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Trump Wants Dollars to Follow Students
Donald Trump unveiled several policy specifics Thursday during a visit to an Ohio charter school. At the inner-city Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, Trump said, “As President, I will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child living in poverty.”
He added, “If we can put a man on the moon, dig out the Panama Canal and win two world wars, then I have no doubt that we as a nation can provide school choice to every disadvantaged child in America.”
Later that day, Trump released a full list of education reform proposals:
- Redirect $20 billion of existing federal dollars to create a block grant for school-age kids living in poverty. It will be left up to each state to determine how the funds will be spent.
- Establish a national goal of providing school choice to every American child below the poverty line. Again, the states will decide how to achieve this goal, but the preference will be for dollars to follow the student.
- Use the bully pulpit to campaign for school choice, and work to elect local officials who support the issue.
- Support merit pay for teachers, creating a financial incentive for education excellence.
The second proposal is the most interesting, and likely the most important. For decades, Washington has sent federal money directly to the schools, which then slowly trickles down to students. This has led to a massive increase in dollars for school staff and administrators, while the students get dimes. The group EdChoice, formerly known as the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, created a chart showing the number of K-12 public school students versus administrators, support staff, and school districts between 1950 and 2011. The results are shocking:
While the number of students has doubled in 60 years, principals and assistants have tripled, and support staff has quintupled. And despite the number of school districts dropping by more than 80 percent, district staff has increased by nearly 300 percent.
In addition, as education expenditures have grown exponentially since the Department of Education was established, student performance has remained almost stagnant:
Instead of dumping dollars into school districts’ front offices, the Trump plan urges states to let the money follow students to whichever school they choose. So if a parent decides that a charter school or online school is the best option for their child, the dollars go with them. This common-sense market incentive not only encourages non-traditional schools to improve their programs, it will also spur ossified school districts to compete for students.
This single proposal offers the best path to improve education. The other major party nominee would prefer to shovel even more dollars into the old, failed system.
Published in Education
Actually, I think this is a clever nose-under-the-tent strategy. If this works for the students stuck in crappy poor schools, then it will be easier to expand the program later.
Education is a not a Federal concern. Choice is not a thing only for the poor. So I don’t know how to react to this thing that, in a vacuum, is better than what we now do, but what we now do is insane and we’re not in a vacuum. The Feds should get out of all education, then states will figure out choice. Choice is what markets do. What is it about education in a diverse rapidly changing, complex, highly educated society that make rent seeking politicians the people who should centrally design how to educate our children? Why does the whole idea of Federal direction of education not strike folks as crazily stupid.
Who says it doesn’t? But that’s where we are at and as @tkc1101 says…baby steps.
You know I was just thinking this! I still wonder how much he has thought this through, him being himself.
Well that is sort of my point. If it is set up so nobody can use it or access it then how do you prove it worked? If anything you prove that it does not work.
I’m shocked at how few people are pointing out what seems obvious to me: we need less federal intervention in education, not more. While some of this is paying lip-service to otherwise republican-sounding goals (e.g., the money following the student), it’s just that: lip-service.
That’s a joke, right? Or did he mean “unless the state allows prayer on school grounds, or maintains properly gender-segregated restroom and bathing facilities, or allows teachers to carry concealed weapons?”
Make no mistake: these proposals envision a more intrusive federal role in education and at a greater cost in tax dollars to boot.