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Brookings Institution: What Project 2025 Means for Education

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2024 //
6

A group of scholars at the Brookings Institution analyzed Project 2025’s proposals for education and their implications.

What struck me as most bizarre about Project 2025 was not its efforts to block-grant all federal funding of schools, nor its emphasis on privatization of K-12 schools. (Block-granting means assigning federal funding to states as a lump sum, no strings attached, no federal oversight).

No, what amazed me most was the split screen between the report’s desire to hand all power over education to states and communities, and the report’s insistence on preserving enough power to punish LGBT students, especially trans students and to impose other far-right mandates, like stamping out critical race theory. You know, either you let the states decide or you don’t. The report wants it both ways.

It’s also astonishing to realize that the insidious goal of the report is eventually abandon federal funding of education. That’s a huge step backward, taking us to 1965, before Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whose purpose was to raise spending in impoverished communities. I essence, P2025 says that decades of pursuing equitable funding “didn’t work,” so let’s abandon the goal and the spending.

Here is the Brookings analysis:

Project 2025 outlines a radical policy agenda that would dramatically reshape the federal government. The report was spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and represents the policy aims of a large coalition of conservative activists. While former President Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, many of the report’s authors worked in the previous Trump administration and could return for a second round. Trump, himself, said in 2022, “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

In other words, Project 2025 warrants a close look, even if the Trump campaign would like Americans to avert their gaze.

Project 2025’s education agenda proposes a drastic overhaul of federal education policy, from early childhood through higher education. Here’s just a sample of the Project 2025 education-related recommendations:

  • Dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED)
  • Eliminate the Head Start program for young children in poverty
  • Discontinue the Title I program that provides federal funding to schools serving low-income children
  • Rescind federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
  • Undercut federal capacity to enforce civil rights law
  • Reduce federal funding for students with disabilities and remove guardrails designed to ensure these children are adequately served by schools
  • Promote universal private school choice
  • Privatize the federal student loan portfolio

It’s an outrageous list, and that’s just the start of it.

We’ve reviewed the Project 2025 chapter on education (Chapter 11), along with other chapters with implications for students. We’ve come away with four main observations:

1. Most of the major policy proposals in Project 2025 would require an unlikely amount of congressional cooperation

Project 2025 is presented as a to-do list for an incoming Trump administration. However, most of its big-ticket education items would require a great deal of cooperation from Congress.

Proposals to create controversial, new laws or programs would require majority support in the House and, very likely, a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate. Ideas like a Parents’ Bill of Rights, the Department of Education Reorganization Act, and a federal tax-credit scholarship program fall into this category. Even if Republicans outperform expectations in this fall’s Senate races, they’d have to attract several Democratic votes to get to 60. That’s not happening for these types of proposals.  

The same goes for major changes to existing legislation. This includes, for example, a proposal to convert funding associated with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to no-strings-attached block grants and education savings accounts (with, presumably, much less accountability for spending those funds appropriately). It also includes a proposal to end the “negotiated rulemaking” (“neg-reg”) process that ED follows when developing regulations related to programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA). The neg-reg requirement is written into HEA itself, which means that unwinding neg-reg would require Congress to amend the HEA. That’s unlikely given that HEA reauthorization is already more than a decade overdue—and that’s without the political baggage of Project 2025 weighing down the process.

The prospect of changing funding levels for existing programs is a little more complicated. Programs like Title I are permanently authorized. Eliminating Title I or changing the formulas it usesto allocate funds to local educational agencies would require new and unlikely legislation. Year-to-year funding levels can and do change, but the vast majority of ED’s budget consists of discretionary funding that’s provided through the regular, annual appropriations process and subject to a filibuster. This limits the ability of one party to make major, unilateral changes. (ED’s mandatoryfunding is more vulnerable.)

In sum, one limiting factor on what an incoming Trump administration could realistically enact from Project 2025 is that many of these proposals are too unpopular with Democrats to overcome their legislative hurdles.

2. Some Project 2025 proposals would disproportionately harm conservative, rural areas and likely encounter Republican opposition

Another limiting factor is that some of Project 2025’s most substantive proposals probably wouldn’t be all that popular with Republicans either.

Let’s take, for example, the proposed sunsetting of the Title I program. Project 2025 proposes to phase out federal spending on Title I over a 10-year period, with states left to decide whether and how to continue that funding. It justifies this with misleading suggestions that persistent test score gaps between wealthy and poor students indicate that investments like Title I funding aren’t paying off. (In fact, evidence from school finance reforms suggests real benefits from education spending, especially for students from low-income families.)

The phrase “Title I schools” might conjure up images of under-resourced schools in urban areas that predominantly serve students of color, and it’s true that these schools are major beneficiaries of Title I. However, many types of schools, across many types of communities, receive critical support through Title I. In fact, schools in Republican-leaning areas could be hit the hardest by major cuts or changes to Title I. In the map below, we show the share of total per-pupil funding coming from Title I by state. Note that many of the states that rely the most on Title I funds (darkest blue) are politically conservative.

[Open the link to see the map.]

Of course, the impact of shifting from federal to state control of Title I would depend on how states choose to handle their newfound decision-making power. Given that several red states are among the lowest spenders on education—and have skimped on programs like Summer EBT and Medicaid expansion—it’s hard to believe that low-income students in red states would benefit from a shift to state control.

What does that mean for the type of support that Project 2025 proposals might get from red-state Republicans in Congress? It’s hard to know. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that the GOP’s push for universal private school voucher programs has encountered some of its fiercest resistance from rural Republicans across several states.

3. Project 2025 also has significant proposals that a second Trump administration could enact unilaterally

While a second Trump administration couldn’t enact everything outlined in Project 2025 even if it wanted to, several consequential proposals wouldn’t require cooperation from Congress. This includes some actions that ED took during the first Trump administration and certainly could take again.

Here are a few of the Project 2025 proposals that the Trump administration could enact with the authority of the executive branch alone:

  • Roll back civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
  • Roll back Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination
  • Dismantle the federal civil rights enforcement apparatus
  • Eliminate current income-driven repayment plans and require higher monthly payments for low-income borrowers
  • Remove protections from predatory colleges that leave students with excessive debt

Federal education policy has suffered from regulatory whiplash over the last decade, with presidential administrations launching counter-regulations to undo the executive actions of the prior administration. Take, for example, “gainful employment” regulations that Democratic administrations have used to limit eligibility for federal financial aid for colleges that leave students with excessive loan debt. A second Trump administration would likely seek to reverse the Biden administration’s “gainful employment” regulations like the first Trump administration did to the Obama administration’s rules. (Then again, with the Supreme Court striking down Chevron, which provided deference to agency expertise in setting regulations, the Trump administration might not even need to formally undo regulations.)

Other Project 2025 proposals, not explicitly about education, also could wreak havoc. This includes a major overhaul of the federal civil service. Specifically, Project 2025 seeks to reinstate Schedule F, an executive order that Trump signed during his final weeks in office. Schedule F would reclassify thousands of civil service positions in the federal government to policy roles—a shift that would empower the president to fire civil servants and fill their positions with political appointees. Much has been written about the consequences of decimating the civil service, and the U.S. Department of Education, along with other federal agencies that serve students, would feel its effects.

4. Project 2025 reflects a white Christian nationalist agenda as much as it reflects a traditional conservative education policy agenda

If one were to read Project 2025’s appeals to principles such as local control and parental choice, they might think this is a standard conservative agenda for education policy. Republicans, after all, have been calling for the dismantling of ED since the Reagan administration, and every administration since has supported some types of school choice reforms.

But in many ways, Project 2025’s proposals really don’t look conservative at all. For example, a large-scale, tax-credit scholarship program would substantially increase the federal government’s role in K-12 education. A Parents’ Bill of Rights would require the construction of a massive federal oversight and enforcement function that does not currently exist. And a proposal that “states should require schools to post classroom materials online to provide maximum transparency to parents” would impose an enormous compliance burden on schools, districts, and teachers.

Much of Project 2025 is more easily interpretable through the lens of white Christian nationalism than traditional political conservatism. Scholars Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry describe white Christian nationalism as being “about ethno-traditionalism and protecting the freedoms of a very narrowly defined ‘us’.” The Project 2025 chapter on education is loaded with proposals fitting this description. That includes a stunning number of proposals focused on gender identity, with transgender students as a frequent target. Project 2025 seeks to secure rights for certain people (e.g., parents who support a particular vision of parental rights) while removing protections for many others (e.g., LGBTQ+ and racially minoritized children). Case in point, its proposal for “Safeguarding civil rights” says only, “Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”

These types of proposals don’t come from the traditional conservative playbook for education policy reform. They come from a white Christian nationalist playbook that has gained prominence in far-right politics in recent years.

At this point, it’s clear that the Trump campaign sees Project 2025 as a political liability that requires distance through the election season. Let’s not confuse that with what might happen during a second Trump administration.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Disruption, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Elections, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Equity, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Special Education, Vouchers

Tennessee: Governor Lee Demands Vouchers for All Students, Rich and Poor Alike

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
5

Marta W. Aldrich reported in Chalkbeat that Governor Bill Lee will make universal vouchers his top priority in education this coming year. Tennessee currently has a voucher program that is limited to three urban districts and is not fully enrolled. The Governor, who is a graduate of public schools, wants all students, rich and poor alike, to have a public subsidy to pay for private and religious schooling.

Republicans have made universal vouchers a high priority, knowing that it will drain students and funding from their local public schools.

Governor Lee’s effort to pass universal vouchers failed last year because of opposition by urban Democrats and rural Republicans. However, some of the Republican opponents were defeated with the help of out-of-state money spent to elect voucher-friendly Republicans who were willing to undercut their local public schools.

The extremist Republicans were funded by an organization called 1776 Project PAC, whose purpose is to elect school boards who will oppose “woke” policies and support privatization. Its leader is a GOP operative named Ryan James Gidursky. Here is a video where he discusses “the Marxist takeover of America’s schools.” Check out the merchandise on their website, which says more about their purposes than the other parts of the website. The 1776 Project PAC was funded by a rightwing billionaire, Richard Uihelein, who wants to destroy public schools because they are “woke.”

From what we already know about vouchers, we can predict that the great majority of them will be used by affluent families whose children are already enrolled in nonpublic schools. In his recently published book, The Privateers, Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has shown that the low-income students who transfer to nonpublic schools do not make academic gains and frequently experience “catastrophic” declines in their outcomes.

A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for a second straight year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states….

Similar to last year’s proposal, the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters”.

Categories Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers

Democracy: Trump, the GOP, and Racism

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2024 //
2

Our reader who goes by the pen name “Democracy” left the following comment on recent events. We are familiar with Trump’s racist, enophobic outbursts. He has no problem with immigration from Europe but is apoplectic about immigration from nonwhite countries. The usual word for this is racism. How do other Republicans react to Trump’s overt racism?

Democracy wrote:

Here are the parts of the Heather Cox Richardson article that I found to be astounding:

“Since he announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, Trump has trafficked in racist anti-immigrant stories. But since the September 10 presidential debate when he drew ridicule for his outburst regurgitating the lie that legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their white neighbors’ pets, Trump has used increasingly fascist rhetoric. By this weekend, he had fully embraced the idea that the United States is being overrun by Black and Brown criminals and that they, along with their Democratic accomplices, must be rounded up, deported, or executed, with the help of the military. 

Myah Ward of Politico noted on October 12 that Trump’s speeches have escalated to the point that he now promises that he alone can save the country from those people he calls ‘animals,’ ‘stone cold killers,’ the ‘worst people,’ and the “]’enemy from within.’  He falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris ‘has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world…from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.’

When Trump said, ‘We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them for long, a person in the crowd shouted: ‘Kill them!’ “

Jennifer Rubin put it like this today in The Washington Post:

“Trump has consistently evidenced racism throughout his career. He might have flipped on abortion, but racial animus seems baked into his psyche. Whether being sued for refusing to rent to African Americans, demonizing the innocent Central Park Five, promoting the ‘birther’ conspiracy theory to delegitimize the first Black president, announcing his entry into politics by slandering immigrants as murderers and thugs, refusing to denounce white nationalists at a debate in 2016, referring to non-White-majority countries as ‘s—holes’ or preemptively blaming Jews for his defeat, Trump has never departed from a steady stream of racism, xenophobia and antisemitism. His exaggeration about crime in big cities is a racial dog whistle; his phony ‘immigrant crime wave’ is a racial bullhorn. This is who he is.

…for Trump, racism is crucial to his voter suppression and election denial. The spate of voter suppression laws following Jan. 6 disproportionately affecting non-Whites, the targeting of cities in swing states with large Black electorates in 2020 (Detroit, Philadelphia), the attacks on Black poll workers and the ongoing claims of millions of undocumented immigrants voting all have a common purpose. Trump and his followers aim to put non-Whites outside the American electorate (not ‘real Americans’) and cry foul based on unsubstantiated charges of fraud when the candidate loses. If non-Whites are not ‘real’ Americans or stand in the way of Whites attaining or retaining power, then making it harder to vote (or not counting their votes) — and removing immigrants on the mere suspicion that they are illegal — are justified.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/15/trump-racism-detroit-immigration/

Like Rubin notes, it’s NOT just Trump. It’s virtually the entirety of Republican politicians AND Republican voters.

Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin was on CNN yesterday defending Trump’s racist rhetoric.

As Tom Nichols at The Atlantic described it,

“Tapper read Trump’s remarks verbatim, and then asked: ‘Is that something that you support?’ Youngkin replied that Tapper misunderstood Trump, who he said was referring to undocumented immigrants. No, Tapper responded, Trump clearly meant American citizens…Youngkin aw-shucksed his way through stories about Venezuelan criminals and Virginians dying from fentanyl. “’Obviously there is a border crisis,’ Tapper said. ‘Obviously there are too many criminals who should not be in this country, and they should be jailed and deported completely, but that’s not what I’m talking about.’ And then, to his credit, Tapper wouldn’t let go: What about Trump’s threat to use the military against Americans?

Well, Youngkin shrugged, he ‘can’t speak’ for Trump, but he was certain that Tapper was ‘misrepresenting [Trump’s] thoughts.’ “

UVA political analyst Larry Sabato described the Youngkin Critical Race Theory strategy this way:

“The operative word is not critical.And it’s not theory. It’s race. What a shock, huh? Race. That is what matters. And that’s why it’s sticks. There’s a lot of, we can call it white backlash, white resistance, whatever you want to call it. It has to do with race. And so we live in a post-factual era … It doesn’t matter that [CRT] isn’t taught in Virginia schools. It’s this generalized attitude that whites are being put upon and we’ve got to do something about it. We being white voters.”

When Youngkin ran for governor in 2021, his entire campaign was overtly racist. Youngkin claimed – falsely – that Critical Race Theory permeated all of Virginia’s public schools, and that teachers were teaching to kids – white kids – that they were “racists.” Noe of this was true, but Youngkin turned out the low-education white cracker vote.

THIS is where we are now with Trump, and expect it to get even worse between now and November 5.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Extremism, Racism, Republicans, Trump

North Carolina: “Armed Militia” Threatens Federal Emergency Workers

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2024 //
12

The Washington Post reported that federal emergency workers had to stop work due to concerns about an “armed militia.”

It can’t happen here. We are the United States.

But we have a candidate for President who constantly encourages violence against enemies and disparages the federal government that he wants to lead.

And we have a political party that wants no restrictions on guns. And here we are.

LAKE LURE, N.C. — Federal emergency response personnel on Saturday had employees operating in hard-hit Rutherford County, N.C., stop working and move to a different area because of concerns over “armed militia” threatening government workers in the region, according to an email sent to federal agencies helping with response in the state.

Around 1 p.m. Saturday, an official with the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sent an urgent message to numerous federal agencies warning that “FEMA has advised all federal responders Rutherford County, NC, to stand down and evacuate the county immediately. The message stated that National Guard troops ‘had come across x2 trucks of armed militia saying there were out hunting FEMA.’”

“The IMTs [incident management teams] have been notified and are coordinating the evacuation of all assigned personnel in that county,” the email added.

Two federal officials confirmed the authenticity of the email, though it was unclear whether the quoted threat was seen as credible. The National Guard referred questions to FEMA when asked about the incident. One Forest Service official coordinating the Helene recovery said responders moved to a “safe area” and at least some work in that area — which included clearing trees off dozens of damaged and blocked roads to help search-and-rescue crews, as well as groups delivering supplies — was paused.

By Sunday afternoon, personnel were back in place, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The setback is one of the latest examples of growing concerns about safety and security in western North Carolina, where many towns were almost wiped off the map after the historic hurricane made landfall two weeks ago. In the weeks since, misinformation and rumors have made the recovery more difficult, targeting multiple federal agencies operating as part of the recovery. Federal officials such as the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA’s director of public affairs have been the target of antisemitic attacks.

Chimney Rock, in Rutherford County, has become one of the centers of tension and conflict after a rumor spread on social media that government officials planned to seize the decimated village and bulldoze bodies under the rubble. Authorities and news outlets debunked the assertion, but people still took to social media imploring militias to go after FEMA.

A person familiar with FEMA operations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the agency was working out of an abundance of caution and its teams were operating at fixed locations and secure areas instead of the usual practice of going door to door.

Categories Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Guns, North Carolina, Republicans, Trump

Read This Tweet and Pray to Save Our Country from Religious Cults

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2024 //
28

A man named Matthew D. Taylor (@TaylorMatthewD) writes on Twitter about a violent cult called the New Apostolic Reformation. NAR held a rally on Friday on the mall in Washington, DC. It was called the Million women March but it was decidedly anti-feminist. Its members and followers are passionately pro-Trump. The last speech of the day came from a leader who prophesied the election of Trump and described Kamala Harris to Jezebel. The tweets quote the Biblical passage in which Jezebel is thrown out of a window to the ground, where she is trampled by Jehu’s horse, then consumed by hungry dogs.

An illustration shows a pack of dogs consuming the body of a woman of color.

Is this an assassination threat?

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Religion, Republicans, Trump

Right Before Hurricane, These Republicans Voted AGAINST FEMA Funding

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2024 //
12

The hypocrisy of Republicans is astounding. Right before Hurricane Helena devastated parts of Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, Congress voted on nearly $20 billion in funding for FEMA.

Every Democratic member of Congress voted for fully funding FEMA. Large numbers of Republicans voted NAY, including some from the states hit hardest by Helene.

Newsweek reported:

As Hurricane Helene careened toward Florida’s Panhandle, numerous Republicans voted against extending funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Last week, Congress approved $20 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund as part of a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through December 20. But the measure left out billions of dollars in requested supplemental disaster funding.

The Senate approved the measure by a 78-18 vote on September 25 after it passed the House in a 341-82 vote. Republicans supplied the no votes in both chambers.

Some of the Republicans who voted against the bill represent states that have been hard hit by Helene, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.

These are the Republicans who voted NO to FEMA funding. Note how many come from states that were hit hard by the hurricane:

House of Representatives:

Representative James Baird of Indiana

Representative Troy Balderson of Ohio

Representative Jim Banks of Indiana

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado

Representative Mike Bost of Illinois

Representative Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma

Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee

Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri

Representative Kat Cammack of Florida

Representative Michael Cloud of Texas

Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia

Representative Mike Collins of Georgia

Representative Eli Crane of Arizona

Representative John Curtis of Utah

Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio

Representative Byron Donalds of Florida

Representative Jeff Duncan of South Carolina

Representative Ron Estes of Kansas

Representative Mike Ezell of Mississippi

Representative Randy Feenstra of Iowa

Representative Brad Finstad of Minnesota

Representative Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota

Representative Russell Fry of South Carolina

Representative Russ Fulcher of Idaho

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida

Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas

Representative Bob Good of Virginia

Representative Lance Gooden of Texas

Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia

Representative Morgan Griffith of Virginia

Representative Michael Guest of Mississippi

Representative Harriet Hageman of Wyoming

Representative Andy Harris of Maryland

Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio

Representative John Joyce of Pennsylvania

Representative Trent Kelly of Mississippi

Representative Darin LaHood of Illinois

Representative Laurel Lee of Florida

Representative Debbie Lesko of Arizona

Representative Greg Lopez of Colorado

Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida

Representative Morgan Lutrell of Texas

Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina

Representative Tracey Mann of Kansas

Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky

Representative Tom McClintock of California

Representative Rich McCormick of Georgia

Representative Mary Miller of Illinois

Representative Max Miller of Ohio

Representative Cory Mills of Florida

Representative Alex Mooney of West Virginia

Representative Barry Moore of Alabama

Representative Nathaniel Moran of Texas

Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina

Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee

Representative Gary Palmer of Alabama

Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

Representative Bill Posey of Florida

Representative John Rose of Tennessee

Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana

Representative Chip Roy of Texas

Representative David Schweikert of Arizona

Representative Keith Self of Texas

Representative Victoria Spartz of Indiana

Representative Claudia Tenney of New York

Representative William Timmons of South Carolina

Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey

Representative Beth Van Duyne of Texas

Representative Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin

Representative Mike Waltz of Florida

Representative Randy Weber of Texas

Representative Daniel Webster of Florida

Representative Bruce Westerman of Arkansas

Representative Roger Williams of Texas

Representative Rudy Yakym of Indiana

Senate

Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee

Senator Mike Braun of Indiana

Senator Katie Britt of Alabama

Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina

Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho

Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska

Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin

Senator Mike Lee of Utah

Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas

Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky

Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska

Senator James Risch of Idaho

Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina

Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama

Categories Environment, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Georgia, North Carolina, Republicans, Tennessee, Wall of Shame

New Hampshire: The GOP Legislature Refuses to Pay for Adequate Education

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2024 //
3

Garry Rayno is a veteran journalist in New Hampshire who covers the legislature for inDepthNH.org. His education reporting is excellent. In this post, he describes the Republicans’ refusal to fund public schools adequately, although they have launched a voucher program that is sure to drain the state imof hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The latest round for education funding lawsuits enters the judicial ring this week in Rockingham County Superior Court and will be argued over the next two weeks.

The second half of the Rand suit goes before judge David Ruoff and — much like the ConVal suit — hinges on whether the state is providing ample money to provide an adequate education for its students, which is essentially the same question before the courts three decades ago with the Claremont suit.

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Under the two Claremont rulings, the state is required to provide an adequate education to its students, define what constitutes an adequate education, pay for it with constitutional taxes and ensure school districts are providing  it.

That sounds pretty simple, but you have to dig a little deeper to understand why the issue has not been settled in the intervening 30 years.

As ConVal argued, the state believes currently that $4,100 per student is the cost of an adequate education, and the state largely pays that cost with the Statewide Education Property Tax, portions of existing taxes and Sweepstakes revenues.

According to the latest figures from the Department of Education the statewide average for educating a single student is $20,322, or $24,756 when all expenditures are included such as transportation, capital expenses and interest,  out-of-district tuitions, etc.

In the ConVal ruling, which is on appeal with the other half of the Rand suit to the Supreme Court, Ruoff set the state’s obligation for the cost of an adequate education at $7,356  and said it is probably closer to $9,900 per student.

In any event the lower figure is almost double what the state pays and would cost the state an additional $500 million.

In the Rand case, the plaintiffs also want the court to determine if the additional money school districts receive for higher costs for educating special education students, or from low-income households or do not speak fluent English, for example is enough to cover those costs as well.

In their suit, the plaintiffs claim the state funding is inadequate to cover those “differentiated aid” costs as well.

When the funding formula was originally developed in the late 1990s, many of the lawmakers sitting on the committee were from the state’s largest cities like Manchester, Rochester and Nashua and weighted the formula to help their communities and that has not changed much since as communities like Manchester, Nashua, Rochester and Somersworth receive a greater percentage of state aid than most other communities.

They are larger and have larger populations of children in poverty, with disabilities and children whose native language is not English, but other communities like Claremont, Berlin, Newport, Pittsfield, Franklin and Milan have problems raising money for education as well without the same percentage of state aid.

But that is not the crux of the Rand suit, which is by failing to pay all of its constitutionally obligated cost of an adequate education, city and town taxpayers have to make up the difference with local property taxes.

As most people know by now, there are property wealthy communities like Moultonborough, Tuftonboro, Wolfeboro, New Castle, Rye, Portsmouth, Hampton, Sunapee, New London, Newbury, etc. that collect more than they need through the Statewide Education Property Tax to pay for the state’s contribution of $4,100 per student and have money left over.

Ostensively all those communities and all the other communities in New Hampshire pay the same tax rate for the Statewide Education Property Tax.

But when the statewide tax receipts in a community do not cover the $4,100 per student threshold, local property taxes have to make up the difference, and those property tax rates vary from community to community.

If the communities have to pay for an adequate education, then the state is using local property taxes to satisfy its obligation, which would mean they are really state taxes.

And the constitution requires that all state taxes be proportional and reasonable and that is the problem, because widely varying tax rates do not meet the constitutional requirement.

And the other aspect of the lawsuit is that the cost of an adequate education is much higher than $4,100 and if that is true, and Ruoff has ruled once that it is, than the state has an even greater obligation, meaning most every community is using local property taxes to pay the state’s share of an adequate education.

The state aid to education totals $817.84 million for the current school year, while the total spent on public education from kindergarten to 12th grade is estimated to be about $3.8 billion for all education related costs, not just adequate education.

The federal government sends hundreds of millions of dollars to the state but there is no simple total of federal funds going to public education in New Hampshire to be found on the Department of Education’s website.

But if the state paid even half the cost of the total amount spent on public education, its obligation, given federal funds, is considerably more than what it currently pays and may be nearly double that amount.

The stakes are extremely high for the state at a time when state revenues are declining, exacerbated by years of rate cuts and repeals.

The state has steadfastly refused to approve any new money source for education outside the statewide property tax which was moving the same dollar from the local side of the property tax ledger to the state’s side although making it more proportional across the state.

However, that did little to reduce property taxes in property poor communities or increase the educational opportunities for students in the property poor districts.

The state has argued since the two Claremont decisions were written 30 years ago that the definition of an adequate education and how to fund it is up to the legislative and executive branches, which it is, except when fundamental rights are being violated.

Recently, the Attorney General’s Office spent a great deal of time arguing what the plaintiffs seek would violate the constitutional separation of powers provision.

The question is where do you draw the line?
Does the legislature in failing to address the inequities for property taxpayers and students exercising its rights to control the purse and set policies, or is it contempt of court?

Or does the court have the final say when fundamental constitutional rights are violated?

Before pondering those questions there are two weeks of arguments by the plaintiffs and the state. The state told the court last spring the plaintiffs have failed to “meet their heavy burden of demonstrating that the current funding formula is in clear and substantial conflict with the [sic] Part II, Article 83,” in seeking a summary judgement and asked not to go forward with this week’s hearings.

The court rejected that request quickly and there will be two more weeks to parse the fundamental issue of whether the state’s children have a fundamental right to an adequate education and how the state would pay for it to be on center stage in the public arena once again.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, New Hampshire, Republicans, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Project 2025: Politicking for Jesus

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2024 //
9

Mercedes Schneider is a high school teacher in Louisiana who holds a doctorate in statistics and research methodology. It’s no secret that she is also a devout Christian who takes her faith seriously, so seriously that she doesn’t try to impose it on anyone else. As a veteran teacher, she writes with authority and keen intellect about education.

The following essay by Schneider was posted by the Network for Public Education. To read the full essay, please open the link.

Teacher and scholar Mercedes Schneider takes a look at Project 2025. Reposted with permission.

Schneider writes:

Project 2025 identifies itself as “The Presidential Transition Project,” further described as “an agenda prepared by and for conservatives who will be ready on Day One of the next Administration to save our country”:

The Heritage Foundation is once again facilitating this work, but as our dozens of partners and hundreds of authors will attest, this book is the work of the entire conservative movement.

The next conservative President will enter office on January 20, 2025, with a simple choice: greatness or failure.  It will be a daunting test, but no more so than every other generation of Americans has faced and passed. The Conservative Promise represents the best effort of the conservative movement in 2023—and the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.

Though the 900+-page document is clearly meant for “the next conservative President,” former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has publicly attempted to distance himself from the far-right, Heritage-Foundation-steeped governing plan.

In the opening pages of the document, numerous contributors include in their bio sketches connection to the Trump administration. So there’s that.

But one issue that has my attention is that the July 17, 2024, Intercept reports that “Conservative Groups Are Quietly Scurrying Away from Project 2025”:

THE MORE PEOPLE learn about it, the more unpopular and politically toxic Project 2025 has proven to be. This has led the Trump and Vance campaign to attempt to distance itself from the effort. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller now says he had “zero involvement with Project 2025,” despite appearing in a promotional video. And just today, The Intercept discovered two more conservative groups that have quietly bowed out from the controversial 900-page manifesto — including a national anti-abortion organization.

Miller’s group, America First Legal Foundation, was one of the first organizations to jump ship from the Project 2025 advisory board. Last week, America First Legal asked to be removed from the Project 2025 advisory board webpage. The organization was part of Project 2025 since at least June 2022, when the Heritage Foundation first announced the advisory board’s formation.

America First Legal staff were deeply involved in writing and editing the Project 2025 playbook. Its vice president and general counsel, Gene Hamilton, drafted an entire chapter about the Justice Department, which proposes launching a “campaign” to criminalize mailing abortion pills. In a footnote, Hamilton thanked “the staff at America First Legal Foundation,” who he wrote deserved “special mention for their assistance while juggling other responsibilities.” …

America First Legal did not respond to questions about why it asked to be removed from the Project 2025 advisory board despite its prior participation.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Michigan think tank, were among the more than 100 groups listed on the Project 2025 website as part of its advisory board. By Wednesday, Americans United for Life and the Mackinac Center had vanished.

Both organizations were relatively recent additions to the Project 2025 coalition. The Heritage Foundation announced they had joined in February 2024, several months after the massive playbook was released.

Neither organization would elaborate as to why it had joined the Project 2025 board in the first place or why it was exiting it now.

The distancing of conservative groups from a plan that has clearly been brought into the public eye reminds me of the 2011 exposure of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) by the nonprofit watchdog, Common Cause, and subsequent corporate member exodus.

Seems like far-right conservatives have a history of not really wanting the public aware of those conservative plans and schemes.

It should come as no surprise that ALEC is a Project 2025 advisory board member:

Project 2025 is the conservative, American white Evangelical Christian plan for operating government. Below is a “note” from Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 director, Paul Dans:

Let me offer some excerpts. Not many, for it does not take much reading to realize that the Project 2025 overarching goal is to force all of America into a white Evangelical Christian mold.

A smidge from Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts’, foreword:

PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN. The next conservative President must get to work pursuing the true priority of politics-the well-being of the American family. In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatu- ral ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are
the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society. Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives-and
the life of the nation— is the family. Today, the American family is in crisis. Forty percent of all children are born to unmarried mothers, including more than 70 percent of black children. There is no government program that can replace the hole in a child’s soul cut out by the absence of a father. Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of Ameri- can poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts. So many of the problems government programs are designed to solve-but can’t-are ultimately problems created by the crisis of marriage and the family. The world has never seen a thriving, healthy, free, and
prosperous society where most children grow up without their married parents.
If current trends continue, we are heading toward social implosion. Furthermore, the next conservative President must understand that using gov- ernment alone to respond to symptoms of the family crisis is a dead end. Federal power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown. The Conservative Promise includes dozens of specific policies
to accomplish this existential task. Some are obvious and long-standing goals like eliminating marriage penalties in federal welfare programs and the tax code and installing work requirements for food stamps. But we must go further. It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government
power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family. Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent. The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensi- tive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice-a goal all conservatives and con- servative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women.


Schneider continues:

Free the churches, imprison the librarians.

Roberts was in the news for stating that an “ongoing American Revolution” will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” According to The Hill, that comment caused “blowback” for Roberts and the Heritage Foundation.

None of Jesus’ ministry involved any political agenda, much less the government-driven denigration of “other” or the imposing of His will on any human being.

Yet here we are.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Inequality, Injustice, Privatization, Propaganda, Religion, Republicans, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Umair Haque: Why Is the Presidential Election So Close?

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2024 //
36

Umair Haque is an economist who writes at a blog called The Issue. He recently addressed an issue that has befuddled me and probably you as well. How is it possible that Trump is tied in the polls with Kamala Harris? He is an embittered old man who spews hate and cares only about himself; she is a vibrant and empathetic woman who wants to make life better for everyone. How can they be tied?

Haque has an answer. Democrats keep talking about how good the economy is, but they don’t speak to the vast number of people who are struggling economically.

He writes:

Day after day now, polls say the same thing.

The election’s deadlocked.

Despite all of it. History, immense spending, speeches, rallies, the drama surrounding Biden stepping down, the euphoria around Kamala.

So: what’s going on here?

What Makes Politics Move in a Capitalist Society?

By now, you should know, because precisely what we’ve discussed over the last few months is coming true.

Kamala and Tim aren’t connecting on the economy.

And yet it’s the Number One Issue for voters.

Let’s recap. America’s a hyper capitalist society. In such a society, the economy is always the top issue. It comes before everything else, because in a place like America, economics is existential. There are no real safety nets. And money, having enough of it, is literally everything.

That’s not so much the case elsewhere. To use the example I always do, the Sorbonne in Paris—Europe’s best university—is free. In America, sending a kid to an Ivy League school costs three times the median income, enough to bankrupt most families.

So the economy is always issue number one. Always.

And that’s why the Dems have a long, long history of losing. Because they are frankly pretty poor at crafting economic agendas which convince Americans, since they won’t admit Americans are in dire economic pain to begin with. Americans, meanwhile, have grown up in an environment which has sort of been poisoned, and any social contract or agenda remotely European or Canadian is instantly called “communism” or “socialism.”

Put those two trends together, and you can explain the Democrats’ long losing record—or why, in America, the default is that the GOP tends to win.

How Long Can the Democrats Keep on Ignoring the Economy?

But in times like these, the economy is…even more important. Crucial. It’s always the decisive factor, but this isn’t a normal era by any stretch of imagination.

The economy is a wreck.

It is doing really, really badly. If the question is: how’s capitalism doing, then the answer is, great. Yes, stock prices are roaring, sure, profits are in rude health, and yeah, CEOs are making out like pirate emperor bandits. But none of that’s the economy.

The economy is how average people are doing, and all the indications are they’re doing pretty terribly. Incomes just now crossed 2019 levels, and that means they fell for five straight years.

Meanwhile, prices exploded.

Before that came a long, long run of stagnation: median incomes for men, for example, are lower today than they were in the 1970s.

So people are struggling. The vast majority live paycheck to paycheck, large percentages struggle to pay bills, and of course, generations are in downward mobility, while “unretirement” is becoming a social trend.

The Democrats continue to make the fatal mistake they always make.

Ignoring all this.

People Trust Trump on the Economy More Because the Democrats Don’t Seem to Actually Care About It

Who was it that reached right into the heart of the working class, and empathized with its misfortunes? It wasn’t the Democrats. It was Trump.

Think of how bizarre that is. Trump’s a guy that likes to flaunt being a billionaire. But because the Democrats ignored the biggest socioeconomic issue of the last half century, he was able to walk away with the whole ballgame.

Let me put that even more sharply.

To this day, Democrats won’t dare mention this damning statistic, that median incomes are where they were, or lower, than half a century ago.

Those really are Roman sorts of social indicators, no exaggeration necessary. A half decade of stagnation is OK, maybe. But a half century?

But the Democrats never, ever even look in this direction. They look away awkwardly.

Their silence is deafening.

Why is Trump still so widely supported?

Because more people trust him on the economy. (And on immigration, which is the same thing, because here there’s a naive theory of economics, that immigrants take our jobs and so forth, which can be true, but in America, has more to do with the reverse, offshoring, etcetera.)

Why do people trust Trump more on the economy?

He empathizes with their pain.

The Democrats don’t even attempt to. They deliberately ignore it. But this is, let me say it again, the single biggest socioeconomic issue in modern history.

What happens when socioeconomics stagnate for long periods of time—like half centuries? Democracies die. People give up on their institutions and leaders. They give up on each other. They turn on one another…

And there’s a good reason why.

How Economic Stagnation Leads to Social Collapse

If the pie’s the same size, or shrinking, as it is for many Americans, then the only option is to try and fight tooth and nail to keep your slice. To have a bigger slice, you need to take it from someone else.

That’s how democracies die by way of stagnant or declining economies.

It isn’t a theory, speculation, opinion: there’s a formal mechanism at work, a kind of vicious cycle, an engine of ruin.

A shrinking pie, a stagnant one, necessitates a less democratic society. I have to take from you. To keep my slice the same size, I need to wrest it away from everyone else.

Thus, democratic norms of peace, equality, justice, and truth soon corrode. They’re replaced by authoritarian fascist norms of violence, domination, hierarchy, and blood-and-soil destiny.

This is how democracies die, and while that’s a phrase you’ll see used a lot, it’s not very well understood even by the columnists and pundits who sort of utter it ad infinitum. This isn’t a game. It’s not a set of platitudes.

This is what happened to America.

And still is.

“Hey, At Least They’re Not the Fascists”

The Democrats just refuse to acknowledge any of this. The long run stagnation. The decline. Any real aspect of it how it’s sort of wrecked the Dream, and destroyed generations of Americans’ fortunes and possibilities.

That leaves a gigantic, truly enormous, vacuum. One that’s big enough for Donald Trump’s ego to fill.

It’s a striking, bizarre thing to see the working and lower middle class support a billionaire, who of course, is also a convicted fraudster. Sort of crazy, right? That happens because nobody trusts the Dems on the economy, and nobody trusts the Dems on the economy because they won’t even admit a glimmer of reality when it comes to the economy.

So what truths can they speak back to people, to gain their trust?

Hence, here we are, sort of half-heartedly supporting them, most of us, knowing that they aren’t going to do a whole lot to really fix much, but hey, at least they’re not the fascists.

Not exactly the stuff of an inspiring politics, is it?

Why the Election’s Closer Than it Should Be

The Democrats still have time to fix this problem, and I say that chuckling, because we all know they won’t.

If anything, it’s probably going to get worse.

People are going to be mystified about why the Democrats think things are great, when they struggle to pay the bills.

They’ll look at Trump, who at least empathizes with them, and says things are bad out there, and it’ll strike a chord in them. Trump will continue to be more credible on the economy, the most important issue, even though he’s, wait for it, a convicted fraudster.

And after a time, Kamala’s grin is going to seem a little off kilter to a lot of people. Why does she keep on smiling, when things are pretty bad for me and mine? Is she for real? What’s the deal here?

I’m not trying to be unkind, I’m just pointing out that being joyous, while it’s fine and nice and good, and even touching, for those who are already true believers, also carries a risk in times like these. It can come across as tone-deaf. These are difficult, difficult days for the vast, vast majority of people, and I know that in statistics like “50% of young people feel numb” or “70% of people feel financially traumatized.”

Given those sorts of social currents, it might be tough to grin your way into the Presidency. In fact, it already is. The contest’s deadlocked. Joy is a tough sell, and at some point, it can verge on Let Them Eat Cake.

Again, those are wicked words, and I’m sorry to write them, but it has to be said, if only for the 0.001% chance the Democrats come to their senses, and begin to actually speak sense, truth, reality, on the Number One Issue to most people, the economy.

People don’t trust them on this issue, and there’s a good reason for that. Not what they want to do. But what they won’t say. The attitude they won’t take. The deafening silence everyone can hear when it comes to admitting how troubled and tough things actually are.

If I wanted you to trust me, and there was smoke billowing from the house, but I kept on telling you the curtains were wonderful, and hey, wait until you see the garage, what would you think of me? This is where the Democrats are heading when it comes to the economy, if they aren’t already, with a whole lot of people.

And that’s why the election’s a lot closer than it should be.

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Economy, Harris, Kamala, Republicans, Trump

Brookings Institution: A View of Education in the Republican and Democratic Platforms

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2024 //
25

Jon Valant, head of the Brown Center at the Brookings Institution, reviewed the education sections of both parties.

He writes:

K-12 education has captured its share of headlines over the last few years. Schools—and, specifically, local school boards—became a lightning rod for anger about the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. From the first weeks of the pandemic, Republicans accused Democratic leaders of being too slow to reopen schools. That accusation gained potency as evidence mounted that schools hadn’t been the vectors of COVID-19 transmission that experts initially feared. Sensing vulnerability, Democrats became reluctant to engage on K-12 issues, and Republicans such as Glenn Youngkin showed that Democrats wouldn’t put up much of a fight if education became a battlefield for culture war conflicts. The result was a dizzying, maddening stretch where schools were embroiled in controversies over critical race theory and transgender students’ rights when education leaders needed to focus on pandemic recovery.

Now, as memories of the pandemic recede, the politics of education are changing. Democrats are talking more about schools, emboldened by the selection of a former schoolteacher, Tim Walz, as Vice President Harris’s running mate. Republicans, for their part, have harnessed discontent with public schools into an aggressive push for private school voucher programs that threaten America’s public education systems.

The platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties, along with the education-related portions of Project 2025, provide a glimpse of where K-12 education might be headed.

The Democratic platform

The Democrats’ 2024 platform is light on specifics, with more attention to the current administration’s accomplishments and the would-be Harris administration’s support for some broadly defined goals (e.g., reducing chronic absenteeism). To some extent, the lack of specifics stands in contrast to both the Democrats’ 2020 platform—which, for example, pledged a tripling of Title I funds for high-needs schools—and more detailed 2024 proposals for early childhood education (e.g., free, universal pre-K) and higher education (e.g., free community college). 

The 2024 platform does contain relevant, specific ideas outside of its “Education” section. For example, Democrats propose rebates for school districts that purchase electric school buses—an idea grounded in research on the harms of students’ exposure to toxins. They also offer specific proposals to reduce gun violence (amid a scourge of school shootings) and to strengthen civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ children and students of color (frequent targets of culture war attacks).

Notably, some of the platform’s clearest statements on education describe what Democrats oppose. That includes private-school voucher plans and policies hostile to transgender youth that have become increasingly popular among Republican leaders.  

The Republican platform

Republicans’ 2024 platform is also light on policy specifics. The platform has a few ideas that have long been cornerstones of GOP education politics. That includes ending teacher tenure—an idea that would require local or state action and confront fierce opposition from teachers’ unions.

The platform has language about resisting political indoctrination in schools—while seeming to propose some indoctrination of its own. This includes proposals to “support schools that teach America’s Founding Principles and Western Civilization” and “promote Fair and Patriotic Civics Education.” Along similar lines, former President Trump recently described a bewildering plan to create a credentialing body to “certify teachers who embrace patriotic values, support our way of life, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children.”

Substantively, the most important part of the Republican education platform might be its support for universal school choice. In about a dozen states, Republicans have recently created or expanded education savings account (ESA) programs that make public funds available to pay for private school or other educational expenses. Critics of these programs—myself included—argue that they violate our basic traditions, benefit the wealthy at the expense of others, and are not well supported by research.

Project 2025

If the Republican platform is light on policy proposals, Project 2025 certainly is not.

Along with my colleagues Rachel Perera and Katharine Meyer, I recently wrote a more detailed piece that analyzes Project 2025’s education proposals. Project 2025 proposes severe cuts to the resources and protections available to the country’s poorest, most marginalized children. For example, it proposes to eliminate the Head Start program (for young children in poverty), discontinue federal Title I funding (for schools that serve low-income children), and kneecap IDEA (federal legislation that supports students with disabilities). It’s especially harsh on transgender children, with proposals aimed at reorienting civil rights enforcement around “rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory” and stripping Title IX protections from transgender students.

In other words, Project 2025 sets its sights on the programs that serve America’s neediest students. It would essentially terminate the federal government’s long-running role in addressing inequities that arise in locally governed school systems.

Notably, many key Project 2025 proposals would require an unlikely degree of congressional cooperation. This includes some of the highest-profile proposals, such as eliminating the U.S. Department of Education (a vaguely defined idea that’s unlikely to materialize in its most extreme form). Still, a second Trump administration couldenact some Project 2025 proposals unilaterally. That includes rolling back civil rights protections and replacing civil servants in the U.S. Department of Education with political appointees after reinstating Schedule F.

Taking stock

It’s fair to say that Democrats’ plans for federal education policy are modest. Democrats aren’t proposing a markedly stronger role for the federal government. On K-12 education, Democrats remain in a mostly defensive posture as they offer a more “conservative” agenda that protects against the GOP’s increasingly radical efforts.

Just what those GOP plans might be—and just how radical they are—depends on whether the true Trumps X administration plan is the Republican platform, Project 2025, or some combination of the two. That remains to be seen

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Vouchers
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