Trump unveiled his first education budget, and it contains many cuts to popular programs in public schools. But it has a bonanza for private alternatives to public schools.
The Washington Post obtained a draft copy of the new budget, which has not yet been submitted to Congress.
Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.
President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have repeatedly said they want to shrink the federal role in education and give parents more opportunity to choose their children’s schools.
Trump and DeVos are following the Obama formula for Race to the Top: Offer financial incentives for states to adopt the policies that the federal government wants. If they want the money they must volunteer, and that allegedly proves that participation was “voluntary.”
The budget proposal calls for a net $9.2 billion cut to the department, or 13.6 percent of the spending level Congress approved last month. It is likely to meet resistance on Capitol Hill because of strong constituencies seeking to protect current funding, ideological opposition to vouchers and fierce criticism of DeVos, a longtime Republican donor who became a household name during a bruising Senate confirmation battle…
Under the administration’s budget, two of the department’s largest expenditures in K-12 education, special education and Title I funds to help poor children, would remain unchanged compared to federal funding levels in the first half of fiscal 2017. However, high-poverty schools are likely to receive fewer dollars than in the past because of a new law that allows states to use up to 7 percent of Title I money for school improvement before distributing it to districts.
The cuts would come from eliminating at least 22 programs, some of which Trump outlined in March. Gone, for example, would be $1.2 billion for after-school programs that serve 1.6 million children, most of whom are poor, and $2.1 billion for teacher training and class-size reduction.
[Trump budget casualty: After-school programs for 1.6 million kids. Most are poor.]
The documents obtained by The Post — dated May 23, the day the president’s budget is expected to be released — outline the rest of the cuts, including a $15 million program that provides child care for low-income parents in college; a $27 million arts education program; two programs targeting Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students, totaling $65 million; two international education and foreign language programs, $72 million; a $12 million program for gifted students; and $12 million for Special Olympics education programs.
Other programs would not be eliminated entirely, but would be cut significantly. Those include grants to states for career and technical education, which would lose $168 million, down 15 percent compared to current funding; adult basic literacy instruction, which would lose $96 million (down 16 percent); and Promise Neighborhoods, an Obama-era initiative meant to build networks of support for children in needy communities, which would lose $13 million (down 18 percent).
The Trump administration would dedicate no money to a fund for student support and academic enrichment that is meant to help schools pay for, among other things, mental-health services, anti-bullying initiatives, physical education, Advanced Placement courses and science and engineering instruction. Congress created the fund, which totals $400 million this fiscal year, by rolling together several smaller programs. Lawmakers authorized as much as $1.65 billion, but the administration’s budget for it in the next fiscal year is zero.
The cuts would make space for investments in choice, including $500 million for charter schools, up 50 percent over current funding. The administration also wants to spend $250 million on “Education Innovation and Research Grants,” which would pay for expanding and studying the impacts of vouchers for private and religious schools. It’s not clear how much would be spent on research versus on the vouchers themselves.
The new budget would also have a large impact of student aid programs for higher education.
It is clear that parents and educators must organize to fight for the funding of programs that benefit students in public schools.
Ninety percent of American children attend public schools, yet they are being neglected in the budgetary planning because Trump and DeVos favor charters, vouchers, and other kinds of school choice.
Don’t agonize. Organize.
Join the Network for Public Education. Be active in the fight against these cuts. Be active in the resistance to privatization and the Trump administration’s indifference/hostility to public schools.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
The only thing good about this budget is that at least it works towards a skill that is well developed by most educators.
Do more with less and spend out of their own pockets!
This budget is a setup for failure.
It also makes me laugh. Some of little trumpys supporters said…there will be more local control. There will not be much to control in 3 years.
This is what happens when dumb people draw up budgetary priorities for public programs designed to help smart people–i.e. students and teachers.
I feel a little sick at my stomach….
How can anyone expect anything else from Trump, DeVos, and the Republican controlled legislature. Neither Trump nor DeVos have the slightest clue what REAL education is all about. I really wonder where people like Trump and his minions plan to get well educated workers toward for them if they keep trying to kill public education. The idea of choice for schooling has not worked yet.
” public-service loan forgiveness would end”
I guess one should try the SSM* method of “debt dispersal” of filing for bankruptcy.
Wait!! What?? They’ve already foreclosed that option for the peeons?!!?
*Salmon** Swamp Monster
**color not fish, I wouldn’t demean the royal fish in that fashion
Whose constituents would buy into this devastation? He’s hit every program except charters and vouchers. Republicans may gladly cut programs directed towards the poor but this budget doesn’t stop there.
I have come to think of DeVos as a potentially good marketing tool for us. She is a national joke who is already more widely known than Duncan ever was. We can glue “Guns and Bears,” to vouchers and charters and get more attention from voters outside of our chorus. We can toss the privatizing billionaires into Trumps cabinet too.
Could these two clowns be a pathway to the larger voting public?
Mary
This is a Republican party budget. DeVos is simply the vehicle to deliver the Republicans dream of ending govt involvement in all socail programs. It’s straight from Grover Nordquist’s pledge to shrink govt until it fits into a bathtub. The bulwark of Reagan’s neoliberal revolution was to kill Roosevelt’s New Deal by tax cuts. He justified destroying California’s public ed system by making drastic cuts to their education budgets (we shouldn’t pay for people’s intellectual curiosity & wasteful welfare queens -his words).
Paul Ryan & Mitch McConnell (not to mention the entire southern block of reps & senators) have campaigned forever on “reforming”, (i.e, privatizing) Social Security & medicare.
DeVos is simply the vehicle. So far, Paul Ryan is getting everything he wants- huge tax cuts for the wealthy, ending Obamacare & privatized education. Privatized social security is next.
McConnell & Ryan will suffer no consequences for destroying the lives of millions.
Diane The below link is about the question raised by many Catholics about their own educational situations FYI:
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/will-catholic-schools-be-left-behind-by-school-choice
Here is the first part of the article–ALL BELOW QUOTED FROM ARTICLE:
NATION | MAY. 18, 2017
Will Catholic Schools Be Left Behind by School Choice?
President Trump restates his commitment to school choice, but a variety of factors may determine whether Catholic schools thrive in any reform.
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has asked Congress to work with him to make “school choice” a reality in each state, yet advocates of Catholic education are concerned about the potential effects on the U.S. Catholic school system.
“School choice” references the freedom of a student to go to the school that best meets his needs, whether that be a public school in another district, a charter school or a private school.
It can also refer to putting parents more in control of how their taxpayer funds support their children’s education.
Appearing at a White House event during “School Choice Week,” the president reiterated that school choice had been a campaign promise and remains an important cause for him.
In his remarks at the May 3 White House event, Trump said, “Every child has the right to fulfill their potential, and, if we do our jobs, then we will never have to tell young, striving Americans to defer their dreams for another day or for another decade.”
He asked legislators to “extend school choice to millions more children all across the United States of America.”
School choice has been an increasingly strong movement in education circles, picking up steam especially in the past decade. But not all types of school choice are equal, and some have led to heavy closures in the Catholic school system. While the recently passed 2017 federal budget contained no increased investment in school choice, the 2018 budget blueprint increases by $1.4 billion the amount available for private and public-school choice, eventually reaching an outlay of $20 billion per year.
The budget proposal increases by $168 million charter-school funding and devotes $250 million to a new private-school choice program. The administration has so far not provided any specifics on what types of school choice it will support, but the current assumption by many analysts is that any future school-choice program will be likely either an education savings account or a scholarship tax credit, both of which are often used for private schools.
Supporting Parents
Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, a free-market think tank in Michigan, told the Register that it is unjust to force parents of children in private school to pay school-district taxes on top of their children’s tuition.
“It seems quite obvious that something needs to give in this regard, both on the level of justice, but also on the level of quality, in the services being rendered,” he said. Father Sirico suggested tax-credit scholarships, in which individuals or corporations receive tax credits in exchange for donations to scholarship-granting organizations, and education savings accounts (ESA) as ways to help parents. In an ESA, a family is typically given an amount of public money to draw on for their children’s educational expenses, whether . . .
MORE . . . .
CBK,
Thanks. As Charter schools have expanded, Catholic schools have closed. Why pay tuition for a Catholic school when charters are free? Unfortunately, the charters lack the moral core of Catholic schools.
Diane Yes about the moral code. Catholic schools have been around a long time and I think find themselves “caught in the middle,” so to speak.
This whole thing is a case where its complexity lends itself to the privatizers–it’s difficult to get busy people to understand what’s “going down” about education as we speak. So sorry about LA. And that complexity is hiding further behind the fire-hose of outrage that keeps flowing from the ongoing Trump debacle. God help us if he breaks from the script overseas because his stream of consciousness is a sewer, and everyone knows it but him.
Yes, he is impulsive, narcisstic, and never thinks twice. That’s why he bragged to the Russian Foreign Minister about his “great intel.” He was showing off when he blurted out the details of highly classified information. Some informant inside of ISIS may have been killed because of his mouth.
I hope the CIA and FBI are wise enough not to share important secrets with him. He can’t control his mouth. I suspect our allies will not share secrets with the US because of his inability to self-monitor. That threatens our national security.
As I recall, his favorite attack against HRC was that her emails compromised national security. Comeys investigation said that was not true.
Now we learn that Trump has Loose Lips, and has no idea that he is not supposed to brag about our nation’s secrets.
Diane I think it was the HuffPost this morning–there was an article about how the technology at Trump’s place in Florida is a virtual sieve–where all sorts of material is being transmitted, classified or not. And all that flap about Hilary’s e-mails. The Republicans will NEVER be able to legitimately complain about a Democrat’s behavior again.
” Unfortunately, the charters lack the moral core of Catholic schools.”
I’d say it’s obvious that you didn’t go to Catholic schools. That moral core is bogus. Much of my adult life has been a repudiation of that supposed “moral core”. I certainly learned the “hidden curriculum” well-how to subvert authority, how to see through platitudes, how to play games to get what one wants being two faced, etc. . . .
Will Catholic Schools Be Left Behind by School Choice?
According to this article – No
Taxpayer money is keeping many Catholic schools alive, study finds
http://www.businessinsider.com/catholic-schools-voucher-programs-study-2017-2
In NYC, scores of Catholic schools have closed and been replaced by charter schools.
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/3049247-study-charters-putting-catholic-schools-out-of-business
I think this will cause non-secular schools to back vouchers/ESA. With one system (vouchers) they stay open. With Charters, they close.
Corporatists undermining democracy and, reports of a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut democratic institutions- both treasonous.
I wonder if those people who reused to vote for Hillary have 2nd thoughts now.
None whatsoever!
Instead of acting to find the truth, Republican politicians, reportedly, demanded silence from those who heard an opinion that Trump and another member of Congress receive payments from Putin. Pillorying is too good for them.
Some of us signed up for much lower payments based on public service loan forgiveness.
The lower payments allow the debt to balloon, which mine had previously done when I had trouble making payments because I had to pay for my own health care out of pocket for a decade and didn’t make enough teach college at first to make a payment that was more than my rent.
If you have student loans, have kids who have student loans, or know someone who went to college and wasn’t already wealthy, you should call your congressman and senators and tell them ending this program is a really bad idea.
https://www.contactingcongress.org/
Since this article attributes the policy to Betsy DeVos, call the Department of Education too.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/contacts/gen/index.html
That DUMP hates America. He has NO CLUE, because he is a spoiled, illiterate man-boy who has gotten away with doing BAD DEEDS his entire life. I have NO respect, just total disdain for him and his ‘SEEDY” people who hang aournd him for $$$$$$ and perks.
I have wondered what actually goes on at Mar-A-Lago, a pit for this UGLY American we call potus.