Five essential steps for a better-educated America

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Shift educational decision-making from the government to the family.

 

It’d be easy to claim that my administration will have some magical fix to all the education issues that plague our future generations. But this would be a lie. The truth is that education does not start with government. It starts with family. It pains me to admit that many children in this country grow up with a lack of parental involvement in their education. The result is higher dropout rates and lower academic achievement among our nation’s youth.

 

Let’s get rid of this negligence. By supporting charter school and homeschooling initiatives, we’ll bring school choice back to where it should be: not government, but parents.

 

Reduce dependency on federal loans for college.

 

The cost of higher education has skyrocketed in recent years, leaving a large share of America’s students in debt. However, using the federal government to tackle this debt is an unrealistic and reckless entanglement of our taxpayer dollars. These precious funds could be spent in such a way that more total benefits are reaped by hard-working citizens, rather than wasting them on debts that states and the private sector could easily attend to.

 

This, fellow Americans, is the essence of contemporary conservatism. Choosing to conserve our resources in one area gives us the ability to use them where America benefits most.

 

Overhaul higher education so that college graduates don’t end up with minimum wage jobs.

 

Right now, too many students graduate college only to find themselves working jobs that pay little more than minimum wage. In its current state, higher education does little to prepare students for the demands of the workforce, leaving Americans in huge holes of student debt. That can and will change.

 

My plan to fund technical institutions and other forms of work-based learning will increase readiness for high-paying jobs that make it easy to repay student debt and allow hard-working Americans to focus on bettering themselves and their families.

 

Eliminate excessive standardized testing.

 

One size does not fit all. Nowhere is this truer than in the field of education. Yet the Common Core, standardized tests, and irrational government curricula have come to dictate the life of the typical American student. What America needs is personalized education—a system that embraces the vast diversity of talents in our schools—not a cookie-cutter model. The Common Core and other regulatory legislation will be immediately rolled back under my administration.

 

Make the college admissions process fairer.

 

Colleges make an important decision when they decide between the students who are worthy of acceptance and those who are better suited elsewhere. For many students, it’s the most important decision of their life, so it needs to be fair. And the fairest system of them all is strictly merit-based.

 

Why should the color of your skin give you an inherent advantage over others? It shouldn’t. Only a student’s level of dedication, grandeur of achievements, and strength of intellect should be considered in the college admissions process. Judging race, on the other hand, isn’t just arbitrary. It’s discriminatory.

 

As President, I will bring an end to the racial prejudice of today’s affirmative action programs, so that we can work together towards a more equal America.