Dive Brief:
- Republican nominee Donald Trump visited the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy charter school Thursday, announcing plans to use $20 billion of existing federal money to support school choice efforts in the states.
- Bloomberg Politics reports Trump seems to be capitalizing on the “education as a civil right” concept that helped New Jersey Governor and Trump advisor Chris Christie win over more Latino and African American voters during his 2013 re-election bid.
- The 74 was one of many organizations to criticize Trump’s choice of charter school, a low-performing one in a state known for its particularly unregulated, scandal-ridden charter sector.
Dive Insight:
The issues page of Trump’s election website includes exactly two mentions of education — one a defense of Trump University and the other a rant against the Common Core State Standards. One of Trump’s key promises as president is to end Common Core, though the standards were not created by the federal government. States individually adopted the math and reading standards, and abandoning them would have to be a state decision as well.
Another little discussed area of Trump’s education policy will be his impact on immigrant students. In one key area, Trump vows to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Barack Obama created by executive order and used to give undocumented immigrants brought here as children the opportunity to work legally, drive and be protected from deportation for two-year, renewable terms. This will severely limit post-high school options for undocumented students.