Of Team Trump and Reading
Will dismantling the Department of Education improve reading ability in schools?
Incoming President Donald Trump and his band of merry oligarchs have a range of solutions simply searching for problems.
Rather, they have a bunch of ideas for how to get more public money without accountability. And they’re dressing those ideas up as solutions to crises real or imagined.
Peter Greene explores the latest development: A claim that eliminating the Department of Education will somehow lead to improved reading scores.
The Trumpsters want what privatizers have always wanted-- they want all that sweet sweet taxpayer education funding liberated from strings that determine how it can be spent, the better to direct it to their favorite pockets. There's no reason to believe that such a liberation would result in higher Big Standardized Test scores (and no reason to believe that such higher scores would improve the lives of individuals or the nation). But that's not really the point.
When it comes to reading, it seems important to note the reality of what the prevailing test-and-punish system has brought us so far:
Reading a passage to answer questions specific to that passage is different than reading a text and understanding the full context of the events and actions undertaken by multiple characters.
And, while the constant distraction of devices certainly plays a role in the brevity of attention spans, perhaps reading disconnected texts and taking test after test robbed a generation of students of the joy of connection with characters - and therefore, robbed them of a passion for reading.
While it seems unlikely that Team Trump will succeed in implementing many of their worst ideas when it comes to education, that won’t stop them from trying. And from breaking some things in the process.
Best case scenario, they stop any potential progress for the next four years. Worst case, they actually succeed in getting Congress to pass some sort of federal school voucher scheme.
All the while, as Nashville education blogger TC Weber notes, we’ll still be facing the same underlying challenges in schools.
Unfortunately, in reading the tea leaves, when it comes to the education world, it appears to me, 2025 will provide much the same as 2024.
Extensive ink will be spilled in the battle over vouchers, but questions around what we are measuring, and if those are the right things, will remain a slight murmur.
I’m betting that conversation over funding for desperately needed updates to existing facilities will be shuffled to the back burner once again, and kids will continue to attend schools with pest problems, heating and cooling issues, and inadequate space for enrolled students.
Tennessee has provided billions in corporate tax breaks and $500 million to fund a new stadium for the Tennessee Titans.
Meanwhile, the state’s teachers are among the lowest-paid in the Southeast and the schools receive per pupil funding at levels near the bottom nationally.
Gov. Lee’s solution, though, lines up with Team Trump: privatize at all costs.
That seems to miss the point:
While in 2018, Tennessee ranked 42nd in the nation in school funding effort, today we rank 47th. On overall funding level, there has been no change since 2018 - that is, we’re still at 43rd.
This!