President-elect Donald Trump is high on Indiana’s school system, saying it could be a model for the rest of the country.
During an interview with Time magazine, which named him Person of the Year for 2024, Trump addressed plans to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.
“We want to move the schools back to the states. We want to, you know, we’re at the bottom of every list in terms of education, and we’re at the top of the list in terms of the cost per pupil, and we want to move them back to the states, and we’ll spend half the money on a much better product,” he said.
“I think Iowa, and I think Indiana, and a lot of these states that are well-run states. We have a lot of them that are very well run. When they run their own educational program, I think it’s going to, I think they’ll be able to compete with anybody,” he said. “Then you’re going to have the badly run states, like a guy like Gavin Newscum [sic] in California, where he does a poor job, and he’ll, but even in California, you’ll give it to Riverside. You’ll give it, you know, you’ll give it to areas of California where I think they’ll run a great school program.”
According to a 2022 report by the National Center for Education Statistics, the average reading score for fourth-grade students in Indiana was 217, not significantly different from the average score of 216 for the nation.
Contact IndyStar reporter Cheryl V. Jackson at cheryl.jackson@indystar.com or 317-444-6264. Follow her on X.com:@cherylvjackson or Bluesky: @cherylvjackson.bsky.social.
