If you have been following the debates and the election closely you have heard now a million times about emails, inappropriate comments from Trump, and missing tax returns. But, there is a topic that has not been mentioned in the slightest, although its importance ranks higher than those three things. Education. Despite talking about making college affordable, not once has Clinton or Trump mentioned their plans to build up education, which made me, question what their plans are and why education has not been discussed. So, I did research to find what their exact plans for education are.
Hillary Clinton
Clinton says she is a big supporter of charter schools, although not-for-profit charter schools. But, there is still the big problem of charter schools that claim to be non-profit but are managed by for-profit companies. But, since her time as a New York senator her position on charter schools continue to change, she now acknowledges that charter schools are not accepting the same students that a traditional public school would and she thinks that charter schools should be a public school supplement instead of a replacement. This is a pretty big stance change for Clinton and it is a pretty big deal that she is admitting to charter schools being problematic. Clinton also has said that she wants to raise standards for Common Core, but the meaning of that is ambiguous. It is unclear if that means she wants to make standards more developmentally appropriate or that she wants to ensure that they are applied appropriately to development, or if that means that she wants to make Common Core standards harder to make children do more work, which many argue would only be more detrimental to children.
Donald Trump
Trump has said that he would pick a secretary of education that was not in the “realm of education,” which would be problematic as seeing as the worst educational decisions are often made by people with no educational background. He has also been quoting saying that Common Core State Standards were created by “pot-smoking hippie” professors and he would not tolerate them as a president. But, he does bring up the point that it is bad to judge teachers dealing with difficult circumstances by one standard.
Altogether neither Trump’s nor Clinton’s plan for education seems fully formed, both of them seem like their stances have changed over time. These are people who are about to make huge decisions with policy and it is evident that they have little idea what they want to do. But, since it is not a “hot button” topic it seems that their plans can be less fully formed.
In the end, it really is telling that education is not a big topic. At the end of the day, debates rely on viewers so debate proctors will pick topics that they know will make Trump and Clinton bite each other’s heads off; education is probably not one of those topics.
Our nation’s apparent apathy towards education and what our next president intends to do about it is pretty telling about where our educational system is ending. I would have loved to hear about ideas of going in the direction of Finland’s educational system or rebuilding standards to make them more developmentally appropriate, but unfortunately this is not that election.
Resources: EdWeek, Diana Ravitch