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Washington Post (via Philadelphia Inquirer)-- Trump's first full education budget: Deep cuts to public school programs in pursuit of school choice
Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by the Washington Post.
The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.
President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have repeatedly said they want to shrink the federal role in education and give parents more opportunity to choose their children's schools.
The documents - described by an Education Department employee as a near-final version of the budget expected to be released next week - offer the clearest picture yet of how the administration intends to accomplish that goal.
Emma Brown, Valerie Strauss & Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post| Updated: May 18, 2017 — 7:30 AM EDT
Education Week--70,000 Students With Disabilities Secluded, Restrained in School
But Rates Can Vary Widely From District to District
One out of every 100 special education students was restrained by school personnel or secluded in school from his or her peers in the 2013-14 school year, presumably to quell behavior that teachers considered disruptive or dangerous.
That means nearly 70,000 special education students were restrained or secluded in that school year, the most recent for which data are available. For most students, this happened more than once: States reported more than 200,000 such incidents, so on average, a special education student was restrained or secluded about three times.
These statistics, based on an analysis by the Education Week Research Center of data collected by the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights, represent the best national snapshot of these controversial practices.
Christina A. Samuels| May 16, 2017
