Trump Plans to Shut Down U.S. Dept. of Education

GOP Wants to Shut Dept. Of Education

Trump Team mulls merger of Education, Labor Departments. Education Week: “The Trump administration is considering a merger of the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Labor, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the proposal. The plan, which would be part of a broader effort to overhaul the federal government, would require congressional approval. That’s likely to be a difficult hurdle. It could be announced as soon as a cabinet meeting scheduled for June 21. The proposal, would fit into the president’s push, first outlined in an executive order issued last year, to overhaul the federal government, eliminate what the administration considers unnecessary agencies, components of agencies, and programs, and merge functions. Administration officials are also considering the more limited step of moving some programs in the Labor Department over to the Education Department, sources say. The programs that would most likely get shifted to the Education Department include initiatives in the Employment and Training Agency that deal with workforce training for young people, including Job Corps and YouthBuild.”

Trump Appointment to Education - A Cause for Concern

Jeff Bryant

Donald Trump’s election to the US Presidency left education policy experts at a complete loss to explain what this would mean for the nation’s schools. During his campaign, Trump had given few clues about what would inform his education leadership, only that he had some antipathy for the US Department of Education, that he was no fan of Common Core, and that he would advocate for more “school choice.”

After his election, experienced education journalists at Education Weekpredicted Trump would embrace conservative Beltway think tanks and state education policy leaders who had bristled under the rule of Obama’s education department, and he would reject the influence of teachers unions, civil rights groups, and politically centrist education “reform” groups.

Many who pointed out “personnel is policy,” speculated Trump would pick an Education Secretary from the ranks of his transition advisers who came mostly from the above mentioned DC-based circles and state government centers. Other knowledgeable sources predicted Trump might draw education policy knowhow from “outsider” sources, such as the military, big business, or the charter school industry.

No one – not a single source I can find – anticipated Trump would look for education expertise in the deep, dark well he repeatedly seems to draw from – the extremist, rightwing evangelical community.

The DeVos Nomination

The first clue that Trump would embed the extremist views of radical Christian orthodoxy in the White House’s education policy apparatus was his nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the nation’s next Secretary of Education.

As Politico reports, DeVos is a “billionaire philanthropist” who “once compared her work in education reform to a biblical battleground where she wants to ‘advance God’s Kingdom.'”

Chicago Teachers Union joins opposition to Common Core Standards

by ctu communications  |  05/07/2014

CHICAGO – Today, members of the House of Delegates (HOD) of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) passed the following resolution that enjoins the city’s educators to growing national opposition to the Common Core State Standards, saying the assessments disrupt student learning and consume tremendous amounts of time and resources for test preparation and administration.

Now that the resolution has passed, the CTU will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core for teaching and assessment; and be it further and will work to organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the law that increases the expansion of nationwide controls over educational issues.

Common Core’s origins can be traced to the 2009 Stimulus Bill which gave $4.35 billion to the federal Department of Education which created the “Race to the Top” competition between states. In order to qualify for funding, the states needed to adopt Common Core  with the added incentive that participating states would be exempted from many of the more onerous provisions of George Bush’s “No child left behind” program.