than anyone this side of Bill Gates.
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yes,yes & yes. Was it Spellings who coined that one or Arne? We should compile a list of the marketing slogans for privatized schools & send it out with a poison label.
Here’s one of Arne’s tropes that grated on my last nerve: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
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What Arne actually meant “Don’t let the awful be the enemy of the obamanable”
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Re “.families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them” They can right now. Anyone with the money can go to a private school. Anyone meeting very lax laws can school their kids at home. And all are free to send their kids to religious schools if they exist nearby or move to where there is one. But the religious schools can’t be paid for from government receipts because … Constitution.
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 8:30 PM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Mike Klonsky has a sharp post tonight critiquing > Trump’s meaningless blather about education. http://michaelklonsky. > blogspot.com/2017/03/trumps-empty-statements-on-education. > html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mi” >
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“Home School Choice”
The home school choice
That’s best for me
Is one with voice
Of Betsy D.
I like the pool
And tennis court
The butler’s cool
Despite the wart
I’d love to live
At Betsy’s D’s
So surely give
Me voucher, please
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Part of the DeVos/Trump political plan to push vouchers seems to be to omit public schools completely from any discussion or involvement:
“Trump’s first school visit as president will be to a Catholic school in Florida”
You won’t see or hear about a successful public school for the next 4 years. This was already bad in ed reform- their whole narrative is overwhelmingly negative towards public schools- but now it will be federal policy.
I wonder if there’s an opportunity there. Holes tend to get filled and there’s a gaping hole in ed reform- it’s public schools. At some point the public will ask what these people actually do for public schools. They simply don’t add any value. Often they don’t even pretend to add value. The ed reform argument for how vouchers benefit kids in public schools is that private schools make public schools “better”. So the private school gets the direct benefit and public schools get some downstream, theoretical benefit.
There are tens of thousands of paid ed reformers supposedly working on “public education”. They can’t omit public schools and make that claim forever. At some point people will wonder why we’re paying them. Handing out vouchers doesn’t require any expertise at all. No one claims food stamps “improve” the quality of food.
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Thanks, Chiara! Keep pointing out that complete silence of the edudeformers and politicians on the every day workings of public schools and all the good, in spite of laws and policies working against them, that comes from all the hard work and effort of the dedicated public school employees. You can’t reiterate it enough!
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Oklahoma – School Vouchers Effort Appears Dead This Legislative Session
“An education savings account – or education scholarship account, as SB 560 called it – gives parents a portion of the state funding used to educate their child, and the parents can spend the money on private school tuition or other qualifying expenses. Critics of education savings accounts and other forms of school choice say such programs siphon money from district schools, hurting public education, and channel it to private schools, often religious ones.”
Interesting that when they talk about the critics – they never mention “VOUCHERS DON’T WORK”.
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“In other words, a throw-back to Plessy v. Ferguson kind of choice.”
That phrase just went into my education stump speech.
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Not to quibble, but isn’t an “open racist” someone who says “I’m racist and I don’t care who knows it”?
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One does NOT have to say he/she is a racist to be one. Look carefully what is going on now. NOW in his latest speech the man who has created division and racism to a new level speaks in PUBLIC about how bad it is. HYPOCRISY EXEMPLIFIED.
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True, but the term for that person is just a “racist.”
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