Monday, September 16, 2024
Trump’s road map for taking ‘woke’ out of American education
Donald Trump is vowing to take what he describes as wokeness out of America’s schools if he is elected president. He and allies have a road map for doing so.
The former president has said he would deploy federal powers to pressure schools and universities that he considers to be too liberal. One strategy that he has described would launch civil-rights investigations of schools that have supported transgender rights and racial diversity programs. Another tactic would use the college accreditation system, which sets standards for schools, to scale back diversity goals.
Conservatives have previously decried the use of federal agencies – sometimes derisively called the “deep state” – by Democrats. Now, Trump and his allies have suggested they want to turn the tables.
Unlike many of Trump’s other education proposals — including punishing schools that require vaccines, creating an anti-”woke” online university, and instituting “universal school choice” — these new tactics wouldn’t require state or congressional cooperation. They would likely kick up a legal fight, from school systems, universities and LGBTQ advocates, among others.
In speeches, Trump has also repeatedly pledged to abolish the Education Department.
Trump representatives pointed to his campaign website when asked for further details.
Critical race theory targeted
“Our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs,” Trump said in a campaign video earlier this year. “We will cut federal funding for any school or program pushing critical race theory.” Conservatives have used the term “critical race theory” as a catch-all for liberal ideas about race.
Trump’s platform promises to investigate “any school that engages in race-based discrimination,” though it doesn’t specify which programs he would target.
Several common practices in schools might be subject to scrutiny, said R. Shep Melnick, a professor at Boston College who has studied civil-rights law. Those could include initiatives focused on helping Black or Hispanic students succeed in class; diversity offices that cater mainly to non-white student groups; and lessons on white privilege.
Since last year’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, conservatives have brought lawsuits against race-conscious access programs that they say discriminate against white and Asian people.
The threat of an investigation can be as effective as an actual inquiry, according to legal analysts. A few high-profile cases could cause many institutions to change their practices.
“There’s a chilling effect here that cannot be understated,” said Jasmine Bolton, a former civil-rights lawyer in the Biden administration’s Education Department.
‘Transgender insanity’ and Title IX
The Biden administration has interpreted Title IX — the 1972 law that bars sex-based discrimination in educational institutions — to protect transgender people, too. (This rule has been halted by courts in much of the country.)
By contrast, Trump has criticised what he describes as “transgender insanity” in schools. He has suggested that he would flip the Biden’s interpretation of Title IX to say that certain accommodations for transgender people would amount to sex-based discrimination. Trump’s campaign site says he would use the law to bar “men from participating in women’s sports.” In 2020, the Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding from some Connecticut schools over a policy allowing transgender girls to play on female sports teams. Upon taking office, the Biden administration dropped the effort.
Sarah Parshall Perry, a former Trump administration Education Department official and a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said a Title IX violation could occur “when we find biological girls” losing access to “privacy or private spaces,” such as when transgender students use bathrooms or locker rooms aligned with their stated gender identity.
Accreditation as a ‘secret weapon’ Conservatives have criticised accreditation agencies — which set standards for colleges and control access to federal student-aid dollars — as being meddlesome, particularly in campus diversity initiatives.
The agencies are granted recognition by the Education Department, with the help of an advisory committee. Some have called on schools to close gaps in minority graduation rates, or explicitly support the concept of equity.
Trump has signalled intentions to give schools more wiggle room on diversity efforts by up-ending that accreditation system, a tactic he has called his “secret weapon.” Analysts have said such a move could include stripping recognition from some agencies, approving more alternatives, or loosening their watchdog mandates.
Michael Poliakoff, a member of the accreditation advisory committee, and head of the conservative-leaning non-profit American Council of Trustees and Alumni, called accreditors “intrusive” and “micromanaging” and said they have grown overly prescriptive.
Poliakoff’s group served on the advisory board of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, considered by many conservatives as a blueprint for the next administration, although Trump has disavowed it.
The Education Department under Trump limited accreditors’ oversight authority in 2019, including by allowing colleges to get approval from accreditors outside their regions.
Legal fights ahead A new Trump Education Department might face legal hurdles. The Supreme Court recently stopped giving agencies, such as the Education Department, broad leeway in interpreting federal law. Future high-court decisions on transgender rights and race-based policies could affect how the next administration enforces civil-rights law.
Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the country’s second-largest, said he is troubled by Trump’s education promises and would be willing to fight them in court. The district receives hundreds of millions in federal dollars.
“We would pursue every opportunity available to us to defend, to protect, to assert the rights of our students,” he said. “I think that we would not be alone in this.”
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Independent and Undecided Voters Largely Aligning with Trump Post-Debate
Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has been touted as either a draw or a Harris victory by mainstream media pundits, but Independent and undecided voters saw the evening differently. Multiple polls are showing that a majority of undecided voters either decided on backing Trump or leaned towards that decision following the debate. Reuters conducted interviews with a focus group of 10 undecided voters, six of whom said that they would support Trump following the debate. Only three said they would back Harris, while a final voter was still undecided.
“Harris and Trump are in a tight race and the election will likely be decided by just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, many of whom are swing voters like the undecided voters who spoke to Reuters,” the news agency noted. “The Trump converts said they trusted him more on the economy, even though all said they did not like him as a person. They said their personal financial situation had been better when he was president between 2017-2021,” Reuters continued, adding, “Four of those six also said Harris did not convince them she would pursue different economic policies than Democratic President Joe Biden, a Democrat they largely blame for the high cost of living.”
Most of the undecided voters interviewed by Reuters said that Harris spent too much time attacking Trump and was “vague” on her own policies. “I still don’t know what she is for. There was no real meat and bones for her plans,” 61-year-old Floridian Mark Kadish told Reuters. Robert Wheeler, a 48-year-old Nevadan, told Reuters that he had been leaning towards Harris prior to the debate but decided on Trump after watching the vice president’s performance. “I felt like the whole debate was Kamala Harris telling me why not to vote for Donald Trump instead of why she’s the right candidate,” Wheeler commented.
The New York Times also interviewed a slate of undecided voters, most of whom were unimpressed with Harris’s showing on debate night. Most voters said that Harris “did not seem much different from Mr. Biden,” and while they acknowledged that Harris “laid out a sweeping vision to fix some of the country’s most stubborn problems,” she offered no details or “fine print” regarding how she would achieve that vision.
While most undecided voters named by NYT simply remained undecided following the debate, a number skewed in favor of Trump. Keilah Miller, a 34-year-old black woman living in Milwaukee, said she had been leaning toward Harris but was disappointed by the vice president’s debate performance. “Trump’s pitch was a little more convincing than hers. I guess I’m leaning more on his facts than her vision,” Miller said. “When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better. I’ve never been so down as in the past four years. It’s been so hard for me.”
Voter analysis from Fox News also found that Independent voters supported Trump’s positions, expressed in the debate, on immigration and the economy. Even Democrats liked what Trump had to say about taxes, jobs, and inflation. Pollster Lee Carter told Fox News, “Independents are tracking very much with Republicans. They’re looking for a couple of things. They’re looking for answers on immigration, they’re looking for answers on the economy. They want to hear that things will get better for them and they also want change from what is happening right now.” Carter continued, “One of the most important things they were looking for last night from Kamala Harris is how are you going to make it different?”
A post-debate poll from CNN found that while a majority (63%) of voters said that Harris did better overall, Trump performed better on issues of the greatest importance to voters. Trump garnered a 20-point lead (55% to 35%) over Harris when voters were asked who would do better on economic issues, and an even-wider 23-point lead (56% to 33%) on immigration issues. Trump was also ranked a better “commander-in-chief” (49% to 43%) than Harris.
As polling data comes trickling in, Harris has requested a second debate against Trump. So far, the 45th president has refused to commit to a second debate, posting on Truth Social, “In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate.” Trump added, “She was beaten badly last night… so why would I do a Rematch?”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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