Donald Trump and the Cultural Impact of His Policies on Education in the United States

• In Event: 77.013 - The Threat to Public Education From the Political Right in the Americas: Trump, Bolsonaro, Pinera, and Macri

Abstract

The Trump administration represents less a break from the Bush and Obama administrations’ neoliberal education reforms than an expansion and intensification of those reforms. The effects of Neoliberalism are economic, political, and cultural. The economic impact of neoclassical economic theory has massively increased inequality since 1980. The political impact has been an increase in the funding by wealthy individuals and corporations of new policy actors and networks that oppose teachers’ unions, promote the privatization of public education, and the use of business models and markets as a new form of accountability. In this paper, we will focus on a third dimension of neoliberal impact, its impact on culture, which has been a hallmark or Donald Trump’s administration.

There is evidence that the volatility and divisive discourse of the Trump administration “has begun to shape how Americans interact with one another in public life” with many feeling that they have implicitly been granted permission to follow the lead of the current administration (Rogers, Franke, Yun, Ishimoto, Diera, Geller, Berryman, Brenes, 2017, p. 2). Schools are no exception, with teachers noting increased polarization and incivility in their classrooms (Rogers, et al, 2017). Teachers have observed “how the political environment ‘unleashed’ virulently racist, anti-Islamic, antic-Semitic, or homophobic rhetoric in their schools and classrooms” (Rogers et al, 2017, p. vi). Schools are clearly microcosms of the larger society’s beliefs and ills and the current environment just described is the context for the ongoing work of educators.

The appointment of Betsy DeVoss as Secretary of Education, signals more extreme privatization of public schools through vouchers and neovouchers (tax credits for private schools) and a roll back of human rights for LGBT people, women, people of color and refugees and immigrants. This paper will analyze recent policy documents that have emerged from commissions appointed by the Trump administration. These include the Final Report of the federal commission on school safety and Trump’s Dear colleague letter on Title IX and how sex and gender are redefined in terms of transgender youth. The former report attempts to take a color-blind approach to data gathered in schools that attempts to document racial disparities. We will also discuss implications of these new policies for school practitioners.

Authors

• Gary L. Anderson, New York University

• Kathryn G. Herr, Montclair State University