Trump has always expressed contempt for public schools. In his first term, he appointed billionaire religious zealot Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. She has spent many millions over decades to promote charters and vouchers, and she shoveled as much money as she could to charter schools, especially large chains.
His nominee for Secretary of Education, wrestling-entertainment entrepreneur Linda McMahon, will be no less spiteful towards public schools than DeVos. McMahon is chair of the extremist America First Policy Institute, which peddles the lie that public schools “indoctrinate” their students to hate America.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump pushed school choice as one of his major issues.
Yesterday he signed an executive order directing that discretionary federal funds be spent to promote all forms of choice, and he praised states with universal vouchers.
His executive order lambastes the “failure” of the public schools, a refrain we have heard from privatizers for the past 30 years, and he makes false claims about the benefits of private choices.
He says:
When our public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and devastates families and communities. For this reason, more than a dozen States have enacted universal K-12 scholarship programs, allowing families — rather than the government — to choose the best educational setting for their children. These States have highlighted the most promising avenue for education reform: educational choice for families and competition for residentially assigned, government-run public schools. The growing body of rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance.
This paragraph is larded with lies. Despite decades of loud complaining about how public schools hurt our economic competitiveness, we have the most vibrant and successful economy in the world. Our public schools, which enroll 85-90% of our nation’s students, contributed to that success.
Next is his patently false claim that universal choice is the best path to educational success. There is no evidence for that claim. In fact, Florida–a leader in universal choice–just experienced a sharp drop in its NAEP scores. Its reading and math scores dropped to their lowest level in more than 20 years.
And most ridiculous is his assertion that “rigorous research demonstrates that well-designed education-freedom programs improve student achievement and cause nearby public schools to improve their performance.”
Josh Cowen’s new book The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers thoroughly debunks those claims.
The most rigorous research, which Cowen reviews, shows that poor kids who take vouchers and switch to a private school experience a dramatic decline in their test scores. Many return to public schools.
The most rigorous research shows that most students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. The voucher is a subsidy for their religious and private school tuition.
The most rigorous research shows that universal vouchers in every state that has them are used by affluent families. They are welfare for the rich.
The most rigorous research shows that public schools lose funding when new and existing state funding goes to nonpublic schools.
The most rigorous research shows that universal choice busts the budgets of states that fund all students, including private school students.
Trump has sharpened his knife to destroy public education.
Fight back!
Join the Network for Public Education and link up with people in your community, your state, and the nation who believe that public dollars should be spent on public schools.
Sign up for the annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, April 5-6 and meet your allies.
Organize, strategize, resist!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The malignant narcissist attended private schools, as did all of his children, so he has no personal experience with them nor any concept of what public schools are like. He might be the best example of how attending private school does not necessarily ensure social, emotional and intellectual development nor genuine academic success, even for those who come from the most advantaged backgrounds.
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Exactly right. When Trump was in military academy, he abandoned empathy, compassion, heart, soul.
Despite his academy grooming, he dodged military service. He’s a coward.
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DJT most recently sharpened his knife & fork to demolish The Aviation Security Advisory Committee. A Public, private, military, civilian, academic & institutional collaboration that made US aviation safety the marvel of the world. It is No More! The committee will no longer have any members to carry out its work.
Last night “The Universe” responded with an air collision over Reagan Airport that defies imagination. Last month The FAA approved even more flights into Reagan National, although Congress was warned about a collision risk increase at an already overburdened airport. Tim Kaine said NO! But he was ignored. The bill received bipartisan support and Biden signed off.
We can no longer act as if any of these people know or care about what they are up to. They do not. Consequences be damned. Too bad and so sad for those who lose their lives, their livelihood, their public schools and their democracy due to the incompetence. Objection to their atrocities after the fact is no longer sufficient.
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So horribly sad. Any reduction of oversight into air security threatens all who fly.
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The Times had a smart article yesterday that honed in on the Trump admin strategy—to take actions that are generally agreed to go beyond the boundaries of the law, with the expectation that things will be sorted out in litigation, with the goal of expanding the boundaries of what executive action is permissible. It’s an aggressive litigation-based strategy, ironic for a party that loves to accuse the Dems as a party of “lawfare.” There’s nothing inherently wrong about it—arguably it is an executive advocating for the full use of its permissible powers—but it depends upon a Congress that zealously guards its own constitutional position and rights, including limiting the executive power. But because we don’t have that, we are going to see titanic shifts in how the federal government works. This is terrible and not easily undone.
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It’s the same strategy Trump used in his business affairs. He would lie, cheat and steal. Then, he would challenge others to sue him. His little vendors generally caved because they could not afford the legal costs. It remains to be seen if this same manipulative practice will work in the federal government. Trump is no “stable genius,” just a braggadocious cheat and liar.
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Trump said he would be a dictator on day 1. He didn’t say he would stop. He hasn’t.
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There’s nothing inherently wrong with taking actions that go beyond the boundaries of the law? Is going beyond the boundaries of the law not inherently wrong when it comes to protesters doing it? Or only when the most powerful person in the world does it?
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You are comparing apples and oranges.
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So you agree with FLERP! that there is nothing inherently wrong with Trump deliberately going beyond the boundaries of the law. I must say that’s not a position I would have expected you to take.
Of course protesters have to stay rigidly within the boundaries of the law – you’ve previously made that clear.
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Protesters have the right to protest. Often they break the law in purpose to draw attention to their protest.
The president of the U.S. is not a protester. He takes an oath to faithfully execute the laws. Trump is a very stupid man. He doesn’t know the laws. Also he has broken laws all his life.
That’s why presidents have a White House counsel, to advise them and make sure they don’t break the law.
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Diane (or anyone), maybe you can help me understand. Since I became a teacher in 1996, we have had so many “reforms.” NCLB, standardized testing, Race to the Top, Common Core, charter schools, ESA’s, vouchers and state standards.
Some were to ensure that teachers taught specific things. Other were supposed to provide competition for public schools because public schools needed that competiton to improve its performance.
Yet, after all of that wonderful reform, the scores just won’t improve. Look at Florida. One would think that doing everything they could to remove the best students from public schools would have fixed the problem. Whoops!
I’m just stunned that education isn’t so much better in the US. We should definitely double down on all the stuff that hasn’t moved the needle.
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Those aren’t reforms. They are deforms.
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Charters and Vouchers are actually “BIG STEALs,”
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Steven,
I have tried to explain all this craziness for 15 years. Please read one of my last three books–or all of them. When politicians get fixated on one idea, and pay no attention to how it fares in the real world, they keep repeating the same errors.
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I know. I was being completely sarcastic.
Every reform has been designed to weaken public schools or attempts to say “gotcha”!
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We’ve moved the needle in the wrong direction. Competency based instruction and corporate reform are failures. To improve education we need to invest in what matters: smaller classes, more resources, community schools, the freedom to teach, reduced standardized testing and no high stakes punishments to name a few. We need to use computers as useful tools to be deployed by teachers as needed and get rid of canned cyber instruction. Every school should have functioning school library as well. These are some of the changes that could help move the needle, IMO, and I am sure there are others.
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RT, yes!
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Invest is a key word here. The problem we face is that few leaders are willing to defend our public schools as an investment. Wealthy and upper middle class families who send their children to public schools are willing to make significant contributions to their school while they don’t see the value of investing in underprivileged schools. Our politicians are willing to invest in a military industrial complex that can’t pass an audit, space exploration, or fossil fuel tax breaks, but asking the same for public schools is a bridge too far. None of the industrial sectors, whether hi tech or skilled manufacturing, will prosper if we don’t support public education. That bi-partisan short sighted perspective is a threat to our national security and well being.
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The scores have changed a lot because the tests have changed. The scores decline when politicians need to “prove” that education is a failure and we “need” to implement their “reform”. Then once said “reform” is implemented, the scores “improve” (using a different test or recalibrating the scoring methods of the old tests) – voila! There’s nothing “standardized” about standardized testing.
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NAEP doesn’t work that way. The test is never the same. State tests in the other hand are manipulated to show progress or decline.
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The lying starts right off the bat at the 2nd sentence of Section 1:
“But too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school. According to this year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math.”
As always, reports ignore the 1/3 of students who scored “NAEP Basic,” as though they were failing, when in fact they scored in a range equivalent to C- to C+.
This para would make perfect sense if one part were reworded accurately: “33% of 8th graders were failing reading, and 39% were failing math.” The approximately 35% failing score we’ve seen in NAEP results for decades. This puts the focus where it belongs. On the low-income kids, who are perennially underserved.
That’s where the effort for improvement needs to be directed. Two-thirds of students are getting at minimum an adequate education: about half of them merely passing, about half excelling. But the typical reporting implies only one-third is passing! Is it reasonable to expect all students to get A’s and B’s? Only in Lake Wobegon. Disingenuous NAEP score reporting makes it sound as though there is a long-standing problem too huge to solve, might as well give up.
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Well said.
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I’ll join you in Columbus!
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That’s great, Paul!
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