Education Week - January 18, 2017 - 25

ing coherence across federal legislation, including
ESSA, the Perkins Act, the Higher Education Act,
and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.
When the business, higher education, and K-12 sectors align efforts, it drives greater educational and
economic opportunity for all youths. This work must
be incentivized or the sectors will remain siloed.
* Honor diversity. Diversity-of background
and opinion-is what makes America great. In
classrooms, just as in business, young people encounter individuals from all walks of life. It is in
these interactions that students develop the communication, collaboration, and joint problem-solving
skills that are fundamental for student success. Our
public schools are a reflection of our great democracy and should be a safe space for children of all
races and backgrounds to learn and thrive together.
Our policies and use of the bully pulpit should
honor this great tradition.
Leading states and systems are raising expectations, setting ambitious credential-attainment
goals, and expanding opportunities in their quest to
get more students ready for success in the economy.
This work should be acknowledged, scaled, and accelerated so that youths in all communities can attain the promise of a prosperous future. n
MATT GANDAL is the president and founder of the Education
Strategy Group, a consulting firm specializing in K-12, higher
education, and the workforce. Previously, he served as a senior
adviser to then-U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and as the
executive vice president of Achieve.

Don't Privatize Education

By Jack Jennings
uring the campaign, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump
promised to respect state and
local control of public education.
With his nomination of Betsy
DeVos for U.S. secretary of education, President-elect Trump
has tossed that promise aside,
saying that she will help him reform the education
system based on one idea-privatization.
Truth be told, candidate Trump had earlier signaled that his promise to respect state and local
control was fraudulent because he pledged to spend
$20 billion on charter schools and tuition vouchers
for children to attend private schools. Since DeVos'
work has been to promote those ideas, the federal
government will most likely be forcefully changing
education regardless of state and local opinion.
For many years, Congress has hotly debated this
issue of control, and on a bipartisan basis passed
the Every Student Succeeds Act in December 2015.
The law limits the federal government's power by
emphasizing state and local decisionmaking. President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act
and President Barack Obama's Race to the Top program were at the root of this debate. Those policies
moved the federal government front and center in
school reform and precipitated a powerful kickback
from many states and local school districts.
President-elect Trump wants to reverse the
course of an intrusive federal government dictating
to states how to run schools. What will the Republicans who control Congress do with his proposals?
Will they stick with their position that state and
local school districts should control education? Or,
was that only a trick to oppose the outgoing president? Will they be two-faced now that a Republican
will be president?
Research shows that school choice has, at best,
a mixed record of success. Even President-elect

Trump has written: "Look, I know that people both
for and against school choice can roll out endless
arguments and statistics showing charter schools
are either very successful or make no difference at
all. This is a legitimate debate."
His proposal, though, would have Washington
dictating policies to states without clear evidence
of effectiveness. That is DeVos' record: promoting
privatization without solid research showing conclusively that it will work.
The Trump administration should honor the idea
of state and local control of education contained in
ESSA. The states are busy making their own plans
for school improvement, and they deserve time to
show what they can do.
More broadly, why do conservatives argue for limited federal involvement unless it is something they
want? Will state and local leaders let them get by
with that?
Has anyone asked educators and not billionaires
what really makes a difference in schooling? n
JACK JENNINGS wrote Presidents, Congress, and the Public
Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2015) based on 27 years
of experience as the key education expert for the Democraticcontrolled U.S. House of Representatives and 17 years as
president and CEO of the nonpartisan Center on Education
Policy, which he founded.

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Make School Choice Fair

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By Kimberly Jenkins Robinson
he Trump administration should
prioritize ensuring that all students have equal access to excellent
schools. Many children today are
denied the opportunity to attend an
excellent school because most states
tolerate the provision of low-quality
schools to children in many poor
and minority neighborhoods. These disparities in
educational opportunity greatly harm our national
interests in a strong economy, an effective military,
and an educated and engaged citizenry.
Given that the incoming administration has
signaled a strong desire to reduce federal involvement in education, it should incentivize states
to reduce and eliminate educational opportunity
gaps, rather than adopt federal mandates. The administration should offer federal research, technical assistance, and funding to states that present
research-based plans to achieve this important
national goal.
If the new administration encourages greater
school choice to build a stronger education system,
as press reports suggest it might, it should condition federal funding for choice on state-developed
standards that insist on high-quality choice options as well as nondiscrimination in admission
to and the administration of new educational opportunities. The Trump administration also should
promote the provision and expansion of excellent
educational opportunities. For example, this can
be done by encouraging innovation in new educational delivery models that take advantage of technology to expand access to excellent teaching and
rigorous curricula to students who live in areas
lacking these resources. n
KIMBERLY JENKINS ROBINSON is a professor at the University
of Richmond School of Law in Richmond, Va. She is co-editor
with Charles J. Ogletree Jr. of The Enduring Legacy of Rodriguez:
Creating New Pathways to Equal Educational Opportunity (Harvard
Education Press, 2015). She served as an attorney in the Office
of the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education from
1999 to 2004.

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Education Week - January 18, 2017

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