RIP DoE

Department of Education Mission Statement:

“The U.S. Department of Education is the agency of the federal government that establishes policy for, administers and coordinates most federal assistance to education. It assists the president in executing his education policies for the nation and in implementing laws enacted by Congress. The Department’s mission is to serve America’s students to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

-versus-

Education Chapter of Project 2025:

“Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”

Yes, these two realities are at odds with each other, and in case you’re wondering, Project 2025 is the winner. Not that its argument is superior, but because they’ve been preparing for this moment for decades, and it has finally arrived.

Linda McMahon, the maven of professional wrestling, and our Secretary of Education is not, and does not pretend to be, an educator. She is an exterminator.

P25 goes on to say, “Education is publicly funded but education decisions [should] be made by families. Ultimately, every parent should have the option to direct his or her child’s share of education funding through an education savings account (ESA), funded overwhelmingly by state and local taxpayers, which would empower parents to choose a set of education options that meet their child’s unique needs.”

There are a couple of points to unpack here. First, never before have public funds been used for parochial education. There’s a good reason for that: taxpayers like the separation of church and state and have never approved of the government taking their money and giving it to religious schools. Religion is a pretty personal subject, and Southern Baptists, for instance, don’t want their money going to Catholic schools and vice versa.

The larger point here is that public education is a primary reason for America’s 20th-century rise. While the world’s authoritarians, kings, and dictators held their subjects in ignorance, we educated every kid to the same standard. We didn’t mess with history or known facts (the “Tulsa Massacre” is a notable exception). That meant that children in rural Arkansas learned the same history, math, and science as affluent suburban kids in Philadelphia. What we did over time was create a level playing field based on common knowledge.

The flaw in the system was not ideological, it was socio-geographical. We have traditionally funded public education with proceeds from property tax, meaning more resources go to wealthier communities, while poorer ones languish in rundown school buildings. From athletic facilities and equipment to field trips, wealthier Zip codes prosper and poorer ones fall behind. Recognizing this, the federal government subsidizes the poorer areas. It isn’t enough, and it isn’t complete.

The hard-right hates the notion of a level playing field, and now, as we face the reality of Project 2025, that roadmap to ultra-conservative governance, of which Candidate Trump disavowed any knowledge, is coming to fruition, and it doesn’t look good for the less fortunate, often Blacks and Hispanics, but just as often the very people who put the president in office, the rural poor.

It’s important to remember that the DoE doesn’t set curriculum. It administers grants and loans. Here’s the DoE website again: “The U.S. Department of Education is the agency of the federal government that establishes policy for, administers and coordinates most federal assistance to education. It assists the president in executing his education policies for the nation and in implementing laws enacted by Congress. The Department’s mission is to serve America’s students to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

When you’re pulling back from the world, that last sentence becomes unimportant. I have to wonder how Americans will feel when this dream of every school for itself, comes true.

The states will take over. That will be okay in many places. It will not bode well for the traditionally under-educated, poverty-stricken states from Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia in Appalachia, to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana in the Deep South.

I lived in Eastern Tennessee as a child, and the big joke there was that Cash Walker, the namesake of the region’s most popular retail stores, quit school in the eighth grade because “he didn’t want to pass his father.” The educational ethos that made America great wasn’t shared uniformly.

Having multiple private and parochial schools receive tax dollars will dilute the pool of money that has traditionally funded the public schools. This will inevitably weaken them, perhaps to the extent that we no longer have any consistency in educational curriculum. This will in turn diminish our shared perspectives, our shared knowledge, and have a corrosive effect on society, dividing us even more in the very moment we need to unite.

©2025 Jon Sinton

VOL. 115, NO. 13 - Mar. 26, 2025