Donald Trump rolled out a detailed education policy in a speech Thursday in Cleveland — coming out strongly in favor of school choice and pledging to campaign for it in all 50 states if he becomes president.
The mogul proposed spending $20 billion on school choice — and ensuring kids who need that option the most get to us it.
“I’m proposing a plan to provide school choice to every disadvantaged student in America,” Trump said. “That means parents will be able to send their kids to the desired public, private, or even religious school of their choice. Competition, competition, competition.”
Trump pledged to use the “pulpit of the presidency to campaign for this in all 50 states and will call upon the American people to elect officials at the city, state and federal level, who support school choice so important.”
Trump’s also called for changing the pay structure for teachers.
“I will also support merit pay for teachers,” he said. “So that we reward our best teachers instead of the failed tenure system that rewards bad teachers and punishes the good ones.”
Education was the central theme, but Trump began his speech by bashing Hillary Clinton.
“The whole country saw how unfit she was at the town hall last night, where she refused to take accountability for her failed policies in the Middle East that have produced millions of refugees, unleashed horror of radical Islamic terrorism all over, and made us less safe than ever before,” Trump said at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy.
“Throughout it all, she put the country, and I mean the entire country, at risk in order to cover up her pay for play scandals as secretary of state,” Trump alleged.