The graphic below shows clearly where Trump’s priorities are and where they are not. A big boost to the military and border security. Deep cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, Labor, Interior, Agriculture, Justice, Housing, Energy, Education, Transportation, and everything else that has to do with social/human/non-military needs.
John Cassidy of The New Yorker describes the most important broken promise in the Trump budget proposal. We should all fall to our knees and thank whatever deity we choose that the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives last fall. It is doubtful that even his own party would want to own these budget proposals, which slash the social safety net that so many millions of Americans depend upon. This budget enhances the Trump administration’s well-established reverse Robin Hood approach, robbing from the middle class and the poor while giving to the rich and corporations.
I’ve noted before that Donald Trump lives by a famous dictum from Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist: “When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it.” (Goebbels attributed this tactic to the English.) And the President has outdone himself with his Administration’s new budget proposal for the 2020 fiscal year, which is entitled “A Budget for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First.”
“Promises kept” has a particularly nice ring to it. Almost as nice as what Trump said on that fateful day, June 16, 2015, when he descended the escalator at Trump Tower. “Save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without cuts,” he declared. “Have to do it.” Throughout the Republican primary campaign, Trump repeated this pledge many times and also accused his G.O.P. opponents of wanting to slash the three big entitlement programs. In the general-election campaign, he stuck to the same mantra. A few days before Election Day, he suggested that Hillary Clinton wanted to “destroy” Medicare, the public health-care system for the elderly, which she had vowed to expand, and claimed that he alone would “protect” it.
So how does the “Budget for a Better America” treat Medicare and the other programs that Trump vowed to safeguard at all costs? By calling for even larger cuts to them than the White House proposed this time last year, when it formally abandoned Trump’s campaign pledges. The budget for the 2019 fiscal year called for five hundred and fifty billion dollars in cuts to Medicare over ten years. With the budget deficit skyrocketing as a consequence of the Trump-G.O.P. tax bill, the 2020 budget would reduce spending on Medicare by eight hundred and forty-five billion dollars over the next decade. Even in Washington, that’s a lot of money.
The cuts to Medicare would be imposed as the budget allots billions of dollars a year in extra spending to the Pentagon and another $8.6 billion for Trump’s wall along the southern border. The economies would be achieved largely by reducing payments to doctors, hospitals, and other health-care providers, which could affect benefits and drive some providers to leave the program. Rather than spelling this out, the document adopts the language of Newspeak: “The Budget proposes to reduce wasteful spending and incentivize efficiency and quality of healthcare in Medicare, extending the solvency of the program for America’s seniors consistent with the President’s promise to protect Medicare.”
The budget treats Medicaid, the federal health program for poor people and children, in even more draconian fashion. Reflecting a long-standing priority of the Republican Party, the budget would convert Medicaid into a decentralized system administered by the states and financed by federal block grants. By indexing these grants to the consumer price inflation, which rises more slowly than inflation in the health-care sector, the budget would substantially reduce the federal-spending commitment going forward. In addition, it would eliminate funding that the Affordable Care Act provided for individual states to expand Medicaid to more recipients—funding that more than thirty states have taken advantage of in recent years.
Even for an ardently conservative administration like this one, you might think that would be enough cuts to health-care spending. No. The budget also proposes to eliminate some federal subsidies that the A.C.A. provided for the purchase of private insurance plans by people who aren’t quite poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. “The budget overall would cut funding for Medicaid and ACA subsidies by $777 billion over ten years, compared to current law,” Hannah Katch, an analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, noted.
Education Week describes Trump’s proposed cuts for programs in the U.S. Department of Education. Trump proposes eliminating 29 federal education programs while maintaining level funding for Title 1 and Special Education. The key quote in this article is the one from Secretary DeVos, who says the budget is about “education freedom,” by which she means, “So long, you are on your own, don’t expect the feds to help you.” The administration proposes $5 billion for vouchers and an increase in the federal charter school program to $500 million. It is not clear why the federal government needs to spend any money to start charter schools, since this project is now well covered by the Waltons, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family foundations, Michael Bloomberg, the Broad Foundation, the Dell Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, the Fisher Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the NewSchools Venture, the Charter School Growth Fund, and others too numerous to mention.
President Donald Trump is seeking a 10 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget in his fiscal 2020 budget proposal, which would cut the department’s spending by $7.1 billion down to $64 billion starting in October.
Funding for teacher development under Title II, totaling $2.1 billion, would be eliminated, as would $1.2 billion in Title IV funding for academic supports and enrichment and $1.1 billion for 21st Century Community Learning Centers that support after-school programs. In total, funding for 29 programs would be eliminated in the federal budget.
On the other side of the ledger, Trump’s budget blueprint calls for $500 million for federal charter school grants, a $60 million increase from current funding levels. The president also wants $200 million for the School Safety National Activities program, which would more than double the program’s $95 million in current funding—of that amount, $100 million would be used to fund a new School Safety State Formula Grant program. There are no requirements for the grant program related to firearms, according to the Education Department. And the office for civil rights would get $125 million, the same as current funding.
On the school choice front, the department says its main proposal has already been introduced: a federal tax-credit scholarship program from Republicans. The Treasury Department’s budget proposal includes $5 billion for the cost of such a program.
Meanwhile, the Education Innovation and Research fund would be funded at $300 million, a $170 million increase from fiscal 2019. Of that amount, $200 million would “test the impact of teacher professional development vouchers,” according to a presentation from the Education Department, while $100 million would go toward innovative STEM grants. In addition, the Trump budget would provide $50 million for a pilot program under Title I to help districts create and use weighted student-funding formulas—this pilot program was created under the Every Student Succeeds Actin order to help schools focus money directly on disadvantaged students and those with special needs. Funding for the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarships Program, which provides vouchers to students in the nation’s capital, would increase to $30 million.
Title I funding for disadvantaged students, the single-largest federal funding program for public schools, remains flat at $15.9 billion in Trump’s budget pitch. Special education grants to states would also be level-funded at $13.2 billion. Also flat-funded are the English Language Acquisition formula grants at $737.4 million.
“This budget at its core is about education freedom—freedom for America’s students to pursue their life-long learning journeys in the ways and places that work best for them, freedom for teachers to develop their talents and pursue their passions, and freedom from the top-down ‘Washington knows best’ approach that has proven ineffective and even harmful to students,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in a statement about the budget proposal.
On a Monday conference call with reporters, Jim Blew, the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development, acknowledged that Congress and the Trump administration have not been synced up in terms of education spending priorities.
“The administration believes that we need to reduce the amount of discretionary funding for the education,” Blew said. “That is based on the desire to have some fiscal discipline and address some higher-priority needs.”
Blew indicated that the priorities should be the disadvantaged children and students with disabilities.
For more details on Trump’s fiscal 2020 proposal for the Education Department, click here. And check out our chart below to see the effects Trump’s budget request would have on different programs.
When the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives last fall, a great champion of working people, children, and public schools was restored as chair of a key committee overseeing the social safety net. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut is determined to protect the federal funding on which millions of people depend. Trump wants to increase military spending.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 11, 2019
CONTACT:
Will Serio: 202-225-3661
DeLauro Statement on Trump’s 2020 Budget
WASHINGTON, DC — Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, today released the following statement regarding President Trump’s 2020 budget.
“For the third year in a row, President Trump has released a budget that is cruel and reckless. His administration has proposed $21 billion in cuts to programs at the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education—cuts that will crush critical programs that serve working people and middle-class families. This is not hyperbole. President Trump actually wants to cut Medicare, Medicaid, home energy assistance for seniors and people with disabilities, groundbreaking medical research, tools that help local communities fight poverty, job training programs, funding to enforce our trade agreements, pre-school grants, teen pregnancy prevention programs, anti-hunger programs like SNAP, afterschool programs, Pell Grants, federal work study programs, and much more.”
“It is disheartening to see a budget that would dismantle so many programs that people rely on every day. It would be a cold day in hell before I helped pass a budget like this—one that hurts the American people in order to lavish tax cuts on millionaires, billionaires, corporations, and special interests. Instead, Democrats will continue fighting for working people, the middle class, and the most vulnerable.”
Some cuts President Trump’s budget proposes within the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education include:
Department of Labor
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Education
In addition, the President’s Budget:
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The story of the task force charged with reviewing the charter law and the fiscal impact of charters on public schools continues to evolve, and not in a good way.
Of the 11 members of the task force appointed by Tony Thurmond, in consultation with Governor Gavin Newsom, at least six are directly connected to the charter industry.
How can this be possible when the charter industry supported former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa against Gavin Newsom, and when the charter industry spent millions to defeat Tony Thurmond, outspending his supporters by a margin of 2-1?
Here is the task force with new information about one member, the superintendent of El Dorado County:
The task force members are:
By my count, six members of the 11-member panel are directly connected to the charter industry, including two from the lobbying organization CCSA. That’s a majority.
As a supporter of public schools, I supported Tony Thurmond as best I could on this blog. I personally contributed to his campaign. I thought that his election and the election of Gavin Newsom meant that charter schools in California would be held to the same standards of academic, financial, and ethical accountability as public schools; I hoped that the state would stop stacking the deck in favor of charters. I hoped that necessary reforms would eliminate shady operators and grifters and put a halt to the unchecked proliferation of unstable, unsound charter schools.
Now, I am not so sure.
The fox is in charge of the henhouse.
If you are as outraged as I am, if you feel you have been had, please contact Superintendent Tony Thurmond.
Only 10% of the students in the state of California attend charter schools.
Why do their representatives get to police themselves?
Why do their representatives get to decide whether they are hurting the public schools that most students attend?
Why does the charter industry get to decide whether it is okay for them to drain funds and impose budget cuts on public schools?
I posted earlier that there are no teachers on the task force appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom and State Superintendent Tony Thurmond to study charter law in California, but that’s not quite right. The task force is meeting regularly and it would likely be impossible for a working teacher to leave her or his classroom on a weekly basis to attend task force meetings.
However, there are at least two members of the task force who were active teachers: Erika Jones of the California Teachers Association and Cindy Marten, superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District.
I don’t understand why the task force has so many representatives of the charter industry on a committee to study charter law, when only 10 percent of students in California schools are enrolled in charters. The charter industry is infamous for protecting its turf and fighting any regulation or accountability. This is like asking representatives of Big Tobacco to participate in a discussion of whether to regulate cigarette sales.
Charter law in the state is notoriously lax. A district with a tiny enrollment can open a charter in a district 500 miles away and collect a commission on the students who enroll. If a charter asks a district for permission to open or for a renewal, and the district rejects the application, the charter can appeal to the county board. If the county board says that its application or its record is deficient, the charter can appeal to the state board. Under Governor Jerry Brown, the state board rubberstamped applications despite rejections from the affected district and county. Under current law, the state need not consider the fiscal impact of charters on nearby public schools, a factor which has severely damaged Oakland, Inglewood, and other districts. Under current law, charters are parasites on the districts that are forced to host them, draining away students and resources and leaving “stranded costs” (fixed costs).
California has had a large number of scandals in the charter sector. The most recent occurred when the CEO of the Celerity Charter chain pled guilty to using the schools’ credit card to charge luxury items, including designer clothing, fancy hotels, haute cuisine and limousine service, as well as to fund her Ohio charter school.
These are issues the task force will consider. Will the large bloc of charter supporters on the task force acknowledge the fiscal problems caused by charters for the public schools that enroll most students? Or will they fight stubbornly to maintain the charters’ freedom from accountability? Why did the California Charter School Association get two members of the task force but the California Teachers Association get only one? If charter schools undermine public schools, it is a net loss for the children of the state. If failing charters are allowed to be renewed again and again, it is a disgrace.
Here is the complete task force:
The task force members are:
Recommended readings:
Gordon Lafer on the fiscal impact of charters on California public schools.
Carol Burris on the travesty of the state’s charter law.
State Superintendent of Instruction Tony Thurmond appointed an 11-member task force to study the fiscal impact of charter schools on public schools.
He did so at the request of Governor Newsom.
Four members of the task force are part of the charter industry.
Thurmond is amazingly evenhanded. In the race for the office last fall, the charter industry outspent him 2-1 and smeared him with negative advertising.
Ten percent of the state’s students are in charter schools.
The task force should be sure to read University of Oregon Professor Gordon Lafer’s Study of the fiscal impact of charters on three districts, called “Breaking Point.”
In the two recent teachers’ strikes, in Los Angeles and Oakland, teachers called for a moratorium on new charters until such a study was completed. Governor Newsom has been noncommittal on that demand.
The charter sector has operated with minimal or no oversight. To see how bad things are, read “Charters and Consequences.” There are storefront charters where students meet their teacher only once every three weeks. There are charters with graduation rates under 10%. Charters are allowed to open wherever they want. Charters can appeal a district rejection to the county, then appeal the county rejection to the state, where they usually got a rubber stamp. Charters may be run like chain stores, without oversight, just to make money. Until Newsom signed a bill recently, there were no laws profiting conflicts of interest or nepotism. The charter industry vigorously opposed any regulation or accountability.
One charter executive called the ban on conflicts and nepotism a “scorched earth policy.”
Jan Resseger writes one astonishingly smart post after another. We can all learn from her. Having dedicated her career to social justice and especially to education justice, she is steeped in the issues. But she has a way of putting together information from different sources that brings new light on old discussions.
This post about our national underinvestment in education is exemplary.
She begins like this:
For nearly two decades the preferred spin of policymakers at federal and state levels has been that financial investments (inputs) are far less important than evidence of academic achievement (outcomes as measured by standardized tests). And the outcomes were supposed to be achieved by pressuring teachers to work harder and smarter. Somehow teachers have been expected to deliver a miracle at the same time classes got bigger; nurses, counselors and librarians were cut; and teacher turnover increased as salaries lagged.
Statements of justice in public education have always been a little vague about the most direct path to get there. One of my favorite definitions of public education’s purpose is from Benjamin Barber’s 1992 book, An Aristocracy of Everyone: “(T)he object of public schools is not to credential the educated but to educate the uncredentialed; that is, to change and transform pupils, not merely to exploit their strengths. The challenge in a democracy is to transform every child into an apt pupil, and give every pupil the chance to become an autonomous, thinking person and a deliberative, self-governing citizen: that is to say, to achieve excellence… Education need not begin with equally adept students, because education is itself the equalizer. Equality is achieved not by handicapping the swiftest, but by assuring the less advantaged a comparable opportunity. ‘Comparable’ here does not mean identical… Schooling is what allows math washouts to appreciate the contributions of math whizzes—and may one day help persuade them to allocate tax revenues for basic scientific research, which math illiterates would reject. Schooling allows those born poor to compete with those born rich; allows immigrants to feel as American as the self-proclaimed daughters and sons of the American Revolution; allows African-Americans, whose ancestors were brought here in bondage, to fight for the substance (rather than just the legal forms) of their freedom.” (An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 12-13)
There are many reasons to consider Barber’s principles carefully in Trump’s America. In the specific case of the provision of education, however, we ought to consider this question: Can these words—“Education need not begin with equally adept students, because education is itself the equalizer”— be achieved without our society’s investing in tangible inputs like class size and numbers of counselors and the presence of school music programs? For a year now—in walkouts and strikes—schoolteachers have been telling us that policymakers are naive to believe inputs don’t matter. In a new report, K-12 School Funding Up in Most 2018 Teacher-Protest States, But Still Well Below Decade Ago, the Center on Budget and Priorities (CBPP) confirms teachers’ outrage about the collapse of financial investment in their schools.
CBPP’s new report summarizes school funding in several of the states where striking teachers have called attention to their states’ long collapse of funding for K-12 public education: “Protests by teachers and others last year helped lead to substantial increases in school funding in Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, four of the 12 states that had cut school ‘formula’ funding—the primary state revenue source for schools—most deeply over the last decade. Despite last year’s improvements, however, formula funding remains well below 2008 levels in these states.”
CBPP explains further that to end teachers’ strikes, legislators too frequently went for a quick fix instead of a stable solution: “Three of the four teacher-protest states that increased formula funding last year used revenue sources that may prove unsustainable…. Arizona teachers ended their strike after Governor Doug Ducey signed a budget giving them a 20 percent salary increase over three years. But the budget doesn’t include the new revenue required to finance the planned spending…. North Carolina’s legislature increased funding for schools without raising new revenue to do so, even though the state faces a revenue shortfall next year for covering ongoing needs, primarily due to unsustainable income tax cuts that began to take effect in 2014… Oklahoma funded pay increases for teachers and other public employees that included a hike in cigarette taxes, a boost in gasoline taxes, and an increase in the tax rate on oil extraction. While these revenue sources were adequate to cover the pay hikes, they may not be in the future.”
Even the emergency increases after teachers’ strikes are not enough: “Most of the teacher-protest states had cut their formula funding so deeply over the last decade that even last year’s sizeable funding boosts weren’t enough to restore funding to pre-recession levels. For example, in Oklahoma, per-student formula funding remains 15 percent below 2008 levels, including inflation adjustments. And per-student formula funding in Arizona, North Carolina, and West Virginia, as well, is still well below pre-recession levels.”
The strike by the UTLA in Los Angeles just claimed an important victory. As California law now is written, the grant of a charter is not supposed to take into account the fiscal impact of a new charter on the fiscal condition of the district where it is located.
Thanks to the UTLA settlement, Governor Gavin Newsom has directed State Superintendent of Instruction Tony Thurmond to appoint an independent panel of experts to review exactly that: what is the fiscal impact of charters on the public schools of their host district?
The panel will have four months to look at the issue, and to report back to Newsom by July 1. Thurmond has not yet announced who will be on the panel, but its formation raises the likelihood that California’s charter school laws may undergo revision over the coming year. This would be the first time there has been an in-depth look at the financial impact of charter schools since passage of California’s first charter law in 1992.
The issue was a concern of Newsom’s even before the L.A. teachers strike, said Newsom spokesperson Brian Ferguson.
“As Governor Newsom stated in his first budget proposal, rising charter school enrollments in some urban districts are having real impacts on those districts’ ability to provide essential support and services for their students,” he said.
Under a 1998 state law, districts are not allowed to take into account the financial impact of a charter school on a district in deciding whether or not to grant them a charter. Charter advocates fear that removing this prohibition could have a dramatic impact on slowing charter school school expansion in the state.
Newsom’s creation of a panel to look into the issue appears a responseto a resolution approved by the Los Angeles Unified school board last month as part of the agreement it reached with the United Teachers of Los Angeles and its striking teachers last month. The resolution called for a “comprehensive study” of various aspects of charter schools in the district, including their “financial implications.”
The resolution also called for an 8-to-10 month moratorium on new charter schools while the study was being conducted. So far, however, Newsom has been silent on these latest calls for a moratorium.
In a statement, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, representing 33,000 teachers and other staff in the district, “applauded” Newsom for recognizing what it said was obvious: that L.A. Unified and other districts across the state are being “financially strangled” by what it called the “unmitigated growth” of charter schools.
But it questioned the need for a panel, saying that an “immediate cap on charter schools is urgently necessary.” Large urban districts, it said, were “well past the saturation point for charter school growth.”
Similar calls for a cap or a moratorium are coming from other districts with a large proportion of students in charter schools. In Oakland, where teachers appear to be on the verge of a strike, the school board also has set as one of its priorities convincing lawmakers in Sacramento to impose a moratorium on charter expansion. And in the nearby West Contra Costa Unified District, which includes Richmond, the board will consider a resolution this week calling for a statewide charter moratorium.
This is a tremendous setback for the charter industry, which has taken advantage of the opportunity to expand without regard to the cost of local public schools, even if it sets them on the path to insolvency.
Last May, Gordon Lafer, a political economist at the University of Oregon, produced a report for “In the Public Interest” estimating what charter schools cost three local school districts. When a student leaves for a charter school, the student takes his or her tuition money but the school still has fixed costs (or “stranded costs”) that cannot be cut, like custodians, transportation, maintenance, and utilities. To break even, the district must cut its budget, lay off teachers, increase class sizes, and eliminate programs. Thus, the majority of students suffer deteriorating conditions so that the charter schools may increase enrollment.
It’s long past time to take a look at this issue and establish accountability, transparency, and limits to charter school expansion in California.
Angie Sullivan teaches first grade children in Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas). Most of her students are low-income and Hispanic. She regularly writes letters to her legislators.
She writes:
Close it down we need to walk out. We all need to fight for money together. We can only dance if everyone is wearing shoes.
No more lectures about teachers improving. You do not have many teachers left. For good reason. Lecturing us – does not work – hasn’t for two decades.
Try something new. Follow the law.
Clean up the central office money.
Clean up the central office financial quagmire.
It is the law.
85-15
You just purchased the $17 million financial software? What has been the issue for two years? Who is going to answer for that mismanagement?
No numbers for the legislative session?
You will soon ask School Building SOTS to cut $50 million?
It’s your turn Central Office.
Cut that $50 million from that marble area.
Time to dismantle everything downtown except the skeleton and central office folks find a home in a vacant classroom. Meets the law and cleans up the corruption. Kids need a teacher not a marble office building.
No more downtown kingdoms.
How are you going to ask the legislature for the $500 million you need to meet contracts?
No one will give it to you. No one throws good money after bad.
Cannot see anything that is not in schools. Even those numbers are questionable since the central office “charges” schools for things schools do not have – like teachers.
The whole state will fight for $300 million this session. This is heavy lift and nothing real has happened in the central office yet.
The listening tour is nice.
Get ready for the session please.
Hard to dance with a partner who doesn’t have sense enough to wear shoes.
Clean up your money mess.
Newsflash: Folks love their teachers. They do NOT like the central office or the Trustees. For good reason.
Next time you address your army – make sure your financial house is clean.
Put your shoes on.
Keep the lecture. And give it to your friends. It is offensive to the team working for kids.
We are fully dressed and ready to march.
You are barefoot.
I am mad.
All I can do is weep.
We are ready for leadership. Leadership is not a lecture about data – that is not going to raise money.
Make moves to get money.
Do what you can to get money.
We need $2 Billion. Telling us to get data is not going to get money.
The heavy lift is money.
Rally your team.
It is about money.
Get your shoes on.
Close it down. We need to walk out. You need to come with us. Clean it up. Shut it down.
The Teacher
Angie
CCSD Central Office needs to be dismantled and reorganized to meet the law.
We need new educational leadership at the highest levels who will improve neighborhood public schools instead of promote charters.
No more business deals and/or tax credits that rob the DSA (Dedicated School Account).
No more cuts at the school level.
Pay your own bills. Raise the funds to cover the bills.
We want adequate total funding for CCSD programs to open equitably – like preschools
Attrition money needs to be returned to the individual schools. If a vacancy is not filled – the school needs the money saved to support kids.
We want the reorganization law to be followed and all of the 85 to be pushed to school level.
We want the pot money.
We want the room tax money
We want our fair share of the education money 80%.
We want ability to raise money locally.
We want money to get to kids
We want weighted funding.
We want our fair share of mining proceeds.
We want the southern caucus to fight for our kids. Quit allowing everyone else in the state to grab our student money.
We need additional money for each and every “great idea”.
We have significant needs.
Teachers being silenced has not worked.
Diane Ravitch's blog 