To the shock and consternation of charter school advocates, the Trump budget proposal abandons the controversial federal Charter Schools Program, turning it into a state bloc program that turns the money over to the states.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools issued a scathing denunciation of the axing of the federal charter school programs, which has enriched the big corporate charter chains.
The Network for Public Education issued two reports on waste, fraud, and abuse in this program, showing that nearly 40% of the federal money was spent on charters that either never opened or closed soon after opening, with waste of nearly $1 billion. See the reports here and here.
Trump and DeVos are backing their chief priority: vouchers, which they prefer to call “education freedom scholarships,” at a proposed cost of $5 billion. They want America’s children to be “rescued” from public schools that hat have been burdened by harmful federal policies like high-stakes testing, and punishments attached to testing. They want them to attend religious schools that are low-cost and have no standards or accountability, and are free to discriminate against students, families, and staff they don’t like.
The erstwhile Center for American Progress lamented the proposal to cut federal spending on charter schools, even though Democratic support for them has substantially declined. Apparently, CAP is the last to know that school choice is a Republican Policy.
Chalkbeat reports:
The Trump administration wants to create a new stream of funding for disadvantaged students that would consolidate current spending on Title I — which gives money to schools serving low-income students — and 28 other programs.
This school year, the department spent $16.3 billion on Title I grants to states and districts and $7.8 billion on the other programs. Under the proposed budget, it would all become a $19.4 billion pot that would be distributed through the Title I formulas — a $4.7 billion cut, if the budget were enacted.
The individual programs on the chopping block include:
- 21st Century Learning Centers, which supports after-school programs in places like Detroit and New York City ($1.25 billion)
- Arts in Education ($30 million)
- English Language Acquisition ($787 million)
- Homeless Education ($102 million)
- Neglected and Delinquent, which offers grants to states to educate incarcerated students ($48 million)
- Magnet Schools, which offers grants some districts use for desegregation ($107 million)
- Migrant Education ($375 million)
- Rural Education ($186 million)
- Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants, which is also known as Title II, Part A, which districts can use for teacher training and to reduce class sizes ($2.1 billion)
This move, the budget documents say, would reduce the federal government’s role in education and pave the way for less spending on department staff.
But the proposed elimination of these streams of funding raised alarms among civil rights advocates, who said this would enable states to spend less money on vulnerable groups like students who are English learners, homeless students, students involved in the juvenile justice system, or migrant students.
“History has shown us that … unless the federal government says you must serve migrant children, and here are funds to help you do that, migrant children are lost and forgotten,” said Liz King, the education equity program director at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “The purpose of the dedicated pots of money … is to make sure that the most powerless people in our country are not lost.”
Advocates for other programs expressed concern, too. During a question and answer session with education department officials, a member of the National Association for Gifted Children asked why the administration had proposed eliminating a $13 million program that supports gifted education.
Jim Blew, one of DeVos’s assistant secretaries, and a former official at the Walton Family Foundation, said that advocates for these programs should lobby the states to fund their favorite programs.
Trump’s plan threw a bucket of bloody chum into shark infested waters. This should be a frenzy worth watching from afar. Of course we all know that this is to pave the way for vouchers and tax credit schemes. Trump is now working for Betsy DeVos and the Scamway family.
Yes. This will be quite the show!
The horror to dismantle public education continues as Trump and DeVos lead the charge. They will starve public education to death and then use manipulated data to prove their point. Fight, fight, fight folks for public education.
LOL. This is hilarious.
Good morning, America! This is your wake-up call! As the current elecshun shoes, Socialists is tryin to take over are country! They wont to lay around and collect govermint benifits on the backs of hardworking folk like me and you and my girlfriend Darlene. Why, even Darlene says her disability aint enough to cover much uh nothin.
The Socialists alredy got controll uv are skools so that half the childrun in the nashun thinks they is veegan an transgendered!!!
But Socialism don’t werk. That’s why all the countrys of Yourup is in such a mess! They don’t even speek English, most of them!
Now, the diference between Socialism and Democracy is plane as day, but jist in case they’s some Libtards that has stumbled on this web sight an dont no bait from Brillcream, let me spell it out for you. Socialism don’t werk cause NOTHIN werks without INDIVICHUAL INISHIATIVE! You think yore fambly would be able to eat if you didn’t git off yore lazy A Double S an go shoot some squirels? Coarse not.
Thats why here at Bobs Real Good Floruhduh Skool, we don’t make children do nothin. They gotta fend for theyselves. Yes, you gotta protect the unborn. That goes with out sayin. Theys hepless. But after theys born, they oughter be on theyre own so they can build TRUE ‘MERKIN GRIT. Shore, at Bobs Real Good Floruhduh Skool, we got curriculums. But if a child don’t feel like larnin about World HIStory from the Creation to the Rapshure today and wonts instid to go out huntin, we aint gonna stop him. Heck, weul loan em a shotgun and some shells from Darlene’s Donuts, Gun, an Pawn across the street. Bobs Read Good Floruhduh Skool. We build CHARAKTER by ignoring childrens needs compleetly.
And best of all, its FREEE cause you kin use yore Floruhduh voucher to pay for it!!!
This is an interesting move. I suspect that some of the smarter Repugnicans (we’re talking RELATIVELY smart here) recognize that the charter movement isn’t going anywhere. And, they also recognize that young people don’t share their views on much of anything–LGBTQX rights, Medicare for All, guns, tax breaks for the wealthy, etc. So, a generation from now, the Repugs are facing EXTINCTION. That’s why, I think, they have decided to throw their weight behind vouchers instead of charters because the latter will support private Christian fundamentalist schools that will train the next generation of Trumpeteers. The voucher thing has several advantages. It preserves and vastly expands private ownership of schools. It effects a massive transfer of students and funding from public schools to private ones. It will kill teachers’ unions. And, in Espinoza v. Montana, the Supremes are about to knock down the wall between Church and State, ensuring that a massive, voucher-driven privatization of U.S. education can take place. What’s a rapacious right-wing troglodyte not to like?
I wonder? if this will ever hit the main news media.
I won’t hold my breath
but just
MAYBE.
Too: I LOVE Bob Shepherd’s post above.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
This is actually a really cynical move. Not really different than the ESSA was, the true goal of this is to Balkanize the states such that fighting the toxic policies in question becomes an effort that must take place in 50 places instead of 1, just like the ESSA did.
Exactly right.
I am not totally against the idea to allow states to “Balkanize,” i.e., just let them do as they will– short of denying equal access to a quality ed [the civil rights issue; why OCR is part of Dept of ed– tho BDeV has done her best to undermine that]. The dicy issue here is whether rolling Title I $ for the poor into a bunch of other fed ed pgms allows states to do precisely that. E.g., there are some locales where charters are an all-white escape from majority-minority urbs; those states could pump $ into “segregation academies” to the detriment of pubschs– & of course sch-choice states could do something similar– but they’re doing it already anyway on their own dime.
My sense is that one can only legislate cultural change in a small way, w/a few nudges. States dominated by cultural backwaters come around only when they have to, prompted mainly by economic forces. Say, a Euro car mfr turns their nose up at a factory in your state cuz their employees would have to pay for privsch to get a decent education. Or cuz your entire younger generation keeps moving away to other more culturally-enlightened states…
At one time, it was easier for the richest 0.1% to buy state governments e.g. ALEC so, they attempted to push control downward. Obama was notable for turning over the U.S. Dept. of Ed. and the federal health agencies to Bill Gates. Bush Jr. was notable for filling federal agencies with know-nothing cronies from business.