The Department of Education under attack

By David W. Marshal
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist

U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) recently introduced legislation to abolish the U.S. Department of Education in a not-surprising move since it was part of Project 2025. It also aligns directly with President-elect Donald Trump’s repeated pledge to dismantle the federal agency. During the campaign, Trump called for the agency’s elimination, arguing it’s an “abuse of your taxpayer dollars” that allows schools to “indoctrinate America’s youth.”

Since its inception, efforts to abolish the department date back to the Reagan administration in 1981. Those early efforts were found not to be an easy endeavor and never materialized. Many of the suggestions in Project 2025 concerning the Department of Education came from a memo written by then-President Ronald Reagan’s education secretary just one year after it became a Cabinet-level agency under the Carter administration.

Despite confusion on the agency’s role – it doesn’t set policy on what schools can or can’t teach – a major function of the department deals with higher education. It issues student loans and oversees the Federal Application for Free Student Aid (FAFSA), which helps students with “exceptional financial needs.” Under the proposed legislation, key programs and funding streams would be moved to other federal agencies.

“Do people know anything about the Department of Education?” Maybe not. But have they ever heard of the Pell Grant? Probably so,” said former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who served under former President George W. Bush. If the Department of Education is eliminated, the Treasury Department would oversee student loans for millions of college students and graduates.

“It’s going to be very costly and very complicated, and it’s not clear that even people who favor this are going to think benefits justify the cost and aggravation,” said Michael Feuer, dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development and a professor of education policy at George Washington University. This illustrates the importance of voter education, awareness, and engagement before and after elections. The proposed legislation by Sen. Rounds shows there will always be a never-ending attempt to dissolve the 45-year agency while weakening public education in favor of private schools. A key component missing from the initial bill text is Title I funds, the federal government’s largest annual funding stream for K-12 education.

The funding is distributed to districts with larger populations of children from low-income families. The bill fails to mention smaller department funding streams such as Title II, which funds teacher training and recruitment initiatives, and Title III, which funds services for English learners. The bill would send block grants to the states that they could use for “any purpose” related to early childhood, elementary, or secondary education. Under the measure, the allocation would be driven by the number of students enrolled in each state’s public, private, and home schools without consideration of other factors, such as how many children live in poverty or have different specific needs. “They’re trying to set it up that way so states can funnel some of that money to private schools, to home schools,” said Nathan Favero, a professor of public administration and policy at American University.

With alternate goals in mind, how does any dismantling of the Department of Education impact families and students within the Black community, considering the number of Black students who depend on Pell Grants? How does it impact low-income families regardless of race? While Republican lawmakers may be in favor of using taxpayer dollars for private and home school, what about their MAGA constituents living in red states that are considered the least-educated states in the nation? These states include West Virginia, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Other states at the bottom of the list include Arkansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Nevada, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Texas. Some of these least-educated states are also the nation’s poorest. Do MAGA voters in favor of the closure fully realize the Project 2025 proposal could jeopardize the public school funding in low-income areas with white residents? Is their understanding of the Department of Education based heavily on the ideas of youth being indoctrinated or in Project 2025 promoting the rejection of Martin Luther King’s idea of a colorblind society in favor of reinstating a color-conscious society?

In reality, can the full elimination of the agency be implemented? “Right now, when we have the Department of Education, we have an entire agency where the leadership is thinking 100 percent about education because that their whole mandate,” said Favero. “Whereas if they slice and dice this up and it goes to different agencies…now education is just going to be a very small part of the portfolio that the organization does, and I don’t think their leadership is going to have the same attentiveness to steer new initiatives.” With conservatives about to control all three branches of the federal government – executive, judicial, and legislative – parents who depend on long-term public school funding may need to take a greater interest in the school priorities of their state and local governments.

David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization, TRB: The Reconciled Body, and author of the book God Bless Our Divided America.

This article originally published in the December 9, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.