Wright State Sign | Photo by Rose Taylor | The Wright State Guardian
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned with a promise to fix K-12 education. His plan includes closing the Department of Education, cutting teacher tenure, cutting school administrators and allowing parents to directly elect school principals, among other ideas. Here is a breakdown of his plan and how it could affect public universities like Wright State University.
Agenda 47
Trump campaigned on the Agenda 47 platform which included 20 core principles, promising to make America great again. One of these principles is focused on public education.
However, Trump’s website breaks down his ideas into “Ten Principles For Great Schools Leading To Great Jobs.” These are ten issues Trump wants to address when it comes to K-12 schools.
The first principle is restoring parental rights including the immediate reversal of gender-affirming care policies, declaring any healthcare providers that provide such care to be taken off Medicaid and Medicare and asking Congress to pass a bill that establishes the only genders recognized by the government be male and female, which are determined at birth.
On top of this, the first principle will be informing states that if any teacher or school official suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body, federal funding could be taken away as a consequence.
The second principle is called great principal great schools, in which Trump supports the direct election of school principals by parents and adapting Merit based pay for teachers. This includes giving parents the right to fire principles if standards are not met.
This also includes cutting funding for schools that do not comply.
“To reward good teachers, President Trump will implement funding preferences and favorable treatment for states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure for grades K-12, adopt Merit Pay to reward good teachers, and give parents the right to vote for the principals who direct their children’s education,” Trump’s website reads.
The third principle is to cut federal funding for any school that teaches Critical Race Theory or “transgender insanity and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content.”
He also plans to urge Congress to create a restitution fund for Americans who have been unjustly discriminated against by equity policies.
The fourth principle is called Love of Country. He plans to veto any effort to nationalize civics education and create a credentialing body to certify teachers who support the “American Way of Life.”
In the fifth principle, he supports bringing back prayer to schools, including updating federal guidelines regarding protected prayer and religious expression in public school.
The sixth principle is focused on classroom safety which supports allowing highly trained teachers to carry concealed weapons at school and use federal funding to hire veterans, retired police officers and other trained gun owners as armed guards in schools.
He also wants to clean up schools using the Department of Justice.
“He will order the Departments of Justice and Education to overhaul federal standards on disciplining minors to get violent thugs out of our children’s classrooms so they can get the professional help they need,” the website reads.
The seventh principle is universal school choice in which parents choose where to send their children.
His last three principles deal with school curriculum. In the eighth principle, Trump supports project based learning that aims to approximate what real-world work situations will demand.
The ninth is career-centered education with internships and work experience built into the curriculum.
Lastly, the tenth principle is to give funding for schools that implement hands-on career counselors.
“President Trump will implement funding preferences for schools with job and career counselors on-hand—because getting a great job best suited to your God-given talents should be a primary goal of education,” the website states.
To read the full plan, visit Trump’s campaign website.
Analysis
A theme throughout Trump’s Agenda 47 is cutting back regulatory agencies. In fact, he actually wants to cut the Department of Education.
“One other thing I'll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington D.C. and sending all education and education work and needs back to the States, ” Trump states in a campaign video.
However, many of his ten principles include increasing regulation.
For example, he wants to overhaul federal standards on disciplining minors using the Department of Justice and Department of Education and implement massive funding preferences.
How can you increase regulations when there is no governing body to implement those regulations?
Dr. Barry Milligan*, an English professor at Wright State University who often teaches argumentative writing, explains that the logic behind Agenda 47 is a contradiction.
“There is a contradiction at heart,” Milligan explained. “On the one hand, there’s the declaration that the government is broken and that regulation has just clogged up the works and kept good things from happening.”
“Then, on the other hand, here’s all these things we need to limit and do…How can you [on] one hand close the government division that regulates and on the other hand implement more regulation?”
Some other flaws in his written plans are lack of clarity on how these things will actually work.
For example, Trump supports the direct election of principals by parents, but who will be able to vote in those elections– those in the community who pay school taxes or just parents– is unclear.
“The idea behind everybody in the community paying taxes that support the school system, even if they don't have children in school, is based on the idea that education is a benefit for the society at large, not just for the individuals being educated,” Milligan explained.
Trump also makes generalized claims that are factually false.
For example, Trump claims that Critical Race Theory is being taught in K-12, or at least writes as if that is true.
Colleen Saxon*, the interim chair of teacher education at WSU, explains that CRT is only being taught at the higher education level.
“[CRT] is an academic theory that is taught in higher education…We weren’t really teaching it at all, but now we have to so that our students, our undergrads, know what is actually being talked about. And so it is never something that’s taught in K-12,” Saxon said.
While Trump’s plan is only a campaign, meaning it is often empty promises, he has begun to act on some of these policies.
On Nov. 19, Trump chose Linda McMahon, a former WWE wrestling executive, to lead the Department of Education, according to the Associated Press.
Currently, McMahon faces a lawsuit alleging she knowingly enabled the sexual exploitation of children by a World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) employee, according to CNN.
Impact on WSU
The closing down of the Department of Education could lead to funding issues for universities and public schools.
The department oversees approximately $1.5 trillion in student loan debt for over 40 million borrowers and Pell Grants, which provides aid to students under a certain income threshold and administers Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) which universities use to give federal aid.
It also oversees the system for accrediting institutions by reviewing all federally recognized accrediting agencies. Higher education must be accredited to gain access to federal money for student financial aid.
Cutting federal funding could have drastic implications for students from low-income households, or who have to pay for college on their own.
“You could very well end up in a system where college access is blocked off for students who have financial need, and that really would reverse the progress that’s been made over the past decade to create a system that had more open pathways into higher education for anybody who wants them,” Michelle Dimino, education program director at Third Way, said in an interview.
This past year, changes in the FAFSA form caused many issues that delayed disbursement of aid, leaving students without a way to pay.
“Here’s one of those things that I think college students and their families are looking at and saying…it isn’t working for us. We’re trying to report in good faith to report our finances to determine eligibility for government aid and we’re not even being allowed to do that,” Milligan said.
“It’s had huge ripple effects because like Wright State’s enrollment is affected by that. People aren’t going to register until they know how their bills are going to be paid.”
The Wright State Guardian requested an interview with Provost Amy Thompson who is the senior vice president for academic affairs at Wright State. The Provost was not available to speak about this topic.
* Saxon and Milligan do not speak for the University.
