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U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visited in April with the rapper Pitbull in his newly opened Sports Leadership And Management Academy (SLAM) private charter school, which opened this fall in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.
There are any number of issues that Donald Trump is set up to bungle catastrophically. But the one that most directly affects economic opportunity for all Americans, regardless of economic status, gender, race or geography, is public education.
In the budget outline that was released this week, Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, reveal a stunning lack of commitment to America’s great equalizer.
Admittedly, expectations were low for the owner of Trump “University,” who settled a lawsuit for $25 million with former students who alleged they were scammed. Nor has anyone harbored high expectations for DeVos, the nation’s most prominent proponent of failed school voucher experiments that have helped bankrupt public schools, resegregate students, and punish teachers.
Not content to stop with rolling back the few consumer protections that exist for student loan borrowers, the Trump budget tilts the system further against Americans who work hard to get their educations and take on the personal responsibility to pay for it.
The budget eliminates federally subsidized low-interest student loan programs, as well as public service loan forgiveness. It calls for student financial aid to cover a smaller percentage of costs as tuition rises, while capping maximum awards and slashing work-study programs.
Also in Trump and DeVos’s line of fire is K-12 public education. Programs providing for smaller class sizes, teacher training, and services for low-income students and students with disabilities are facing deep cuts. Meanwhile, there is a massive effort to funnel tax dollars into the ideologically driven voucher and charter school privatization schemes favored by DeVos.
This sacrifice of public education at the altar of unproven, rightwing ideological experiments is appalling, even for this gang.
Trump has shown the 43 million Americans who owe $1.4 trillion in student debt that he does not care about them. He has displayed the antipathy to the most American of ideals: education as the key to opportunity.
Scot Ross is the Executive Director of One Wisconsin Now.