“I may cut the Department of Education,” Donald Trump—a year and a half ago, back when he was only a celebrity billionaire, and not America’s 45th president as well—mused, casually, on national television.
Trump has not actually done that. It’d be next to impossible. The US’s Education Department comprises 5,000 employees, a $73 billion annual budget, and is responsible for some 98,000 public schools in the country; as far as federal entities go, it’s firmly cemented.
That doesn’t mean the brash new president—who has been in office for all of two weeks—hasn’t already managed to upend the country’s education status quo as it’s been known for the past several decades. And true to Trump’s declaration at his Jan. 20 inauguration that no American will ever “be ignored again,” his rattling of the nation’s education system, which has only intensified since his arrival at the White House, has left no age group unaffected.
For younger students, Trump’s presidency has already taken a toll through psychology, if not yet policy.
Even before he cinched the election in November, teachers all over the country reported a “Trump effect” rippling through their classrooms: a spike in stress and anxiety in students, particularly those belonging to immigrant families or other demographic backgrounds that Trump attacked in his campaign. Post-election, schools saw an immediate uptick in bullying.
“I don’t want to go to America anymore for the next four years,” a 10-year-old child named Kian in London told Quartz, his sentiments echoed by dozens of other kids around the world. Children within the US aren’t doing too well, either, with teachers reporting that many feel threatened—even if they don’t understand why.
Research does show that young kids are strongly affected by presidential elections, often mirroring the attitudes of their parents. No wonder Trump’s physical presence in a classroom causes first-graders to shout “I’m nervous, I’m nervous.”
If young children are upset, their parents and instructors—the people tasked with explaining current events to confused kids and shaping their malleable views on the world—have it even worse.
Billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos squeezed through Senate approval on Jan. 31—albeit barely, trailed by no small amount of controversy—and is on her way to be confirmed as Trump’s pick for US education secretary. While neither DeVos nor Trump has yet announced education policy plans, such policies will have their strongest effect on students in the most formative schooling years: middle school and high school.
Along with slashing the entire department, Trump has suggested he would like to get rid of the Common Core, a set of uniform curriculum standards followed by public schools around the country. (It’s not certain he has the power, but if he does, a massive teaching overhaul would need to take place.)
DeVos’s most well-known education stance is her support of school choice and school vouchers: the idea of having federal money follow students around to classrooms of their parents’ choosing, which include charter schools and privately funded independent schools, not just geographically-assigned public institutions. She pushed school choice in her home state of Michigan, but the experiment has been deemed a failure that actually worsened students’ academic performance, which doesn’t bode well for how well it might play out on a national scale.
Separately, in her philanthropy, DeVos has quietly championed a religious and creationist idea called “intelligent design,” dismissed by most teachers as junk science—and causing worry that she could subvert the teaching of evolution in schools. She’s also a backer of an odd form of behavioral brain therapy (paywall). Let’s hope that doesn’t become part of the national curriculum.
Aside from what can be drawn from her personal background, it’s difficult to predict what other ways DeVos could reshape education. Unlike her predecessors, she has no personal experience attending public schools, nor has she ever administered or taught at one.
All the uncertainties are ramping up anxiety amongst parents and administrators. A history teacher was recently suspended for comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler, for example. And history teachers at large actually have the most influential pulpit in education right now—a bizarre shift in and of itself.
The true battleground for education under the Trump administration is the American university, in several ways:
If Trump’s travel ban holds, it’ll halt the arrival of many international graduate-level students in the country, which will only end up squeezing the US’s pipeline of innovation. “The schools face a financial loss at one level, but a bigger one is the loss of talent, research, the contributions these students will make to the advancement of the field,” researcher Rahul Choudaha tells Quartz.
Some policy analysts expect the immigration ban to eventually broaden and include several other countries, which would further stunt the flow of talent to the nation—a channel that Silicon Valley desperately needs, not to mention hospitals and blue-collar industries like construction. So much for making America great again.
For once, graduate students are in a glaring spotlight, thanks to Trump’s recent ban on immigration to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries.
