The Republican nominee for the presidency, Donald J. Trump, took the opportunity during his appearance at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy to unveil his plan to redirect $20 billion federal dollars to create a block grant that he says will help disadvantaged children struggling in low-performing public schools to attend higher quality charter and private schools.
“I will propose a plan to provide better school choice to all disadvantaged children in the country,” Trump said.
The charter school where he made the announcement serves approximately 325 children, predominantly poor African Americans.
The school is a K-8 academy where less than 50 percent of students scored at proficiency levels or above on standardized tests in 2014-2015. On the school’s 2014-2015 report card, it received failing grades on the two most important measures of student achievement; reading and math.
The school earned an F for student progress on tests, as well as on the gains made during the course of the year, and another F overall for its performance on the closing of achievement gaps.
When asked about his decision to campaign in Cleveland, Ohio, Jason Miller, a trump campaign spokesman, wrote: “Mr. Trump wants all children to have the opportunity to benefit from a first-class education. His school choice reform proposal will help to do exactly that. He is convinced that by challenging failed government education monopolies and introducing school choice we will be taking an important step toward helping students achieve better results. He intends to prepare our nation’s children to lead more prosperous lives.”
“My plan to add a federal investment of $20 billion to fund school choice options would be done by reprioritizing existing federal funds,” Trump said.
Trump told attendees that states would be given the option to use the money in any way they like, but he would encourage them to let students use the funds to attend charter schools of their choosing.
The Republican candidate’s desire to use federal dollars to move poor children from public to private schools of their choosing is not dissimilar to proposals other Republicans have offered in the past, such as last year’s retooling of national federal education law. However, that measure was not added to the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Ohio offers a state program which supplies tax-funded vouchers to over 18,000 students currently. A recent study of the program found that those students who took advantage of the vouchers and attended private charter schools did not perform as well as hoped.
Trump responded to this by saying that he would support additional merit pay for educators who perform exceptionally well, and he promised to use the bully pulpit of the presidency as a platform to advocate for political candidates who run on the issue of making “school choice” a more commonplace alternative.
“There is no school policy more in need of change than our currently government-run public education system monopoly,” Trump said. He told the audience that he was “proposing a new plan that will provide school choice to all disadvantaged students in the country.”
Outside of the event, a group of protesters decried Trump’s campaign in total. A number of abortion rights activists carried signs stating the women “deserve better than Trump.” Another protestor held up a banner that read: “Trump ‘What do you have to lose?’ Everything!” It was a reference to Trump’s urging African Americans to vote for him instead of democrats who take their votes for granted.
A more intimate crowd collected to hear Trump speak which included roughly a dozen schoolchildren, predominantly African American. Another, smaller group of students and educators participated in the discussion before the speech.
Trump spoke of his desire to raise the number of charter schools and school choice options because, as he stated, “The traditional approach, it’s just not working out so well.”
Trump has often criticized public schools for their failure to meet the educational needs of the children they serve. Part of his plan is to eliminate Common Core, an initiative that is infamous for grossly over-complicating simple arithmetic and uses confusing methods to impart simple principles.
He promised to dramatically scale back or eliminate the Education Department, and expand options and facilities for school choice.
Ohio’s charter school law has been criticized for years as too loose, allowing low-performance schools to persist. Lawmakers increased oversight in 2015 with a new provision calling for more transparency and accountability.
“We will save needy children from failing schools,” Trump told delegates earlier this year at the Republican National Convention, and despite the ceaseless accusations on all fronts, he appears to be sincere.
~American Liberty Report
