If Democrats prevail in the midterm elections, economically-challenged families can expect their children to suffer another generation of sub-par education.
In the run-up to the 2016, now-Pres. Donald J. Trump vowed to break the cycle of American children stuck in bad schools and give them the upwardly mobile skills of a good education. The president pushed to infuse billions into school choice programs across the country and tapped advocate Betsy DeVos to fulfill this promise. To say that Education Secretary DeVos has been met with resistance by Democrats would be a gross understatement.
DeVos has been harassed and threatened for her efforts to expand school choice to the most vulnerable children among us. Liberal Democrats repeatedly claim the school voucher program is a payoff to the most wealthy Americans. However, their rhetoric glosses over the fact that the school choice programs open the door for millions of parents to send their children to a school that best meets their needs.
“Every child is different, with varying skills and learning styles. We shouldn’t then force all children into a one-size-fits-all education system,” Sec. DeVos reportedly said. “Our education approaches should be as varied as the students they serve.”
And Devos’ words echo the very core beliefs that earned the program widespread agreement that it works.
Parents Want School Choice Expansion
The 12th annual Education Next poll shows increased support after Pres. Trump and Sec. DeVos forged ahead in 2017.
After one full year of the president’s increases in school choice, 54 percent are calling for even broader expansion of vouchers. The poll also shows that opposition by the program dropped by a substantial 9 percent during the time frame. The key for parents embracing the program was the ability to place children in private schools with government revenue.
While the uptick in support of school choice has energized Republicans, the program still falls far short.
Approximately 50 million students will be attending public schools this year. However, according to data by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, only 3.2 million students plan to attend one of the 7,000 charter schools available to them. Of the 44 states that support charter schools, less than 7 percent of the student population are enrolled.
Another unfortunate statistic is that of the 15 states that enjoy one of the 26 various voucher programs, a mere 200,000 are benefiting. These low numbers are primary drivers behind the president’s push to expand school choice.
Democrats Could Roll Back School Vouchers
Although staunch opposition to school choice programs dropped from 37 to 31 percent over the last year, the poll numbers fell squarely across party lines.
Democrats such as Sen. Patty Murray earned a reputation for reaching across the aisle to make deals on education. Party politics may rule the day, but at least some Democrats put children first. Those days appear to be coming to an end.
Sen. Murray, a former educator, has shifted her priorities and now makes a case against expanding school choice. In fact, the Washington state lawmaker would slash the popular program altogether.
Making her case against the Republican expansion, Sen. Murray says that states such as Arizona don’t micromanage private schools well enough. Her thinking is that without the standardized testing American teachers say does not work, the government should roll back the policy.
“Without this information about whether students are learning to read, write, do arithmetic, and scientifically reason, schools and parents do not know whether the school is delivering on its end of the bargain,” Sen. Murray reportedly said.
The underlying thinking seems to be that parents are incapable of making good decisions for their own children. But the issue has become more like a political football. If the Trump Administration favors it, then Democrats are in lock step to fight. The education woes of children are just collateral damage for resist, obstruct and harass Democrats.
To that end, left-leaning gubernatorial candidates are lining up to denounce school choice programs. In Wisconsin, Democrat lawmakers are proposing legislation that would derail the program even though it began in Milwaukee 27 years ago. If the state elects a Democrat governor come November, parents could be left with no choice. The powerful teacher unions are pushing to end the program as more and more parents opt out of poor performing public schools.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, a Democrat-led school board already attempted to end vouchers in mostly Republican areas. The left passed what it calls the Municipal Concerns Act of 2018 that hits mainly conservative parents’ choice.
If the Blue Wave hits come November, the educational choices of American families will surely drown.
~ Conservative Zone
If its conservative its blocked by FB as unsafe, their way of justifying censorship!
If you wont to loose our free Country , vote for the Democrats. If you wont a free country vote Republican. Wake up people’
THE PROBLEM IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IS NOT 100% THE SCHOOLS FAULT. A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF THE BLAME GOES TO THE PARENT(S) OF THE CHILDREN. IN MY 25 YEARS AT ONE SCHOOL, WE WOULD HAVE PARENT/TEACHER NIGHT AND THERE WOULD BE 110 TEACHERS AND MAYBE 20 PARENTS.
THE ONLY TIME THE PARENTS GOT INVOLVED WAS WHEN THE STUDENT GOT IN TROUBLE AND THEY HAD TO COME TO SCHOOL TO KEEP THE CHILD ENROLLED.
EDUCATION WAS NOT THAT IMPORTANT BUT THEY MADE THE FOOTBALL AND BASKETBALL GAMES WHEN THEIR KIDS PLAYED. DO YOU CATCH MY DRIFT???
Absolutely Mike, and that is what most teachers like you and I found is some parents (not the majority) fight teachers in their attempts to make their child accountable – – like to write their own papers, do their own homework. But please think about the fact that DeVos has a VESTED interest in vouchers – -she made all her money with charter schools – – that is like a car dealer who is against mass transit and wants money to be diverted to helping buy cars from their dealership. Second, vouchers may seem as a consumer like you have more choice — but it will do the opposite of making school better – – it will give pressure on teachers to water down requirements, be more about entertainment, give easy grades, or the students will push parents to leave to go to a more “fun” and easy school. Finally, vouchers drain away money for most public schools which are inadequately funded right now!
inadequately funded by butt – the U.S. doubled funding to public schools over the last decade and got ZERO improvement for the money
i pay top dollar to send my children to a private school because public school absolutely sucks at every level – and guess what? i do NOT attend parent/teacher night, because what a teacher thinks of my child is immaterial – i do my own assessments DAILY and do my childrens’ homework WITH them, to ensure they’re actually learning
students push parents to go to a more fun school? who are you kidding? i choose where my children will be educated, not them – i do what they NEED, not what they want
all thanks to your militant teachers union
Your primary concerns seem to be over the loss of student populations in the poorly performing school districts which adversely impacts the public school teacher unions because there will be need for fewer teachers in those taxpayer supported public schools. At least until the US Supreme Court Janus decision these public employee teachers unions could require dues paying membership as a condition of employment and they donated heavily to the Democratic Party. I wondered why the California Teachers Unions came out so strongly in support of the illegal alien influx until I realized who was directly benefiting from the huge increase in school attendance by the children of illegals and the requirement to conduct classes in some 23 different languages to benefit primarily illegals within the LA County Unified School District – the Teachers Unions. More taxpayer supported teachers hired and retained, the more dues flows into the Teachers Unions coffers. Additionally, because so many parents, who are now able, elect to Home School their children (also something the Teachers Unions rail against and endeavor to outlaw using the same reasoning as Democratic Senator Patty Murphy in the article above), not because of what the public schools fail to teach but also because of the liberal indoctrination and frequently anti-Christian and unpatriotic revisionism they are teaching. Sorry, but in this country citizens should always have the right to take their money and their children to a school or doctor or dentist who provides the better service. Catholic schools, along with other denominations have always provided excellent alternatives to the local public schools and yet the parents were taxed to support the public schools that their children were not attending while also paying enormous fees to educate their children in private religious schools. I am totally in favor of school choice.
As they said above. If PRESIDENT Trump is for it, the LeftWits are against it.
Maybe the PRES should use some Reverse Psychology on them. Push a bad project so the Dems will
actually be forced to do something GOOD for this Nation.
Nah.. They’d just use it as an “I Told You So” moment.
There’s no help for them anymore. :[
#Liberalism: Find a Cure.
The dems are the new terrorists in this country so we need to get them out of our school system ASAP if we want to save our kids.
That reminds me of the crazy women in a McCain town hall that said “Obama is a Muslim,” and McCain, as the decent and bipartisan man that he was, took her microphone away and said (politely): “no ma’m, no ma’m, he is not a Muslim, he is a Christian and we just disagree on some things. What has happened to the Republican party – – the most radical ones have taken over and demonize others, including their own moderates. Bob Dole was an example of a very fine Republican.
When Obama himself uttered the phrase “my muslim faith” during an interview decades ago it negated any claim of being a christian as no Christian would ever utter that phrase even by “accident” much less need the one giving the fake interview to correct the error in his scripted response with “you mean your christian faith”.
In an interview the one doing the interview is not supposed to supply the answers to their own questions much less correct the one being interviewed when the answer did not match what was planned.
I guarantee if they were interviewing a Republican and they made that “Freudian slip” stating the truth instead of the planned lie they would not have corrected them and moved on they would have used the response to destroy any chance of a election to political office the individual had even pointed to the requirements in the US constitution for holding certain offices.
Unless its been censored you can still find the interview on you tube and see the words spoken by Obama himself.
So someone remembering this plus the fact he wears a ring that is intended to be worn by truly devout muslims and pointing it out at a meeting is not crazy because all they pointed out is what he stated himself as his religious faith , now if they were expecting the politicians who worked so hard to conceal that interview and that fact to actually care that would be crazy.
Remember NO CHRISTIAN would have coined the false phrase “christian hatred” to refer to a MUSLIM attacking a group of people at a night club much less made the attempt to censor the 911 tape to remove the CRIMINALS own confession about why he committed the crime when the leaked tape contradicted his “christian hatred” claim as he attempted to divert blame from the CRIMINAL to all of those who are of the Christian.
OhBummer also uttered the phrase “Michael and i” in a speech – no man calls his beloved Michellle Michael ‘by accident’ either
what has happened to the Republican party is we have seen the truth and call it out wherever possible
OhBummer is a muslim as he himself stated, his birth certificate has been proven a fraud, he is married to a man named Michael (again his own words) and he was born in Kenya
what has happened to the Democrat party is that it has become socialist – and the ultimate goal of socialism is always communism
The democrats are taking away our freedoms!!! Open your eyes and ears!!! LOOK AT California – is that what you want for yourself and your country? ILLEGALS WILL BE ALLOWED, all your rights will end, jobs will disappear again, taxes will be doubled or tripled, what jobs are left wiil go to illegals, illegals will outnumber us and they will bring diseases and death with them because they are coming from countries where they had to live in squalor. The democrats have admitted they HATE America and AMERICANS and ESPECIALLY Trump!!! WE HAVE TO VOTE REPUBLICAN ALL THE WAY TO SAVE AMERICA AND HER PEOPLE FROM THE DEMOCRATS!!!
Education is not a federal function. No where in the Constitution is the federal government granted any control over education. The tenth amendment in the “Bill of Rights” reserves anything not specifically granted to the federal government to the several States and to the people. The democrats have openly attacked the second and first amendments. But they have also been insidiously attacking the rest of our “Bill of Rights” as well. It is their goal to strip power from the States and the people and put complete control of everything in the hands of the central government.
The main thing being produced at public school and universities these days are celery stalks. Pretty sad.
celery stalks and snowflakes