Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department as part of the backlash to the department’s ridiculous spending and woke agenda that has brought children’s grades down nationwide. This proposal was met with cheers on the campaign trail as well as people who worked in it. The Department doesn’t do much educating. It has no say over curriculum. That’s decided at the state and local level.
The education department needs to go
It’s done its time. Trump was excited about it. “I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education. We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing.”
One of the people who worked in it, Jim Blew, who served as Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, agrees. “All of the Education Department’s core functions could and should be performed by other federal agencies.”
The department put money in a couple places
It put $18.4 billion annually into Title I, the low-income school district program and $15.5 billion into special education. Some programs could be reassigned to other agencies and some could be scrapped.
A couple of examples are reassigning the student loan program to the Treasury, have the Justice department enforce Title IX and turn Title I into a state block grant program that doesn’t require a lot of federal oversight.
Block grants could be misused
Blue acknowledged there could be misuse there too. At the same time, it’s not likely to be anywhere near as bad at the state level. “But they would be hard pressed to do worse than the current system. We’re betting that the local districts understand their communities better than people in D.C., that they know their students’ needs best, and that they can use the money more effectively.”
Even during COVID the billions given weren’t enough to keep kids from failing academically. Students fell hopelessly behind in needed subjects. Parents were furious with children struggling to learn behind a laptop screen and stay away from each other when they did return to the classroom.
