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Dana Goldstein covers education at The New York Times. She writes about curriculum and textbooks. She reports on test scores. And lately, she has been covering education politics.
President Trump swept into office with plans to scale down the Department of Education. This week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could fire more than a thousand workers there. And earlier this month, the Republicans’ domestic policy bill included a tax credit that could vastly expand access to private school vouchers.
“I’ve been on the beat for almost 20 years,” Ms. Goldstein explained in an interview with Times Insider. “There are years where politics emerge as a bigger story line. And I just think there’s no avoiding that this is one of those years.”
The conversation below, which was conducted Wednesday, has been edited and condensed.
The Supreme Court ruled that President Trump could go ahead and effectively dismantle the Department of Education. What is the department’s role?
The vast majority of the Department of Education’s budget is devoted to the federal student grant and loan program, which helps students pay for their college education. The department has a much smaller role in funding K-12 schools. The federal funding for K-12 education is about 10 percent of total funding for K-12 education across the country.
The federal government has very limited power over K-12 schools. For example, it’s up to states to set curriculum standards, to decide how they want to handle standardized testing. Districts decide which books kids read. So a lot of the questions about education that can be controversial really are state and local decisions.
Nevertheless, that 10 percent of funding for K-12 schools that does flow through Washington is really important because it is directed toward low-income students and students with disabilities. These students are among the most vulnerable kids.
So what is changing or about to change in this equation?
The funding that goes toward low-income and disabled students is flowing. However, the Trump administration just withheld billions that are used for things like after-school programs, English language learning and some STEM programs. A couple days before the states were expecting to receive that money, the administration sent a letter to states saying, We’re not sending this money as expected. Attorneys general from many states have sued to try to block that.
The Trump administration has also issued threats to several states and school districts to withhold additional money because of policies around race and gender that President Trump disagrees with. So, for example, they threatened to withhold all federal school funding from the state of California — which is obviously a massive amount of money — because California allows transgender girls to compete on girls’ sports teams. They’ve made a similar threat to the state of Maine.
All of this is tied up in litigation at the moment, so it hasn’t happened yet. And ultimately, it may be up to the Supreme Court to decide: Can the president actually withhold federal money because the administration disagrees with state policies?
The domestic policy bill Republicans passed this month includes a national school voucher program. Is that part of the same education agenda?
I would say it’s part of the same conservative vision for education, which is to reduce federal funding for traditional schools and increase support for private school vouchers and home-schooling. And we really do see this with the Republican budget package that President Trump has signed into law. It includes this national tax credit for private school vouchers, and it is the first program like that to pass through Congress.
The program does have an opt-out for states, so some liberal states may choose not to participate, which is a win for teachers’ unions and for many mainstream Democrats who have long resisted private school vouchers. But the landscape on these questions has shifted since Covid-19.
There’s been an increased interest in nontraditional options, whether it’s home-schooling, private schools or charter schools. All of those options have seen an increase in enrollment while traditional public school enrollment has decreased over the past few years since Covid-19. So I think there could be many parents, including in liberal states, who are curious and would like to use these tax-credit vouchers.
Is there any alternative movement to counter the sort of conservative agenda that emphasizes private education?
Democrats have traditionally been the party of more funding for public schools, higher pay for teachers. And certainly, Democrats still believe in those things. But I think when it comes to questions like school choice, or the fact that achievement in reading is at a decades-low and achievement in math is also below pre-Covid levels, the Democratic Party does not have a single unified response.
I think one of the really interesting stories to watch over the next few years is how Democrats will respond to what has been a very energetic and muscular approach on education from Republicans, which has really centered around conservative views on how race and gender are discussed in schools, and strong support for helping parents withdraw from traditional public education and pursue private educational options.
In May, you wrote about how conversations about learning and educational achievement had taken a back seat to the politics of education. As a reporter, how do you make sure you’re reporting not only the big political conversations?
My colleague Sarah Mervosh and I share the responsibility of covering K-12 education for the National desk. We both handle a mix of stories that includes politics and also instruction, test scores and curriculum. We’ve both looked a lot at the plummeting student achievement since Covid-19. We’ve both looked at big problems with reading instruction. We have more coverage of learning trends planned for this year. So it is always a balancing act between the politics of education and stories about instruction.
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