Voting for Trump/Vance and Project 2025 would devastate public education. Most Republican Governors are working hard to end our public schools.
For example, Cheryl Binkley describes how Virginia, a state whose public schools have been some of the best in the nation, is being privatized under Rep. Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Similar scenarios are happening in other states.
The Democratic Party has good ideas, but thus far, the Harris/Walz education plan leaves out some details. Here are questions about their education platform (pp. 26-27). The italicized statements are direct quotes from the plan.
The Arts
Democrats will fund the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and art and music education in public schools.
Will they reinstate a vibrant arts program for all public schools, including certified art teachers? While partnerships are welcomed, schools must provide students with consistently funded arts programs rather than rely on other agencies.
Career/Technical Training
The Administration is expanding job training partnerships that connect high schools, local businesses, and labor unions to prepare students for good jobs in high-skill, high-wage, and in-demand industries.
CTE is important, but questions arise when corporations take over high schools, conducting marketing research and driving high school students to fulfil agendas. Students are driven into the workforce early without time to think about what they want to do and to explore a variety of interests.
Why is high school fast becoming college?
Charter Schools
…we’ll continue working to increase accountability at charters, holding them to the same transparency standards as public schools.
Charter schools have consistently drained public schools of funds, and they discriminate. Perhaps it’s time to take charters that work, run by educators, and bring them into the school district (if not already there) ending failing nonprofit and for-profit charters. Focusing on one great public school system might unite Americans.
Class Size
There’s no mention of class size. Smaller classes are especially critical for inclusion and K-3rd grade students (see STAR Study). All classes should be manageable. Middle and high school teachers better understand students and their difficulties, and help children feel accepted and valued.
It’s also a safety issue. Every student deserves a teacher or staff person they can turn to for support, and that’s more easily accomplished by lowering class sizes.
Early Childhood
As always, the plan highlights universal preschool. The question is what will that involve? Since NCLB, unnecessary pressure has been placed on early learners, disregarding play, like recess with a focus on preparing children for the workforce.
Preschool shouldn’t be about pressuring children with academic drill which also doesn’t appear to work according to a Vanderbilt study. Increase and improve childcare for working caregivers, with age appropriate activities and plenty of supervised unstructured play, for children who need it. Continue to invest in Head Start
High-Stakes Standardized Testing
…helping schools to lift student achievement, rather than punishing them based on state standardized tests.
For too long, testing has unnecessarily been used to condemn poor public schools, and teachers who struggle to teach in them. The best assessment is by professional teachers who understand a variety of observational and formal and informal assessments.
The question is whether the Democratic Party will finally follow through on their claims to curb or end high-stakes standardized tests. By their nature these tests are punishing.
Reading
Reading should be addressed because it’s controversial. We need a new National Reading Panel. The last NRP has been criticized for not covering research well and not including early childhood teachers on the panel.
Better scrutiny is required of curriculum highlighting the Science of Reading and scripted reading programs, many online. These replace teacher expertise and dominate student/teacher education programs at great cost.
Also, many poor schools have eliminated school libraries and qualified librarians, detrimental to learning.
The research is also clear that third grade retention based on a test doesn’t have the best interest of students. It’s a punishing act and many children never recover from it.
School Choice
We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education. Public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate.
It’s good that they mention this. It’s a serious issue that should be front and center. In Florida, tax dollars go to families for theme park tickets, big screen TVs, and paddleboards!
Choice is a lie. Parents don’t get to choose where children go to school. Private and many charter schools choose students. Wealthy parents who eschew public schools get a voucher tuition break.
We also don’t know how private, parochial, and charters measure up against public schools. They often turn away children with behavioral difficulties or disabilities compared to public schools which serve all children.
Special Education
We support fully funding IDEA to prioritize students with disabilities and the special educator workforce. We support efforts to provide more timely, well-rounded, actionable feedback on student learning and progress to educators and to families that will support instruction and student success, while upholding rigorous academic standards.
Many universities have reduced the special educator preparation courses and professors in this area, while students requiring special education has increased.
One problem with the above statement involves the use of rigorous academic standards. Education reformers have always used the term rigorous to focus on high-stakes testing rather than a child’s individual needs.
Also, what’s meant by fully funding IDEA? It’s about time this be clarified.
Teachers
Public school educators also deserve a raise. We’ll recruit more new teachers, paraprofessionals and school related personnel, and education support professionals, with the option for some to even start training in high school; and we’ll help school-support staff to advance in their own careers with a living wage. We will improve working conditions and support to help make teaching a sustainable and affordable profession. We’ll keep investing in partnerships with HBCUs, MSIs, and Tribal Colleges and Universities to strengthen and diversify the teacher pipeline, so students of every background can see themselves at the head of the classroom and in charge of their schools.
The last part of this paragraph is excellent, the first part concerning. What’s meant by training high school students to be teachers?
Teaching is a profession. There’s a pedagogy of skills and an understanding of psychology and child and adolescent development that anyone in this role must understand. It’s should not be a 5-week training course, an apprentice position, or a race to make teachers at a low cost.
Fast-track teacher programs create individuals with few credentials to instruct children. Parents have a right to know their child’s teacher’s background.
Technology
Democrats will pass bipartisan legislation to protect kids’ privacy and to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and put stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.
We will invest in the AI Safety Institute to create guidelines, tools, benchmarks, and best practices for evaluating dangerous capabilities and mitigating AI risk.
Both are welcome. These topics are of huge concern, but more details are required. More peer-reviewed research is necessary to show whether technology is improving student learning and whether it’s worth the high cost.
________
These are a few concerns about the Harris/Walz platform for public schools. It’s better by far than the education plan of Project 2025, but it’s often unclear, and one worries that the lack of clarity will lead to changes that will further privatize America’s schools.
Project 2025
Project 2025 is a plan to dismantle our democracy, not one to build strength through unity.
Reading the areas that interest me in Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise (Project 2025), I read on page 319, “Elementary and secondary education policy should follow the path outlined by Milton Friedman in 1955, wherein education is publicly funded but education decisions are made by families.”
What Project 2025 offers as a path to follow for public education is a return to segregated schools in which, as in 1955, public funds pay for racist practices. Friedman writes that all-White, all-Black, or mixed schools are okay as long as parents have a choice, but every parent already has a choice supported by their own money.
“Separate but equal” was the coded phrase then, now it is “family decision.” However, call it what you may, it is racism paid for by public monies.
Words and phrases cloud today’s educational discussions—”choice,” or “parental rights” are two most used. Thus, we are told that if we follow Friedman’s philosophy for government’s role in public schools, families will be able to use government money to educate their children in any approved school.
Ignoring the Constitution or our history of segregated schools, Project 2025’s suggestion sounds great. What parents do not desire choices and rights in all aspects of Valley life, but especially those involving their children.
The public schools of Shenandoah County spend about $12,000 a year to educate a child. Under Project 2025 a family could enroll a child in an approved private school, using that $12k for tuition, books, and other expenses at the new school. Some private schools already exist in Shenandoah County, but others may be started by wealthy folks for this purpose.
Some families will try to take advantage of this $12k and plan to send their children to a new or existing school because they think they now have a choice. But is it an honest choice?
Just over 50% of our school children qualify for free lunches, which reflects the poor earning power of their families. These families likely live away from town centers for more affordable housing, both parents usually have to work in hourly paid jobs, the family may or may not own an automobile, and the free lunch program helps feed children unlike private schools. In 2022 the median household income in Shenandoah County was $62,149 (2/3 of the state average) and the poverty rate was 12.6%. How will such families manage the needs of a private school such as transportation to/from school? Can such families afford the extras of private schools, such as costs for activities? Is $12k enough?
A productive farm contains a variety– a range of animals and crops with each contributing to the wellness of the land. By being diverse in what he or she cultivates a successful farmer is being a good steward (Genesis 1:28).
“Diversity” in agriculture is a positive word, but in Project 2025 it is not.
Thanks for the rundown, Roger.
There are a number of things I learned about teaching when I became a Principal. First, although there are exceptions, giving 22 year olds a class full of students and expecting the same results of a veteran doesn’t serve students. We know through extensive brain research that executive function, critical for classroom organization and emotional stability, does not mature until the mid twenties. Another problem I saw working in secondary schools was content knowledge was sometimes lacking. You are correct, teaching is a profession. Therefore, it is critical that teacher preparation programs are rigorous with a strong liberal arts undergraduate preparation and a graduate focus on pedagogy with a meaningful multi-year internship. We require at least a masters for professors and K-12 teaching should have similar requirements given that it is just as demanding. Once effectively prepared for the classroom, we should then reform the teacher’s daily schedule with significant increases in time for planning and collaboration. I visited a classroom in China that had three teachers working with 30 students. There was a master teacher, probationary teacher, and a novice. All three taught the students while having the opportunity to learn from one another. We can get too heavily into the weeds when we dictate things like curricula and high stakes testing at the exclusion of teaching support. It may sound simplistic, but focusing on support for the teaching profession above all else is far more likely to bring results than one size fits all management. This is how Finland succeeded. It’s about time we reduced the bureaucracy and reinforced the school house.
Thank you, Paul. These are great words of wisdom! I especially agree with reducing bureaucracy inside and outside of schools. This isn’t only a problem in K-12 but in the universities.
Education changed at least in the places I lived in the past, where teacher certification was a necessary requirement. Those rules were relaxed to make fast-track inexpensive teachers.