On March 20, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order to start dismantling the Department of Education and returning management over training to states, dad and mom, and native communities. Opposite to what headlines and Democrat politicians are claiming, this transfer doesn’t quantity to defunding colleges.
It’s not an assault on training — it’s an assault on a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy that has failed its core mission.
The Division of Training was created in 1979 after heavy lobbying from the teachers’ union. Regardless of many years of federal oversight and large spending, academic outcomes have solely gotten worse.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic alone, the federal authorities poured a whole lot of billions into colleges that weren’t even open. Final 12 months, whole education-related federal spending reached $268 billion. And what did taxpayers get in return? Among the worst educational efficiency in fashionable historical past.
In accordance with the newest Nationwide Evaluation of Academic Progress, 70% of eighth graders are under proficiency in studying, and 72% are under proficiency in math. These numbers aren’t simply disappointing — they’re damning. The federal training forms shouldn’t be working.
The Division itself doesn’t educate anybody. It exists primarily to implement federal training legal guidelines, distribute some federal funds, and generate information. It additionally maintains a PR workplace with greater than 80 staff and a $10 million funds — once more, with out immediately impacting a single classroom. In the meantime, it manages a $1.6 trillion scholar mortgage portfolio regardless of having fewer than 1,500 staff in its Workplace of Federal Scholar Support — a construction extra akin to a struggling financial institution than a functioning authorities company.
Critics declare that eliminating the Division is an indication of authoritarianism, even evaluating it to historic dictatorships that feared educated populations. However that is political theater, not actuality.
Trump’s government order emphasizes that companies and funding should proceed with out interruption. The actual objective is decentralization: shifting authority from Washington again to states and native communities, the place training might be tailor-made to the precise wants of scholars.
It’s necessary to grasp that dismantling the Division of Training doesn’t imply chopping federal training funding. Roughly 90% of public faculty funding already comes from state and native governments. And the Division’s working funds — the cash that runs the forms — is totally separate from the funds that go to varsities and college students.
Theoretically, all funding for the Division as an administrative entity may very well be eradicated with out chopping a single greenback of assist to varsities. Packages like Title I and IDEA might nonetheless be absolutely funded and administered by different channels, reminiscent of block grants to states.
In brief, the existence of a federal training forms and the supply of federal training {dollars} are two utterly completely different points. Eliminating the previous doesn’t require eliminating the latter. It’s time to separate delusion from actuality — and to cease defending a damaged system simply because it’s been round for just a few many years.
The opposite main power behind the collapse of public training lately has been the teachers’ union. Removed from merely advocating for truthful wages and improved working situations, at the moment’s unions — particularly the NEA and AFT — have remodeled into extremely politicized activist arms of the Democratic Celebration. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, these unions fought to maintain colleges closed lengthy after information and worldwide precedent proved it was protected to return.
In cities with sturdy union affect, colleges stayed closed the longest — regardless of mounting proof that distant studying was ineffective and devastating to youngsters’s psychological and emotional well-being. Whereas important employees confirmed up in particular person each day, unionized lecturers remained house, refusing to return to lecture rooms whilst they demanded early entry to vaccines and precedence remedy.
This extended shutdown prompted irreversible hurt. Nationwide studying setbacks at the moment are measured in years, not months. In accordance with the Nationwide Evaluation of Academic Progress, 70% of eighth graders at the moment are under proficiency in studying and 72% in math — the worst scores in many years.
However much more alarming, there isn’t a plan in place to get better what was misplaced. Lecturers’ unions, the very establishments chargeable for inflicting this harm, have provided no actual roadmap for studying restoration. As a substitute, they proceed pushing ideological agendas — demanding issues like “Local weather Justice Days,” reparations, and housing for homeless households — whereas ignoring their primary mission to teach youngsters.
For a lot of dad and mom, the union’s betrayal throughout the pandemic was the ultimate straw, fueling an explosion in assist for varsity alternative, constitution colleges, and homeschooling. Public training might by no means get better — and if it doesn’t, the unions can have solely themselves in charge.
Trump is the consummate businessman. He views the federal funds as funding capital, the departments as enterprise items, and civil servants because the workforce. Most significantly, he sees the American taxpayers because the shareholders — and each greenback spent should generate a transparent return or profit to them. In any functioning firm, if a division fails to ship worth to shareholders or meet its said goals, it will get downsized or shut down.
Within the case of the Division of Training, it’s not simply underperforming — it was by no means really designed to enhance academic outcomes within the first place.
That’s why Trump isn’t simply chopping prices — he’s scrapping the complete failed mannequin. If an funding doesn’t profit the shareholders, it’s a foul funding. And dangerous investments don’t have any place in a Trump administration.
