“Use the power of your wallet as a hammer.” This is the message from education reformer Richard Corcoran, president of New College of Florida and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, to President-elect Donald Trump. This is my advice.
When President Trump nominated candidates for cabinet-level positions, he announced his intention to abolish the federal Department of Education and “bring education back to the states.”
Corcoran, a veteran of many battles with “woke” educators at the university level, has a different message. Corcoran had been shortlisted as a possible candidate for Trump. But late Tuesday, President Trump announced that he would instead nominate Linda McMahon, a co-chair of Trump's transition team and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). announced. He served as head of the Small Business Administration during President Trump's first term and later worked as one of the leaders of the America First Policy Institute, which is developing strategy for President Trump's re-election. She also served on the Connecticut State Board of Education for one year starting in 2009 and served as a trustee of Sacred Heart University in Connecticut for many years.
Appeared in drill down Corcoran, along with Peter Schweitzer, believes the department “should be gutted and dismantled, but not abolished.” He added: “Now choose your destroyer.”
Schweitzer agreed, saying, “This is not just air warfare where you just drop a few bombs and shoot some people…This is trench warfare.”
Corcoran points to Florida's experience with education bureaucracy during the COVID-19 pandemic. There, it was the state Department of Education that forced schools to reopen and end mask mandates — after local school boards, dominated by teachers union officials, refused to do so.
“Use the power of the law to your advantage,” he suggests, explaining that the strategy amounts to “if you don't follow it, you don't get the money.”
Corcoran is the author of a new book. Storming the ivory tower: How a Florida university became ground zero in the struggle to take back its campus This book takes New College of Florida from a “woke” school that indoctrinates its students with left-wing dogma to a true liberal arts school where students learn “how to think, not what to think.” It tells the story of Christopher Rufo's efforts to reform the university. ”
Corcoran believes the problem with just sending money to states is that in some states their educational institutions are so far left-leaning that giving them more money will only make the problem worse. “The California Department of Education just says, 'Wait for the beer!'”
Local school boards are often made up of union members, former teachers and ideological liberals, Corcoran said. Eggers sums up the idea as using the federal department to check the worst state systems.
“We can't allow them any more foothold,” Corcoran agrees.
He believes there needs to be more funding for charter schools, which the bureaucracy is resisting. He tells organizers that the red tape of establishing charter schools in areas where public schools are underperforming “will deflate the bureaucracy.”
What are his suggestions for how to reform federal education policy?
He argues that the law should be changed to make it easier for states to change school accreditors. This is because these accrediting bodies often enforce DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging) policies. The DoE harasses those who try, he says.
He also wants to eliminate DEIB bureaucrats. “Just as COVID-19 exposed local school districts, DEIB did it to universities.”
“In Florida, we eliminated the DEI office,” he says. “We actually laid people off. We didn't have to be told. We did it ourselves,” Corcoran says.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the Department of Defense's budget was approximately $238 billion. Nearly $190 billion was allocated to elementary and middle school relief. “And a lot of that was spent on DEIB stuff,” Corcoran said.
He wants to reinvent the DoE's mission to champion world-class education and define it as such. Teach your students truth and how to think, not what to think. “Textbooks, too,” he says.
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