Bedminster, NJ — In a new Agenda47 video, President Donald J. Trump announced his ten principles for achieving great schools that lead to great jobs.
“Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material, which is what we’re doing now, our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world of work,” President Trump said.
Watch President Trump’s Ten Principles For Great Schools Leading To Great Jobs
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S TEN PRINCIPLES FOR GREAT SCHOOLS LEADING TO GREAT JOBS
President Trump believes that we owe our children great schools that lead to great jobs, which will lead to an even greater country than we’re living in right now. To that end, President Trump will work to ensure that a top priority of every school is to prepare students for jobs.
In connection with totally refocusing schools on succeeding in the world of work, President Trump pledges to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and to send all education work and needs back to the States.
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TEN PRINCIPLES TO POWER PRESIDENT TRUMP’S MOVEMENT FOR GREAT SCHOOLS LEADING TO GREAT JOBS
Restoring Parental Rights
President Trump will turn back the tide of left-wing indoctrination and once again respect the fundamental right of parents to control the education, healthcare, and moral formation of their children.
President Trump supports the right of parents to know what their children are being taught in the classroom, to be able to openly communicate any of their concerns with teachers and principals, to protect the privacy of their children, to be made aware of changing academic standards, to be updated on any acts of violence occurring at school, to inspect professional development materials, to be notified before an out-of-school guest speaks in class or at a school event, to review the budget and spending of their children’s school, to know if a school employee is working to address bullying or mental health concerns (including drug use or weapon use), to consent to all student surveys related to health, to have the right to opt out of school healthcare services, and to be immediately notified if a teacher or other school employee has worked to change their children’s name, pronouns, or understanding of his or her gender.
President Trump will immediately reverse Joe Biden’s barbaric “gender-affirming care” policies, and he will sign an executive order instructing every federal agency, including the Department of Education, to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition, at any age.
President Trump will declare any hospital or healthcare provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare.
President Trump will also inform states and school districts that if any teacher or school official suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body, they will be faced with severe consequences—including potential civil rights violations for sex discrimination and the elimination of federal funding.
President Trump will promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique.
President Trump will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female—and they are determined at birth.
President Trump will also make clear that Title Nine prohibits men from participating in women’s sports.
Great Principals and Great Teachers
Great schools require great teachers—and great teachers demand great principals. To ensure children are receiving the education they deserve, President Trump will encourage parents and local school boards to hire and reward great principals and teachers—and to fire poorly performing ones.
To ensure that America’s students are receiving the best possible education, President Trump will support the direct election of school principals by the parents. If any principal is not performing to a high standard, parents should have the right to fire them and select someone who will.
A 2022 study from the University of North Carolina School of Education found that efforts to “recruit and retain high-performing principals are likely to have large payoffs.” A study by the National Association of Secondary School Principals showed that school leadership is “second only to classroom instruction as an influence on student learning”—or as another study from Stronge & Associates Educational Consulting put it, “There is no high-performing school without an effective principal… Principal leadership matters. And it matters substantially.”
Furthermore, according to the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, “schools with the highest learning gains had principals who promoted a strong school climate.” Great principals empower great teachers—and great teachers empower great students.
To reward good teachers, President Trump will implement funding preferences and favorable treatment for states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure for grades K-12, adopt Merit Pay to reward good teachers, and give parents the right to vote for the principals who direct their children’s education.
Knowledge and Skills, Not CRT and Gender Indoctrination
President Trump will get Critical Race Theory, transgender ideology, and left-wing indoctrination OUT of our schools—and he will get reading, writing, and arithmetic back IN, so that America’s young people have the knowledge, skills, and training they need to get a great job and lead a successful career.
A study from American College Testing found that students proficient in core subjects—including math and reading—have higher “workplace employability skills that are critical to job success.”
Another study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that “those who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma than proficient readers.”
Under Joe Biden, too many of America’s schools have devolved into left-wing indoctrination centers where students are underperforming, mental health is worsening, in-school violence is spiraling out of control, and political activists in the classroom are teaching our children a one-sided and distorted view of American history.
As a result of Biden’s school closures, eighth-grade mathematics scores declined in every single state last year.
Biden’s school shutdowns more negatively affected female students, who underperformed male students in both fourth and eighth grades.
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, as of 2022, only 35% of fourth graders and 26% of eighth graders are proficient in mathematics.
Under Joe Biden, scores in reading have fallen by the largest margin in more than 30 years.
The Biden administration’s policy extending school closures worsened the mental health crisis among young people. Tragically, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts spiked among girls ages 12 to 17 in 2021, an increase of 51% from 2019.
In 2021, nearly 1 in 5 high school students seriously considered suicide.
President Trump will cut federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children—and he will pursue civil rights investigations into any school that engages in race-based discrimination.
President Trump will get the left’s “equity” agenda out of our classrooms—and he will get Excellence back IN to our classrooms. On his first day back in office, President Trump will immediately revoke Joe Biden’s sinister executive order mandating that federal departments establish an “equity” enforcement squad to implement a Marxist takeover of the federal government—and he will urge Congress to create a restitution fund for Americans who have been unjustly discriminated against by such “equity” policies.
Love of Country
Just as he did during his first term, President Trump will fight for patriotic education in America’s schools. Notwithstanding that America’s founding principles of liberty and equality have successfully guided the United States throughout the most difficult periods in its history—including the long struggle to abolish slavery, our victories over fascism and communism, the advancement of civil rights for all, and the expansion of material prosperity to more people of every background in a remarkably short period of time—decades of poor scholarship have vilified our Founders and the principles that they championed and have taught many of our young people to hate their own country.
But as America’s history has shown, the path to a restored and strengthened unity can be found through the rediscovery of a shared national identity rooted in our Founding principles and an appreciation of our wonderful American heroes. President Trump will ensure our children know the truth about the American Founding, learn the stories of our remarkable heroes, discover the glories of Western Civilization, and come to appreciate the United States as the freest, most prosperous, and most virtuous nation in the history of the world.
President Trump will reinstate the 1776 Commission, which he originally created but was disbanded by Joe Biden on his first day in office, to ensure America’s children learn the truth about their country’s history and the timeless principles of liberty and equality. Furthermore, the Commission will support President Trump’s pledge to commemorate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s Founding on July 4, 1776, with a yearlong celebration as well as the construction of the National Garden of American Heroes.
President Trump will veto any effort to weaponize or nationalize civics education. And he will create a credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values and support the American Way of Life.
Freedom to Pray
President Trump will once again fiercely protect the First Amendment right to pray in public schools—and he will ensure that every American’s fundamental right to the Free Exercise of Religion does NOT end when you walk into a classroom.
When he is back in office, President Trump will again be a champion for the fundamental right to pray in school.
Under President Trump’s leadership, the White House updated federal guidance regarding protected prayer and religious expression in public schools, which had not been issued since 2003.
Just as he did during his first term, President Trump will ensure that to receive federal funds, local educational agencies must confirm that their policies do not prevent or interfere with constitutionally protected rights. President Trump’s guidance streamlined students’ ability to file a complaint if their rights were being violated and guaranteed that students could read religious texts or pray during recess and other non-instructional periods.
Safe, Secure, and Drug-Free
Greatness in the classroom requires safety in the classroom. To that end, President Trump will completely overhaul federal standards on school discipline to get out-of-control troublemakers OUT of the classroom and INTO reform schools and corrections facilities, for the good of themselves and their peers alike. This will include supporting immediate expulsion for any student who harms a teacher or another student.
President Trump will end the leftist takeover of school discipline and the juvenile system. He will order the Departments of Justice and Education to overhaul federal standards on disciplining minors to get violent thugs out of our children’s classrooms so they can get the professional help they need. When troubled youth are out of control, the consequences must be “swift, certain, and strong.”
President Trump will support school districts that allow highly trained teachers to carry concealed weapons at school, which will greatly reduce the threat of school shootings.
To further harden our schools against harm from outside intruders, President Trump will support federal funding to hire veterans, retired police officers, and other trained gunowners as armed guards in our nation’s schools—a measure that will help deter unhinged maniacs and keep our nation’s children out of harm’s way.
As he previously announced, President Trump will direct the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to convene an independent outside panel to investigate whether transgender hormone treatments and ideology increase the risk of extreme depression, aggression, and violence. He will also look at whether common psychiatric drugs, as well as genetically engineered cannabis and other narcotics, are causing psychotic breaks.
President Trump will encourage local school districts to implement a ZERO-TOLERANCE policy regarding illegal drug use or possession in school with immediate suspension or expulsion.
Universal School Choice
President Trump supports universal school choice so that parents can send their children to the public, private, or religious school that best suits their needs, their goals, and their values.
President Trump commends Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia for leading the American school choice revolution—and he looks forward to working with other states, as well as the U.S. Congress, to provide for universal school choice for every American family.
Freedom in education increases school accountability. A Heritage Foundation report found that school choice creates a “feedback loop that does not exist in the more centralized, top-down systems like the district schools.”
School choice leads to higher graduation rates, higher parental satisfaction and involvement, lower costs, increased competition among schools, and higher reading and math test scores.
School safety has been a top-three reason cited by parents who exercised their right to school choice. In Milwaukee, school choice participants were half as likely to commit felonies and misdemeanors as those who attended public schools.
Project-Based Learning
America’s students are more successful, more engaged, and more prepared for real-world experience when their education involves hands-on projects that aim to approximate what real-world work situations will demand of them. President Trump will support project-based learning inside the classroom to help train students for fulfilling work outside the classroom.
Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education defines project-based learning as a way to “develop deep conceptual understanding of abstract concepts” by seeing how those concepts “actually operate in the real world”—because in order to be successful, “students need to do more than just read textbooks or listen in lecture halls.”
In a project-based learning setting, students work to solve problems that, in the words of Harvard’s Graduate School, “can only be solved if they deeply understand what is to be learned in the class.”
Elements of project-based learning include student engagement, more meaningful learning, exposure to professional career paths, and more active relationships with teachers.
The results of project-based learning have been overwhelmingly positive. A 2021 report from Lucas Education Research found that students in project-based learning environments vastly outperform other students.
Internships and Work Experiences
For many students, the path to a great job is a great internship or part-time work. For that reason, President Trump will implement funding preferences for schools that actively work to help students secure internships, part-time work, and summer jobs that will set them on the path to long and fulfilling careers.
According to XQ Institute, 67% of students don’t think high school is doing enough to prepare them for their careers—a view shared by 93% of teachers, parents, and other non-students. But evidence shows that a career-focused high school experience yields positive results.
The Society for Human Resource Management found the majority of employers agree that students need to begin their focus on their career in high school—including by competing for internships.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 95% of employers said candidate experience is a factor in hiring practices.
As one high school student transition coordinator put it, project- and work-based learning “motivates students to stay in school and improve their grades and attendance. It improves employability skills and makes students aware of nontraditional career opportunities.”
According to a report published by MDRC, “a long-term study of high school career academies, which combined technicalcareer education with an academic curriculum and provided some students with internships with local employers, found that these programs had large, positive impacts on students’ labor market outcomes eight years later.”
Cornerstone Schools in Detroit, MI, a charter school system established in the 1990s, provides a unique model for a career-centered education with opportunities like high school internships, mentorships, and learning experiences with major companies.
Another education model that prioritizes meaningful work experience is Cristo Rey, a Catholic school network that “delivers a career focused, college preparatory education in the Catholic tradition for students with limited economic resources, uniquely integrating rigorous academic curricula with four years of professional work experience and support to and through college.” As education policy analyst and former senior Manhattan Institute fellow Charles Upton Sahm observed of the Cristo Rey model’s work-study program, it “operates, in essence, like a small employment agency”—with firms contracting with Cristo Rey to staff entry-level jobs with each student working five days a month in addition to their schoolwork. The program, Sahm wrote, “helps students build impressive credentials and contacts” as well as develop their “confidence and self-worth.”
Jobs and Career Counseling
President Trump will implement funding preferences for schools with job and career counselors on-hand—because getting a great job best suited to your God-given talents should be a primary goal of education.
According to the National Career Development Association (NCDA), school counselors can play a vital role in “helping students identify their life’s purpose.” Having a purpose, NCDA finds, “can be highly motivating and encourage students to develop skills and persistence towards meaningful education, life, and career goals.”
The American School Counselor Association School found that high school and college “counselors improve their service to their students when they understand [career technical education (CTE)] offers numerous benefits, including rigorous programs of study, academic and CTE curriculum and productive relationships within the business community. These advantages serve as effective means that school counselors can use to help all students make informed career decisions.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS A PROVEN TRACK RECORD OF FIGHTING FOR AMERICAN PARENTS AND STUDENTS AT EVERY LEVEL
The Trump administration restored state and local control of education by faithfully implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act, which prohibits the U.S. Department of Education from “attempting to influence, incentivize, or coerce a state to adopt the Common Core State Standards or any other academic standards common to a significant number of states.”
President Trump signed into law the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, which provides more than 13 million students with high-quality vocational education and extends more than $1.3 billion each year to states for critical workforce development programs.
President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, expanding school choice, allowing parents to use up to $10,000 from a 529 education savings account to cover K-12 tuition costs at the public, private, or religious school of their choice.
President Trump repealed the Obama-Biden administration’s “Rethink School Discipline” policies.
The Trump White House issued a rule strengthening Title IX protections for survivors of sexual misconduct in schools, and that—for the first time in history—codified that sexual harassment is prohibited under Title IX.
President Trump signed the INSPIRE Act, which encouraged NASA to have more women and girls participate in STEM and seek careers in aerospace and allocated no less than $200 million each year in grants to prioritize women and minorities in STEM and computer science education.
The Trump administration prohibited the teaching of Critical Race Theory across agencies of the federal government.
In 2020, President Trump created the 1776 Commission to “better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union.” And in January 2021, the Commission released the “1776 Report,” which calls for the nation to “renew the pride and gratitude we have for this incredible nation that we are blessed to call home” and concludes by noting that “[w]hen we appreciate America for what she truly is, we know that our Declaration is worth preserving, our Constitution worth defending, our fellow citizens worth loving, and our country worth fighting for.”
President Trump issued updated guidance making clear that the First Amendment right to Free Exercise of Religion does not end at the door to a public school.
President Trump made permanent a commitment of $255 million in annual funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and he increased funding for the Federal Pell Grant program by signing the FUTURE Act.
President Trump signed legislation that included more than $100 million for scholarships, research, and centers of excellence at HBCU land-grant institutions.
In 2018, President Trump fully forgave $322 million in disaster loans to four HBCUs, so they could fully focus on educating their students.
President Trump signed an executive order ensuring that public universities protect First Amendment rights or lose funding, addressing student debt by requiring colleges to share a portion of the financial risk, and increasing transparency by requiring universities to disclose information about the value of potential educational programs.
President Trump called on Congress to pass the Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act to expand education options for 1 million students of all economic backgrounds.
TRANSCRIPT
The United States spends more money on education than any other country in the world. And yet, we get the worst outcomes. We are at the bottom of every list. In total, American society pours more than a trillion dollars a year into public education systems. But instead of being at the top of the list, we are literally right smack — guess what? — at the bottom.
Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material, which is what we’re doing now, our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world of work, and in life and the world of keeping our country strong, so they can grow up to be happy, prosperous, and independent citizens.
We owe our children great schools that lead to great jobs, and leads to an even greater country than we’re living in right now. Right now we’re living in a failing nation because of Joe Biden and these people running it. They’re Marxists. They’re communists. What they’re doing to our country is incredible, but we’ll take care of that for our children.
Here are ten key ideas that will power our movement for great schools.
First, we will respect the right of parents to control the education of their children.
Second, we will empower parents and local school boards to hire and reward great principals and teachers, and also to fire the poor ones. The ones whose performance is unsatisfactory they will be fired. Like on The Apprentice, you’re fired.
Third, we will ensure our classrooms are focused not on political indoctrination, but on teaching the knowledge and skills needed to succeed — reading, writing, math, science, arithmetic, and other truly useful subjects.
Fourth, we will teach students to love their country, not to hate their country like they’re taught right now.
Fifth, we will support bringing back prayer to our schools.
Sixth, we will achieve schools that are safe, secure, and drug free, with immediate expulsion for any student who harms a teacher or another student.
Seventh, we will give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want. It’s called school choice.
Eighth, we will ensure students have access to project-based learning experiences inside the classroom to help train them for meaningful work outside the classroom.
Ninth, we will strive to give all students access to internships and work experiences that can set them on a path to their first job. They are going to be very, very successful. I want them to be more successful than Trump. Let them go out and be more successful. I will be the happiest person in the world. But we want our children to have a great life and be successful.
And tenth, we will ensure that all schools provide excellent jobs and career counseling so that high school and college students can get a head start on jobs and careers best suited to their God-given talents.
This is how we will ensure a great education for every American child.
And one other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington D.C. and sending all education and education work and needs back to the States. We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse. We spend more money per pupil, by three times, than any other nation. And yet we’re absolutely at the bottom. We’re one of the worst. So you can’t do worse. We’re going to end education coming out of Washington D.C. We’re going to close it up — all those buildings all over the place and yet people that in many cases hate our children. We’re going to send it all back to the States.
Thank you very much.
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States
No president has ever fought harder for autoworkers than President Trump. Time after time, I rescued the U.S. auto industry from certain destruction: withdrawing from TPP, overhauling the Korea deal to restore the protective tariff on pickup trucks, canceling Obama’s job-killing CAFE rules, and replacing NAFTA with the USMCA while insisting on unprecedented protections for American Labor, and American autoworkers in particular.
If I had caved on ANY of those promises to workers, the U.S. auto-industry would right now be GONE. It would be DEAD.
The best interests of American workers have always been my number one concern. That is why I strongly urge the U.A.W. to make the complete and total repeal of Joe Biden’s insane Electric Vehicle mandate their top, non-negotiable demand in any strike. If that disastrous Biden policy is allowed to stand, the U.S. auto industry will cease to exist, and all your jobs will be sent to China. That’s why there’s no such thing as a “fair transition” to all electric cars. For the American Autoworker, that’s a transition to Hell. Nothing is more important than terminating this job-crushing mandate.
Crooked Joe has sold you out to appease the environmental extremists in his party. Do not surrender! Stand strong against Biden’s vicious attack on American Labor and American Autoworkers. And if you want more jobs, higher wages, and soaring pensions, vote for President Trump and have your leaders endorse me. If they don’t, drop out of the Union and start a new one that’s going to protect your interests right. I delivered for you before, and I will deliver for you again.