Trump Education Budget Rattles Establishment

President Trump’s budget “blueprint” for the U. S. Department of Education recommends a 13 percent decrease in spending for the agency, but provides few details on how he will reach that goal.

Nevertheless, the details that the Trump Administration does provide have already drawn the ire of the education establishment. The blueprint promises to preserve and protect special education and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Meanwhile, the blueprint claims the new administration “eliminates or reduces over 20 categorical programs that do not address national needs, duplicate other programs, or are more appropriately supported with State, local, or private funds, including Striving Readers, Teacher Quality Partnership, Impact Aid Support Payments for Federal Property, and International Education programs.”

As well, the blueprint claims it “eliminates the $2.4 billion Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants program, which is poorly targeted and spread thinly across thousands of districts with scant evidence of impact.” A panel of education officials convened at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on March 28, 2017, to take issue with this recommendation, although none of them rebutted the “scant evidence of impact” assertion:

• Catherine Brown, vice president of education policy at CAP, said that 40,000 teachers’ salaries would be affected.
• “Two hundred twenty-seven teachers will be affected,” Tonia Holmes-Sutton, director of the Network to Transform Teaching in Clark County, Nevada, said.

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