Distribution of the proposed grant, Trump said, would favor states that have private school choice and charter laws, thereby encouraging broad participation among the states.
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Before speaking about education when he took the podium in the school’s cafeteria, Trump took sharp aim at Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on foreign policy and defended his repeated assertion that he was opponent of the Iraq War from the start, a claim that has been debunked by fact checkers.
Before endorsing choice as the solution to numerous nation’s educational problems, Trump spent 18 minutes criticizing Hillary Clinton’s handling of private emails while secretary of state and defending in unusual detail his assertion, which media reports have shown to be untrue, that he opposed entering the Iraq war.
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Before Trump’s speech, he met for 20 minutes for a “roundtable” discussion in one of the school’s classrooms with a group of students, charter-school officials and others. Ron Packard - who now heads the for-profit company, Accel Schools, that manages the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy - used to run K12 Inc., which runs virtual schools across the country.
Before today, Trump had only said he is for choice and against Common Core Standards.
Trump spoke to a small, invitation-only crowd in the cafeteria of the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, run by Accel Schools, an Arizona-based, for-profit operator of charter schools.
Mr. Trump said the cost of his school choice block grant could be covered by existing federal funds and said he would encourage states to bolster the effort by ponying up $110 billion.
Trump asked the students what they thought of how the school compared to a traditional public school. As chair of the education committee in the Ohio House, Brenner has pushed for universal vouchers in a state that already leads the nation in school choice options.
“I will also support merit pay for teachers so that we reward our best teachers instead of the failed tenure system that rewards bad teachers and punishes the good ones”, he said. To his left was Ron Packard, the CEO of ACCEL schools.
Trump responded by praising Cleveland police for their performance during the Republican National Convention. They were absolutely fantastic.
The lawsuit alleged that Packard, who made almost $20 million in his last five years running K12, misled investors, oversaw questionable testing practices and inflated enrollment to draw more public funding. “But they kept it down. Really professional. So thank you”.
Packard said he’s building a “scalable” and “successful” charter school model in Ohio. “If Trump wants to discuss real solutions – like how we can hold charters to high standards and ensure they’re serving our kids, how we can reinvest in our neighborhood schools, and how we can return the joy of teaching and learning to our classrooms – I’m ready and willing to have that conversation”.
“For the children who were exposed to [the visit], I definitely think it was a wonderful educational experience. But for our [students] who were exposed to it, this was a chance to see it up close and personal”, she said.
Once elected, he pledged to campaign across the country in order to tout school choice as a “national goal” and said he’d promote local candidates who back his policies.
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Trump was last in Cleveland on Monday, when he participated in a “roundtable discussion” with a few organized-labor figures before dropping by the Canfield Fair in Mahoning County.
