There is perhaps no figure more adept at the art of deflection than Donald J. Trump. He has turned scapegoating into a political art form, lobbing blame like confetti at rallies, press conferences, and now on his social media platform. Economic woes? Blame immigrants. Public health failures? Blame governors. Electoral losses? Blame rigged machines. Legal troubles? Blame a “deep state.” At every turn, Trump’s strategy is simple: never take responsibility when a distraction or scapegoat can be found.

But while Trump’s deflection tactics are often outlandish and headline-grabbing, they reflect a deeper, more insidious trend in public life—one that’s especially pervasive in education. In K–12 and higher education alike, the “blame game” is a well-worn script. It’s the performance of accountability without the substance. And it’s hurting our students, our educators, and the future of public education.

Blaming Down, Deflecting Up: The Trump Doctrine

Donald Trump’s recent return to the presidency in 2025 has brought with it a recycled narrative: everything good in the economy is because of Trump, and everything bad is Biden’s fault—even though Trump has been in office since January. In a recent press conference, he celebrated stock market gains and falling unemployment as personal victories. But when pressed on rising inflation and housing costs, he pivoted: “These are Biden’s policies catching up to us.” Never mind that under President Biden, unemployment fell to historic lows, inflation was trending lower, and the stock market hit record highs by late 2024. These facts don’t matter in the world of spin because of how much a dozen eggs may or may not cost. For Trump and leaders like him, success is always self-made, and failure is always someone else’s fault. This is not just a political strategy—it’s a leadership style. And unfortunately, it’s deeply embedded in educational institutions as well.

IQ and the Roots of Blame in K–12 Education

The blame game in education has a long history. In the early 20th century, student underachievement was often attributed to fixed, immutable traits like intelligence. IQ tests—deeply flawed and racially biased—were used to label students as “slow,” “average,” or “gifted.” These labels shaped everything from class placement to life trajectories. When students didn’t perform well, the explanation wasn’t inadequate instruction, racial inequity, or poverty. It was “low IQ.” Full stop. This mindset absolved systems and leaders of any responsibility. If kids failed, it was because they weren’t smart enough. The system was working just fine—it was the children who were broken. Even as the language evolved, the mindset persisted. Today, we’re less likely to hear “low IQ” in polite company, but we still see students pathologized. We blame them for lacking grit, their families for not being involved, or their communities for being “hard to reach.” Meanwhile, structural causes—like underfunded schools, culturally irrelevant curricula, and punitive discipline—go unaddressed.

Blaming Educators: Reformers’ Favorite Scapegoat

When blaming students started to lose its rhetorical power, education reformers shifted their sights to teachers. In the 2000s, a new wave of accountability rhetoric took hold: if students weren’t achieving, it must be the teachers’ fault. Anyone remember the Time Magazine cover with Michelle Rhee looking tough with a ruler? Enter high-stakes testing, value-added models, and scripted curriculum packages. The assumption was clear: educators were lazy, incompetent, or both—and only fear of job loss would motivate them to improve. This narrative fueled legislation like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, which punished low test scores with school closures, staff firings, and charter takeovers. But the evidence never supported this level of blame. Peer reviewed research has consistently shown that out-of-school factors—poverty, trauma, housing instability—account for a majority of variance in student achievement. Yet the system insisted: punish the teacher. It was an easier political sell than confronting systemic racism or redistributing educational resources.

Districts and the Dance of Deflection

School districts, caught in the middle, have often played their own version of the blame game. State test scores go down? Blame the principal. Parent complaints rise? Blame the teachers’ union. Enrollment drops? Blame “school choice.” What’s rarely examined by district leaders is the role of central office policies (e.g. intradistrict funding inequality), budget decisions, or educator turnover in these outcomes. And when districts do confront hard truths, it’s often because the community forces their hand—not because leaders voluntarily stepped up. The blame game shields those at the top from scrutiny while shifting responsibility to those with the least power to change the system. It’s cowardice masquerading as leadership.

Higher Ed and the Ivory Tower of Evasion

If K–12 is a chessboard of blame, higher education is a master class in subtle scapegoating. University presidents have refined the art of responsibility deflection to a fine science. I recently spoke with a faculty member who lamented that their provost was responsible for deep staff cuts during the COVID crisis. But I reminded her: the provost was only carrying out the president’s marching orders. The reality? Presidents often push controversial or unpopular decisions through intermediaries—so when the blowback comes, it doesn’t land directly at their feet. The provost becomes the fall person, even if the real decisions were made behind closed presidential doors. This is not an isolated incident. Across the country, university leaders make planning errors, underestimate costs, or ignore warning signs that they were made aware of—and when the results come in, they scramble for someone else to take the fall. Like Trump, these leaders claim credit for every success and disavow every failure. It’s leadership without ownership.

Blame by Bureaucracy: Masking Power with Process

In both K–12 and higher ed, one of the most insidious blame strategies is procedural: using committees, consultants, and lawyers to diffuse responsibility. A decision is made to close a school, cut a program, or cancel a search. The message? “This was a shared decision based on committee input.” But insiders know the truth: the outcomes are often predetermined, and the process is used to manufacture consensus, not genuinely engage stakeholders. It’s the educational equivalent of a magician’s trick: distract the eye, hide the hand. I know a university Vice President that loooooooves this trick.

Trumpism and the Failure of Moral Imagination

Trump’s blame game isn’t just a political strategy—it’s a worldview. It rejects nuance, shirks accountability, and embraces victimhood as a leadership posture. University leaders and school superintendents may not share his bombast, but too many share his instincts: when things go wrong, look for a scapegoat. Preserve your image. Protect your legacy. It’s a failure of moral imagination. Instead of asking, “What did we miss?” or “How can we do better?” the question becomes: “Who can we blame?” This is not leadership. It’s damage control.

A Call for Accountable Leadership

So what’s the alternative? Accountable leadership means taking responsibility not just for success, but for mistakes. It means owning missteps, learning from them, and modeling transparency. It means moving away from reactive, fear-based policy and toward proactive, equity-centered decision-making. It also requires us—students, staff, faculty, families—to reject scapegoating when we see it. To ask better questions. To understand who made the decisions and why. To demand honesty. Because the future of education cannot be built on blame. It must be built on courage.

Final Word: The Courage to Stay in the Mirror

The real measure of leadership is not how loudly someone sings their own praises, but how willing they are to sit with failure.

To stay in the mirror when things go wrong.

To say, “I got that one wrong.”

To say, “We’ll fix it.”

To say, “Let’s try again.”

Trump won’t do it. Too many university leaders won’t either.

But we can.

And we must—because the stakes are too high for finger-pointing. Our students deserve better than a blame game. They deserve a justice game. A truth game.

Let’s demand our leaders end the deflection and begin the work.