The U.S. Dept of Ed is Being Stripped for Parts by the Trump Administration

Meanwhile the Nation Loses Critical Functions and Oversight

4 Public Education has warned about the Trump Administration’s major changes to public education. As has been the goal of the Republican party for the last 40 years, they intend to shut down the Department of Education (ED) even though closure should require Congressional permission which they do not have. Nevertheless, the administration has successfully gutted the ED by: 

• Outsourcing many of its functions to other government agencies, despite a lack of agency familiarity with K-12 education; and

• Reducing the ED workforce from 4000 to 2000 employees in 2025, with another 400 soon to be lost. 

If the Administration’s changes stand, this nation will lose mission-critical functions and oversight by the ED. 

In 1979, the ED became a cabinet level agency, after recognition that federal oversight was needed to ensure equitable access to education for all students. Other functions included providing federal funding and oversight to improve student achievement and global competitiveness, managing student aid programs, enforcing civil rights laws, supporting innovations in education, collecting and disseminating data, and helping to implement national education policy, especially for underserved groups. In fact these many responsibilities of the ED provide a clear counter argument to the suggestion by the Administration and others that a federal education department is unnecessary. In response, many Democratic and Independent US Senators have called the Administration’s actions illegal and have demanded the reversal of those changes. 

In addition to reforms at the department level, the Administration has initiated on-the-ground measures designed to weaken public education. Efforts are ongoing to encourage students to leave public school for private schools by propagating a negative view of public education.

Public schools are being starved into compliance with the republican agenda by threats of withholding funding. Also a heavy-handed effort is underway to influence school curricula including demands to include lessons on patriotic history and remove lessons on black history. At the same time, there are contradictory efforts. For example, there is a plan to “return” control of education to the states at the same time the federal government is forcing compliance with federal curriculum changes. 

More Gaslighting from the Trump Administration

When the ED was first established in 1867, it had only about four employees and a small goal: to collect statistics on the status and progress in education across the states. It started during Reconstruction in a volatile political period. The political volatility led to its quick dissolution since the department was associated with Reconstruction efforts to rebuild the South and educate formerly enslaved people, which many in the country opposed.

Thus the dissolution of the ED was framed as it being an “unnecessary investment” and an “overreach of federal power” but many recognized that it was mostly about opposing the education of Black students. This is not dissimilar to the efforts today to limit education of Black students, weaken programs that are meant to fund students in high poverty communities, and gut the office of Civil Rights.

Members of the Trump administration and their allies have been gaslighting the public about public education using falsehoods to get parents to reject public schools. For example, they claim that public schools are failing students but they don’t acknowledge that public education is a two-tiered system with great inequity in student achievement between high poverty and affluent communities. 

It is clear that better funded schools have better student outcomes, and this is a reason that the federal government has been providing supplemental resources to disadvantaged students under Title I . This funding is to close achievement gaps, but (ironically) the federal government is withholding funds from many communities, including Northern Virginia. Merely sending more students to private schools will not solve the problem of low-achieving students in high-poverty areas. We already know that help offered via vouchers to provide “school choice” will not improve student achievement, because private schools tend to raise the price of tuition by the voucher check value. As a result voucher benefits will land unequally across states and the country, with greater harm to students caused by voucher schemes in rural and low income communities. 

“Public schools aren’t failing, they’re starving.” - First Focus on Children

Some try to create a negative view by claiming that public schools are dangerous and that they impose a Marxist, anti-God and anti-family agenda to indoctrinate students. That kind of misinformation helps the lobby for privatizing public schools, which have economic rather than student-centered goals. Part of the Republican agenda is a free market economy, and public education is just one area they target for privatization. However there are many problems associated with the privatization of public schools. Many communities that have supported privatization by accepting voucher schemes can testify to the fact that privatization initiatives have a dismal record. As a result of those failures there is a nationwide effort by educators to demand that lawmakers support public education. 

Why do we financially support public schools?

Public education is structured to serve everyone regardless of ethnic background, income status, physical or mental abilities, special education or accommodation needs, English language proficiency, or citizenship status. Also, public school buildings and employees tend to serve as anchors in communities.

We support public schools with our taxes because education is too important to leave it to chance. Public education is a cornerstone of our democracy and a thriving democracy needs citizens to be educated. In addition to helping children become productive members of our society, public education provides the knowledge and skills to understand civic responsibilities and participate in the democratic process. 

A healthy democracy needs citizens who are engaged, can make well-informed decisions about their government, and have critical thinking skills so they can actively participate in the democratic process. 

“Stripping the [Education} department of its resources and mission would be catastrophic for the millions of students in low-income communities who need educational services and support. Civil rights protections against discrimination based on race, gender, and disability would also be gutted.” – National Education Association