The Trump/DeVos Education Agenda Mirrored in the Original Obama Plan

It’s true that the Trump/DeVos Tax-Credit Scholarship CHOICE plan is nearly the same as the Obama Equity plan. Parents and citizens should be screaming and banging their heads.

Former President Obama created a driving force that flipped education toward nationalizing the system. The historic transformation began with ACT who developed and benchmarked Common Core standards-branded, standardized, and tied to federal funds in every state. The state longitudinal data system expansions identified individuals with a national ID. ESEA Flexibility Waivers, Social and Emotional Learning, and RELAXED FERPA regulations began to unravel traditional education while transforming the Constitution and the Republic via Obama shenanigans.

Take notice. The $5 billion earmarked in President Trump’s budget appear to step into Obama footprints as he calls for CHOICE Tax-Credit Scholarships for disadvantaged children. Does he know the background of Title I, Disadvantaged Children? Supplement NOT Supplant? The $5 billion for Choice tax-credit scholarships are a bad move for this President. Who’s kidding who?

Who’s advising the President???

The Trump budget would provide $50 million for a pilot program under Title I to help districts create and use weighted student-funding formulas—this pilot program was created under the Every Student Succeeds Act, ESSA, in order to help schools focus money directly on disadvantaged students and those with special needs.

The definitions are the key to this statement:

  • money that would be focused directly on individuals students, not schools,
  • the true definition of what is a disadvantaged student, and
  • who are special needs students

Let’s look at the history:

President Obama’s key objectives in education were to redesign schools and reform how schools were funded. Instead of distributed funds based on ZIP CODE, funds would be based on student need. The federal government WOULD develop a mechanism to monitor and enforce PERFORMANCE through Common Core. To make sure the federal government’s investment would be tied to federal funding and federal outcomes President Obama initiated “CHOICE IN EDUCATION” based on a “per pupil expenditure” and civil rights. Everything would be tied to the individual. Sounds like familiar phrasing according to the DeVos agenda. But is this truly the Trump agenda? The Obama agenda? The Republican Congress agenda who passed ESSA? Or the Ted Cruz agenda who wrote the legislation for Tax-Credit Scholarships?

Speaking in terms of “equity and excellence,” President Obama had a very well defined CHOICE plan to establish a complete equitable Democracy-and to extinguish our Republic with the force of the federal government behind it. His CHOICE Plan had already been written and had been laid bare for anyone to read called, For Each and Every Child: A STRATEGY FOR EDUCATION EQUITY AND EXCELLENCE(Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6zikOSdV-TAdENQNFFWc1ZFMm8/view?usp=drivesdk )

The final agenda would be ENFORCEMENT through funding through these federal mandates that would force every sort of school to become chartered. The blueprint will destroy America. The Democrats had this plan in their legislation prior to a Trump landslide, but did nothing. But the Republicans initiated the plan and former Speaker Paul Ryan pushed the ESSA legislation through.

The new ESSA legislation passed (2015) lead by our Republican Congress, Senator Alexander (TN-R) and former Congressman Kline (MN-R) and quickly signed by former President Obama, creates a model for how schools will be refinanced to be sure that all children are funded equally called “per pupil expenditures.” These new financial plans change how schools would be funded and transfers the focus to fund children. DeVos calls it a weighted student funding formula. ESSA refers to this aspect as a “per pupil expenditure” and the funding is defined in the legislation as  “public school choice.” (Source: ESSA, ‘(D) PUBLIC SCHOOL CHOICE; PAGE 92) The word that must be remembered here is PUBLIC.

But what’s missing? Equitable funding!  The money must “follow the child” and every child will have the same amount of money as a stipend. How is a child targeted? When a child receives a Tax-Credit scholarship that child is Title I. But, the money goes into a parent’s ESA, a government enforcement vehicle. Title I equitable services moves with the child called portability who will enroll in the new school of CHOICE. Remember, when a public school is knighted as school-wide, all children are Title I and all children are showered with Special Education interventions. All kids can apply for these scholarships. This moves our taxing system closer to “regionalization” discussed in Obama’s plan. (Source)

How Will Title I Enforcement Measures Force School Districts to “Equalize” Student Funding.

The U.S. Department of Education stated that the typical public school in the United States spends approximately $12,000 – $15;000 per year for each child enrolled. This suggests that a child who is enrolled in a public school from kindergarten through the end of high school will have as much as $150,000 spent on primary and secondary education. In essence, President Obama used Title I “supplement not supplant” regulations that also allowed consolidated federal monies. The Obama Plan allowed  a public school child to go to the public school of their CHOICE, including charter schools. The federal Tax Credit Scholarships in President Trump’s budget also include private and religious schools of CHOICE.

The Obama administration proposed regulations to implement  the “supplement not supplant” section in ESSA, but got cold feet directly before President Trump took office. Notice the date. (Source: “Obama Administration drops last-minute Education Department rule change,” CNN, January 18, 2017)

“The Education Department said Wednesday it is withdrawing a proposed policy that would have dramatically increased federal control over school-district budgets, because it “did not have time to publish a strong final regulation.” (Note: Realize President Obama tried to pass this a week prior to President Trump’s inauguration.)

The “supplement NOT supplant” regulation goes into effect in the 2019 school year. Read carefully because this is the plan. Get ready.

The following is a summary of the Obama regulations-supplement not supplant.

“Purpose of This Regulatory Action: On December 10, 2015, President Barack Obama signed the ESSA into law. The ESSA reauthorizes the ESEA, which provides Federal funds to improve elementary and secondary education in the Nation’s public schools. ESSA builds on the ESEA’s legacy as a civil rights law and seeks to ensure every child, regardless of race, national origin, socioeconomic status, background, or zip code, receives the support needed to succeed in school.”

As the statute affirms, the purpose of title I, part A of the ESEA is to “provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps.” 

“The new ESSA statutory language focuses not on costs and services, but on funds. Specifically, section 1118(b) of the ESEA requires that an LEA “demonstrate that the methodology used to allocate State and local funds to each [title I school] ensures that such school receives all of the State and local funds it would otherwise receive if it were not receiving assistance under [title I].”

“Importantly, States and LEAs need not shift resources among schools in order to comply with this provision, but instead may elect to provide additional State and local educational funding to title I schools to ensure compliance with the supplement not supplant provision of the law.”

“…hundreds of LEAs across the country, title I schools are receiving, on average, hundreds of thousands of dollars less in State and local funding than the average non-Title I school. These are critical funds that could be spent on, for example, wrap-around services, high-quality preschool, access to advanced coursework, or incentive pay for educators who choose to work in high-need schools.” (Emp. Added.)

So, what does all this mean?  The “supplement not supplant equation” means the regulations will force the local school district and state to “pay up” or force wealthy districts to “re-distribute” or shift funds to low income districts. If the federal scholarship pitches in $6000 for each child, the local school MUST pitch in $6000 for each child. A 50/50 bargain to use an equalized per pupil expenditure from both federal and state/local funds as a new way to finance children…NOT SCHOOLS.  So ESSA Title I is setting up the grand bargain that says every child should be funded exactly the same and all parties MUST pitch-in. Choice will kill public schools forever. But then, social and emotional learning truly killed education.

Will Per Pupil Expenditures and Title I “Supplement and Supplant” Equation Be Used For Tax-Credit Scholarship CHOICE? You can be sure that DeVos will embrace the rule to get complete federal control over school funding.

(Funding Inequity, Civil Rights Division-pp. 41-44)

President Trump vowed this last September:

“As your President, I will be the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice. I want every single inner city child in America who is today trapped in a failing school to have the freedom – the civil right – to attend the school of their choice.’’

The question that must be asked, is President Trump really only focusing on poor inner city children, OR has he aligned his agenda with President Obama’s no poverty guidelines to encompass ALL children in EVERY SCHOOL which is called the Traveling-Title I-SCHOOL-WIDE-Common Core-SocialEmotionalLearning-For-All Net? It doesn’t look good.

Background

Sen. Ted Cruz proposed Title I portability (2016) to be those equitable funds in his SB 306. Common Core would be a yoke around the Title I child’s neck and Senator Cruz wanted to give those Title I yoked children to private, religious, and homeschools. He also redefined a homeschool as a private school to force homeschools into this portability agenda. His bill never saw daylight. Former Rep. Luke Messer (IN-R) aligned himself with that same agenda proposing legislation for CHOICE. Rob Goad, aide to Rep. Messer, was tapped by the Trump administration to advance this CHOICE agenda. The Indiana group, VP Pence, Messer, Goad, were considered part of the “hatchet team” pitching CHOICE at every turn.

Currently, Senator Cruz has proposed the $5 billion campaign for Tax-Credit Scholarships for Choice Funds for under-privileged children (Title I)  where business and industry will receive 100% write-off for funding private school scholarships. What does this mean? Will Title I children be swapped for business write-offs that pays a 100% tax credit. Yes! Senator Cruz states, “This legislation doesn’t take one penny from any public school in America,” he said. “What it does is add $100 billion worth of new pennies to create scholarships and expand opportunities.” (Source)

Senator Cruz is Wrong! You just can’t TrusTed! He purposely did not explain the

Title I “supplement not supplant” agenda because Ted is part of the hatchet team, too.

We might wonder if President Trump is getting ALL the information he needs to Make America Great Again, or has there been a rerouting of his agenda to make America socialized? Vice-President Pence may also be a guide as to which CHOICE the Trump administration will deliver, as well as, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Rob Goad. They are adamant supporters of  Common Core, school CHOICE and charter schools.  We know what to expect next from this sort of CHOICE.

Wake-up!

© 2019 Anita Hoge – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Anita Hoge: hogieshack@comcast.net