A changing American landscape also means students are experiencing change – and challenges.
My latest at The Education Report offers resources for educators.
All of us are watching a nation that is changing.
If it is difficult for adults to understand, it is also challenging for students.
As the “AI School Librarian” notes:
Our students need adults who can stay steady, protect their dignity, and respond with something more than silence.
Over at The Education Report, I explore a post that provides resources for students during uncertain times.
Students in places where ICE is active need safety and stability.
Students watching this from a distance need understanding and help with processing.
The truth is out there – and it matters.
The Trump Education Agenda is clear: End public schools.
Education Department officials are openly calling for plans to move a majority of kids to private schools (by way of vouchers, for example) within just 5 years.
One official even suggested that the ideal number of kids in traditional public schools would be “zero.”
For all the talk of the benefits of “school choice,” the reality is more stark: Choicers simply mean they want ZERO government responsibility for education, other than handing taxpayer cash to private school operators.
Tennessee’s Gov. Bill Lee is no exception, as he and his allies work to rapidly increase the state’s new, universal school voucher scheme.
Among the ways the current President is taking down public institutions is the federal school voucher scheme embedded in the Big, Beautiful Bill.
These federal vouchers divert public funds to private education uses, with all the attendant harms, and they must be recognized as such, even if it may be possible to use the voucher money for public school students.
All vouchers harm students and undermine public education, and the federal voucher law is no different:
o Vouchers divert public funds to private schools.
o Vouchers lead to worse educational outcomes for students.
o Vouchers put students’ civil rights at risk.
o Vouchers lack quality and accountability standards and encourage fraud and abuse.
Trump and McMahon are outsourcing core functions of the U.S. Department of Education – and looking for more opportunities to effectively “end” the agency.
What they call “partnerships” essentially represent the department ceding responsibility for large portions of its current work.
The Washington Post has more:
The department has signed interagency agreements to outsource six programs to other agencies, including offices that administer $28 billion in grants to K-12 schools and $3.1 billion for programs that help students finish college.
Former House Speaker and convicted felon Glen Casada was instrumental in passing Gov. Bill Lee’s initial, limited school voucher scheme.
Then, he got in some legal trouble. Now, he’s been pardoned by President Trump.
Speaking of questionable leadership, word out of D.C. this week is that former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his chief aide Cade Cothren will receive presidential pardons from Donald Trump.
The pair were convicted on more than a dozen public corruption charges tied to a scheme where they, along with former Rep. Robin Smith (R-Hixson), defrauded taxpayers through a state-funded legislative mailer program. They were just weeks away from prison.
Donald Trump keeps pushing an anti-school agenda – or, at least an agenda that undermines public education:
Donald Trump and his oligarch-friendly Administration are no fans of public education.
The latest evidence? Trump’s attempts to dismantle protections for students protected under the IDEA – Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
The Administration is also proposing to cut billions of dollars sent from the federal government to districts. And is supporting an expensive federal voucher scheme.
The Trump Administration is using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to take a sledgehammer to the Department of Education – and to end key enforcement activities that protect kids in public schools.
During this tumultuous year at the U.S. Department of Education that saw about half of the 4,133 employees leave due to layoffs, buyouts and early retirements, the staff at the Office of Special Education Programs stayed mostly stable.
That changed on Friday, however, when the Trump administration issued reduction-in-force notices across the federal government, including at the Education Department. Court filings show that 466 employees at the Education Department were impacted and several special education association leaders say most of the OSEP staff was laid off.
Raising Concerns
NASDSE said it was “confused and concerned” by the staffing changes, adding that the Education Department under the Trump administration has repeatedly said it supports federal funding and implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and special education for children with disabilities.
“These RIFs, if true, will make it impossible for the Department to fulfill those responsibilities,” the NASDSE statement said. “There is significant risk that not only will Federal funding lapse, but children with disabilities will be deprived” of a free, appropriate public education.
Team Trump focuses on being mean on purpose. To inflict pain and cause compliance through fear.
The latest evidence for this is found in the Administration using the current government shutdown to weaken the Department of Education:
Sweeping layoffs announced Friday by the Trump administration landed another body blow to the U.S. Department of Education, this time gutting the office responsible for overseeing special education, according to multiple sources within the department.
The reduction-in-force, or RIF, affects the dozens of staff responsible for roughly $15 billion dollars in special education funding, and for making sure states provide special education services to the nation’s 7.5 million children with disabilities.
The latest edition of the Trump Presidency is about control – about achieving compliance with a radical view of how America should be and doing so by any means necessary.
The bottom line: It’s about fear. When children learn to fear the state, they learn that compliance minimizes pain.
Governing by fear is how dictators get and maintain a grip on power. You may dream of a better way, but you don’t actively seek it because you’ve learned: The state shuts down any unauthorized ideas.
As Anne Lutz Fernandez notes:
A new report on US immigration policy and mental health confirms what should be obvious: mass deportations are deeply harmful to children in migrant and mixed-status families. And when masked men grab a parent from the school car line or the corner coffee shop, all students in that school or neighborhood are subject to trauma and made to understand: The state can make people disappear. It is to be feared.
