Donald Trump will become the 45th President of the United States. What does that mean for federal education policy? Here are my 11 reflections on what this means and predictions for what might happen:
1. Expert opinion didn’t have a very good night. The polls were wrong, the political experts were wrong, and elite newspaper endorsements didn’t seem to affect the outcome. In some cases, voters outright rejected elite consensus. For an education example, the research on Boston charter schools is overwhelmingly positive, and yet Massachusetts voted down a ballot initiative that would have allowed them to expand. This isn’t just an education problem per se, but it does have troubling implications for the sector going forward.
2. Our country has never been this politically divided across education levels. Donald Trump won non-college-educated voters by huge numbers even as Hillary Clinton became the first Democrat to win college-educated voters in 50 years. If these trends continue, or even accelerate, and political party becomes further associated with education levels, that will turn education itself into a political exercise.
3. Now that Trump is President-Elect, a lot of Democrats will wish we were still under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Even though many states were operating under waivers from NCLB, and a Trump Administration could have authored their own waivers, NCLB as an underlying law provided stronger protection for minorities and other subgroups of students than what’s now in place under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
4. As I’ve written before, the Trump transition team has tons of work to do. Given ESSA’s timelines, the new administration faces huge policy and logistical hurdles in their first six to eight months in office. They’ll need to review and approve every state’s accountability plan in that time.
5. The Obama Administration’s regulations implementing ESSA are in trouble. Again given the timeline here, I don’t expect outright revocation for all of the draft rules, which would take time and formal processes, but I do expect informal “dear colleague” letters weakening the Obama proposals.
6. In particular, the “supplement not supplant” rule was already on shaky political ground before the election. A Trump Administration is not likely to support it going forward.
7. The Obama Administration’s legacy on higher education would take time to dismantle. Rules on gainful employment and teacher preparation are now final. For the Trump Administration to revoke either of those, it would take years of formal regulatory processes. If Republicans really want those gone, they’ll go after them through Congress.
8. Existing grant awards (like the Teacher Incentive Fund or the Charter School Program) are safe. Congressional members will have an interest in funding continuation awards for those existing grants.
9. Trump can’t do much unilaterally on #CommonCore or school choice. ESSA makes the federal role relatively impotent, no matter the president.
10. We’re not getting any new money for education anytime soon. That means no federal expansion of pre-k and certainly not “free college.”
11. I don’t expect a Republican-dominated Congress to take up any large education bills. Their focus will be on policy objectives like the Supreme Court vacancy, immigration, or Obamacare. I don’t think we’ll see a Perkins or Higher Education Act reauthorization, for example. There just isn’t political oxygen for those types of negotiations. Still, we may see some smaller things, like the DC voucher program perhaps, slipped into random must-pass bills.
For more on the Trump victory and the implications for education policy, check out posts from Mike Petrilli and Rick Hes
—Chad Aldeman
Chad Aldeman is a principal at Bellwether Education Partners
This post originally appeared on Ahead of the Heard.
