AP: ORLANDO, Fla. — President Donald Trump toured a private, religious school in Florida on Friday, praising it as an ideal institution for “disadvantaged children” while re-emphasizing that his education agenda will focus on school choice.
Trump visited St. Andrew Catholic School in Orlando, dropping in on a fourth-grade classroom and shaking hands with students. When one girl said she wanted to own her own business, he said with a smile that she’s “gonna make a lot of money. But don’t run for politics.”
The president, who was joined by his new education secretary Betsy DeVos, a longtime charter schools advocate, described St. Andrew as “one of the many parochial schools dedicated to educating disadvantaged children.”
“Education is the civil rights issue of our time,” said Trump, repeating a line from his address to Congress this week.
Teachers unions were quick to criticize the visit, saying it showed hostility by Trump toward public schools and an intention to turn education into a profit-making industry. MORE
SNIP: Yeah, because the unions should be the only ones making profit.
For Leftist Dems, when it comes to children, the only acceptable “choice” is terminating them before they’re born, not in educating them.
Glad he visited but what a traffic nightmare today!
I try to imagine what horrors Hillary would have forced on us by now.
Mass Gun roundup
Anyone involved in school choice we be arrested on site
The new HillaryKare
We really dodged a big ass bullet getting Trump elected.
But my jaw is sore from smiling all day.
Did he use a teleprompter in the classroom?
Asking for a Kenyan I know.
^^^^^^ funny
If he keeps up the pace he will wear the left down with his drive and will.
A year from now they will resort to mimicking him, Chevy Chase style as he speaks, long sighs and eye rolls, and the snarky: “…O..K…” used at the close of a clip.
If President Trump were to go boating near the coast on the Atlantic and actually get out and walk around on the surface, the headlines would read:
“Trump snubs locals by refusing to swim with them”
“Trump displays no respect for our laws (of physics)”
“Trump risks WWIII by using a Russian sub near the surface for his ‘stunt'”
“What is the Trump/Poseidon connection, and is it an impeachable offense?”
My favorite was “Trump forces Black family from home.”
@Ted – terminating them or brainwashing and enslaving them.
I know teachers in low income schools, and they tell horror stories – some about the students, most about the administrators. These schools are processing facilities; take kids in about 5 years old, and get them out at 18. Do they know how to read or write? It doesn’t matter. The administration is obsessed with “graduation” numbers and government testing results, and most of the older teachers are just marking time until they can retire with full benefits.
Choice is just another way of saying competition. I get it; disruptive, disinterested and unmotiviated students will stay in public school because it’s free and the parents don’t care. So be it. But there are plenty of motivated students who would thrive in a better atmosphere where education is valued as education and not a factory process, and these students and families deserve a choice.
Public schools won’t go out of business, and I lived in an area where the public schools were actually better than the private schools. But progressives don’t want choice because they want equality of outcome, and there is no better way to do this than provide a crappy education for all students in poorly administered schools.
Choice in anything is a conservative value. Choice, necessarily, creates competition. Competition for attendance/dollars is the free market in motion. It’s a self-improving proposition for everyone. No mystery why teachers’ unions are against them. Schools should not exist for any reason than for teaching kids how to read, write, and do arithmetic and true American/World history. Beyond that, we are allowing strangers more time to indoctrinate and despoil our children’s minds. Home schoolers get more teaching/learning done in a week than a PS gets done in a month or more.
The whole initiative of school choice and pushing school decisions back to the very local level is incredibly exciting and good. I’m so glad Trump has made this a high priority. The local districts will soon no longer be able to blame bad administration and bad education decisions on the feds.
I’m excited about this subject and the talk about tax
breaks on tuition costs. I’ll work my fingers to the bones
to keep my kid in her private “religious” school. I don’t
give a phock what the unions say.