Trump Admin Begins Dismantling Department Of Education

Government Shutdown — Source: The Washington Post / Getty

One of President Donald Trump’s key campaign promises was to dismantle the Department of Education, and the Trump administration has made several moves this week that seem to be following through on that promise.

According to AP, responsibilities traditionally held by the Department of Education are being divided across several other departments within the federal government. Responsibilities traditionally held by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Postsecondary Education will instead be handed over to the Labor Department. The Health and Human Services Department will take over a program providing child care grants to college students, and the Interior Department will take over the Indian Education Department. While the Department of Education is offloading its responsibilities to other departments, it can’t be formally closed without a Congressional vote.

The New York Times reports that there’s growing concern among schools, education professionals, and even members of Trump’s own party about how well these departments will be able to handle these new responsibilities. There’s particular concern about how programs that provide funding and support for students with disabilities will be handled under these changes. Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R) issued a statement saying the “department’s core offices are not discretionary functions.”

“They are foundational,” He wrote. “They safeguard civil rights, expand opportunity, and ensure that every child, in every community, has the chance to learn, grow, and succeed on equal footing.

From The New York Times:

Kevin Carey, the vice president for education and work at New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said the changes were “wasteful, wrong and illegal.”

“Secretary McMahon is creating a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine that will waste millions of taxpayer dollars by outsourcing vital programs to other agencies,” Mr. Carey said.

Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, criticized the administration for announcing the changes during American Education Week. (Mr. Trump released a statement on Monday trumpeting his plan to close the department in which he noted the week’s designation, which is intended to celebrate public schools and educators.)

“Not only do they want to starve and steal from our students — they want to rob them of their futures,” Ms. Pringle said.

So yeah, nobody likes this!

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who has more experience taking stone cold stunners than working in education, has taken several actions this year to weaken her own department, including laying off half the workforce at the Department of Education. There’s been a significant decrease in civil rights cases being resolved as a result of the department’s civil rights division being drastically reduced during the layoffs.

“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” McMahon said in a statement announcing the changes. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.” That “return education to the states” is another one of the big red flags, as many states simply don’t have the necessary funding to take over responsibilities from the Department of Education.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to dismantle the Department of Education due to an overrun in liberal thinking. While Trump has been, to put it politely, an unusual president, his desire to weaken the Department of Education is actually par for the course for a Republican politician. Trump’s base largely consists of folks without a college education. While there are growing concerns about how much value a college education holds in the workforce, historically, a college degree has opened up a wider array of job opportunities.

Keeping people undereducated and in low-income jobs is a boon for the GOP, as those are the folks most susceptible to their messed-up ideals. From a policy standpoint, the GOP has always been the party of lobbyists and billionaires. The way they get working-class white men on their side is by indulging in culture war nonsense. They did it in the Reagan era through the war on drugs. They did it through the Bush and Obama eras with the wars on both marriage and Christmas, and they’re doing it now with attacks on immigrants, trans folks, and DEI initiatives.

For some reason, it’s easier for uneducated white men to believe that historically marginalized communities are putting them at a disadvantage and not, you know, the people who own the companies that are paying them crappy wages and charging more for less.

Keeping it a buck, I don’t know how we change that thinking. I simply know someone needs to figure it out, because if Trump has his way with the Department of Education, the problem is only going to get much worse in the future.

Department Of Education Being Dismantled By Trump

Black Academic Programs Under Direct Threat From DOE

US Department Of Education Fires 1,300 Of Its Workers

Trump Administration Begins Dismantling Department Of Education was originally published on newsone.com