Vermont Primary Winners Outline Education Policies
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- Created on Monday, 07 March 2016 21:10
- Written by Tim Laroche
Around the NEK -- Democracy in Vermont was strong during the first week of March.
Residents from across the state stormed their town halls to cast votes during Town Meeting Day. In the Northeast Kingdom, for instance, -- where even small towns see big participation – education weighed heavy on the minds of voters. In such towns as Peacham, new members of the school board were elected, and in St. Johnsbury, a drop in enrollment at the St. Johnsbury School was cause for a budget uptick.
But while residents of the Green Mountain State were busy voting on local matters, many residents also made their voices heard on the national stage. The occasion: Super Tuesday.
Ballots were cast in 13 states, dashing the presidential hopes of such candidates as Ben Carson, -- who has since announced his leaving of the race due to dismal turnout -- and fortifying the frontrunner status of Donald Trump, who won Vermont's primary with 33%.
In an unsurprising move, Democrats in Vermont overwhelmingly supported Senator Bernie Sanders, although he still lags behind Hillary Clinton nationally as the leading Democratic candidate.
For both of the winning candidates from the Vermont primaries, national education policy has occupied an important role in the race for the White House.
Trump has repeatedly protested the recent Common Core standards that were passed during President Barack Obama's most recent term in office. The standards -- which the Obama administration says are meant to reform the country's education system and increase US students' literacy and mathematics skills to ensure that students who graduate from public schools are college-ready – have alternately seen widespread criticism and support from educators and legislators alike.
In various speeches, such as his 2015 announcement of his candidacy, Trump has called the Common Core standards "a disaster," and he has derided other GOP candidates, like Jeb Bush – who recently dropped out of the race after seeing lackluster support – who have supported the national standards.
Trump's argument against Common Core is meant to shift the focus of educational legislation away from national initiatives, giving more power to states and local governments to legislate their own curricula.
In a similar sense, Trump has also come out in support of school choice – the process in which parents can opt to send their children outside of their local school system through waivers paid by their town to the school district of their choice.
Arguments against school choice systems often cite de facto economic segregation, in which families with more income can send their children to public schools with greater resources. Meanwhile, families in lower income brackets usually do not have the resources to send their children to neighboring school districts, thereby creating inequality of resources.
But, on the other hand, supporters of school choice often say that the programs allow families to take better control of their students' educations.
In Trump's 2000 book, The America We Deserve – which he wrote long before announcing his candidacy – he said that school choice could improve public education by fostering competitiveness between schools.
"If you look at public education as a business – and with nearly $300 billion spent each year on K-through-twelve education, it's a very big business indeed – it would set off every antitrust alarm bell at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission," Trump said. "When teachers' unions say even the most miniscule program allowing school choice is a mortal threat, they're saying: if we aren't allowed to keep 90% of the market, we can't survive."
Essentially, Trump's argument hinges on the idea of public education being run as a business that must generate revenue. This falls in line with laissez-faire economic theories that argue that a free, unregulated market will yield the best returns, and consumers will naturally select the best product, a sort of economic Darwinism.
To simplify Trump's views on public education: control over curricula, student access and revenue should remain in local hands. Trump says he wants to reduce the reliance on the federal Department of Education.
Meanwhile, on most issues of public education, Sanders has taken the opposite stance compared to his GOP counterpart.
As a Vermont Senator and longtime mainstay of national legislation, Sanders has a longer track record of public commentary on education than Trump. This current election cycle, Sanders has come out in strong support of making public colleges free. He proposed to do this – in numerous speeches, including the November 2015 Democratic Debate – through a $70 billion plan that would require states to pay 1/3rd of the total bill.
His plan is based on the idea that college, in recent years, has taken the same role that high schools took in the 1950's, when high school became compulsory. Essentially, a secondary education is no longer an adequate standard of entry to the workforce, and tertiary education has assumed its role.
And in light of the current essential role of tertiary education, Sanders says, he also supports programs that would allow more forgiveness on college loans.
"We must restructure our student loan programs," he said in a 2015 speech at the University of Iowa, "to take the profits out of our system, and return them to borrowers in the form of loan forgiveness and lower interest rates."
Though Sanders has made the largest waves, in this election cycle, with his views on colleges and universities, he also says he supports national reform for elementary and secondary education.
Sanders supports the Common Core standards, he says, and, in 2001, he co-sponsored an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to set an 18-student limit to elementary class sizes.
Sanders said he does not support mandatory high-stakes testing in public education, and, according to his campaign website, he does not support 2001's No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) that established a system where schools could be punished for failing to meeting standards of adequate yearly progress for their students. In early 2001, when NCLB was introduced to the House of Representatives, he initially voted in support of the act. However, after the bill was finalized in the Senate, he retracted his support, and he has since spoken against the controversial act.
In short: Sanders has focused more time in his campaign to issues of college debt, and he supports more national educational reform initiatives that allow the federal government to set national educational standards than his GOP counterpart. Public education should take, he says, a more holistic and regulated approach than it currently does.
Although Super Tuesday has come and passed, there are still several months left before the United States can declare a new Commander-in-Chief.
More candidates will likely drop out, and some could even change their views on public education, but the possibility still exists, on both sides, for major reform.