Trump Pitches Education Privatization at Ohio Charter School That Failed State Tests

Nobody needed to wait 20 minutes into Donald Trump’s speech Thursday—when he finally turned to the advertised topic, America’s public schools—to know he would bring a wrecking ball to classrooms and trash traditional K-12 education.

Trump has long recited Republican talking points railing against public schools, teachers unions and government oversight. And he’s promoted the GOP's solution—allowing the private sector to run schools at taxpayer expense.

When Trump took the stage at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, he praised its staff, even though the charter public school got Ds and Fs from Ohio education regulators for math, reading and closing achievement gaps. And he gave a feisty shout-out to one audience member before digressing into a lengthy attack on Hillary Clinton and the “dishonest” media.

“In particular, I want to thank Mr. Ron Packard. Where is Ron? Is he here someplace? Thank you, Ron, for a fantastic job,” Trump said. “Today we’re going to discuss one of the most important issues in this campaign, school choice. But before we do I want to briefly discuss new revelations about Hillary Clinton’s very famous e-mails.”

Indeed, first things first. Packard is one of the nation’s most notorious education privatizers. What Trump University has been sued for—promising an education and failing to deliver while bilking students—Packard has done in the public school world. The all-online charter school company he previously headed, K12 Inc., has been singled out as one of the biggest charter school boondoggles nationally.

K12’s notion that teenagers could learn everything they need with all-online instruction and little supervision has proved to be as ludicrous as it sounds. Even the pro-charter Walton Family Foundation last winter wrote a mea culpa commentary in Education Week after its own experts found that K12’s 200,000 students were falling six months to a year behind in math and reading. This past July, California attorney general Kamala Harris announced a $168.5 million settlement with K12, “a for-profit online charter school operator, and the 14 affiliated non-profit schools known as the California Virtual Academies ('CAVA Schools') that it manages, over alleged violations of California’s false claims, false advertising and unfair competition laws.”

In politics, it’s important to pay attention to who candidates surround themselves with, not just what they say. Packard, who is now with one of two firms running the Cleveland charter hosting Trump’s speech, has anything but a record of making public education great again. But he is cut from the same entrepreneurial cloth as many of today’s self-appointed education privatizers and Trump University’s namesake: they see a goldmine in public funds for K-12 per-pupil spending or government-backed student loans for higher education. Meanwhile, they relentlessly talk up doing everything “for the children” as they make their way to the bank. 

Trump’s Cleveland education speech followed that arc. He opened by saying growing up safely, getting a good education and a decent job “is the new civil rights agenda of our time,” before going on to attack public schools. “There’s no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly. They’re protecting a lot of people who have a lot of really high-paying jobs, and they’re not doing the job like Deborah (here), that I can tell you.”

Then came the privatization pitch and Trump’s core proposal, that about one-third of the federal education budget, $20 billion, be diverted into block grants for states to pay for sending children to any school. “I want every inner-city child in America to have the freedom, the civil right, to attend the school of their choice,” he said. “Their parents will choose the finest school. They will attend the school. This includes private schools, traditional public schools, magnet schools and charter schools—which must be included in any definition of school choice… It’s simply a matter of putting students first, not the education bureaucracy.”

Trump, reading from his teleprompter, said states and the federal government spend more $620 billion on K-12 public education each year. Of that figure, $560 billion is from state property tax revenues, he said. The average spending is $12,296 per student, although it varies from state to state, offering examples of what's spent in New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

“Just imagine if each student in these school systems was given a scholarship for this amount of money allowing them and their family to choose the public or private school of their choice,” continued Trump, ever the pitchman. “Wouldn’t that be great? Not only would this empower families, but it would create a massive education market that is competitive and produces better outcomes. And I mean far better outcomes.”

Yet again, Trump either doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he's lying, or he doesn’t care about details or real-world impacts. The Washington Post’s speech coverage noted that a recent study of the 18,000 students in Ohio’s voucher program “by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that [the voucher school] students… actually performed worse on standardized tests than similar students who stayed in public schools.”

The Clinton campaign’s Maya Harris said Trump’s proposals would cause chaos and “decimate public schools across America.” The campaign also noted that such block grants would represent a giant transfer of public funds into private hands, leaving urban school systems even more under-resourced than they currently are.

“Trump’s plan would apparently eliminate the targeting of federal dollars to schools and districts with the highest concentrations of low-income students,” the Clinton campaign's release said. “He would turn over all $15.4 billion in Title I funding to states, and allow money to follow students outside of the public school system to private or parochial schools.” That would divert funding “from up to 56,000 public schools serving more than 21 million children. By allowing funding to leave America's 56,000 Title I schools, Trump's proposal will put crucial funding at risk for nearly 21 million American students.”

“Trump's proposal would serve nowhere near 11 million students,” the analysis continued. “The average cost of a K-12 private school is $13,640 per student, per year. Since the vast majority of states do not support private school vouchers, Trump's proposal would have to carry the full cost of attendance. As a result, Trump's proposal might only serve 1.4 million students, while taking away funding that serves America's low-income schools.”

You did not need to read the wonky analyses by the Clinton campaign to know that Trump’s education privatization agenda would not lead to “far better outcomes.” All you need to do is know who he's flattering in his opening remarks—one of the most notorious get-rich-quick charlatans in the education privatization sector.