As the Trump administration evaluates the Department of Education and hopefully plans to shut the whole thing down, the current thought is to distribute those funds to other agencies or send certain elements of funding back to the states.
Actually, there are large swaths of Department of Education functions and funding that need to be eliminated altogether. In other words, these programs should not be sent to states where they can become bloated little fiefdoms driven by the progressive agenda.
So what should stay and what should go? Here is my “death wish” list for certain programs/policies at the Department of Education. It is not exhaustive by any means, but just a place to start. I am hoping that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, through DOGE, will make this happen.
Let’s start with the FY 2024 budget of the USDOE. It’s around $228 billion, $120 billion of which goes to federal student aid/loans.
The department’s budget for FY 2025 requests a 4% increase over FY 2024.
This is a ton of money, and it’s loaded with administrative self-perpetuation along with reckless “wokeness.” Let’s get real about what is actually required to realize the Number 1 goal: educate children.
Academic achievement—that’s the bottom line.
So consider these thoughts:
1. Any dollars returned to the states would have the federal mandate that no pass-through funds go to a school with lower than 75% student proficiency in 4th grade reading and math. Literacy development grants must be made only to schools where significant progress has been made in the past five years.
2. No state will receive pass-through funds in any category unless the state has passed and implemented a comprehensive school choice plan for all families, applicable to attendance at any school, including home schooling.
No K-12 school will receive funds unless at least 2 teacher in-service workshops are held every year outlining the staff and teachers’ option to bypass membership in the local, state or national teachers’ unions.
And all schools and universities will be required to cooperate with federal immigration law.
3. Any DOE program not directly related to academic achievement should be under high scrutiny to eliminate.
4. End student college loan administration through DOE or through state pass-through programs. Perhaps Department of the Treasury should handle this. No existing loans should be cancelled. Students should pay back all loans.
No loans should be tied to DEI metrics, but only financial need and scholastic performance. So students attending HBCU’s (historically black colleges and universities) or Hispanic serving institutions ( HSIs) should be given no preferential loan treatment. No loans should be based on skin color, ethnicity or identity groups, and no student aid should go to children of illegal immigrants (Dreamers). Only American citizens and their children are to receive any government -administered loans in America.
5. Cut federally-administered funding for any public school or college which allows unfettered voice to those who hate Israel or support Hamas. Anti-Israel “protests” and threats to Jewish students or faculty are to be turned over to law enforcement and treated as incidents of sedition or domestic terrorism.
And cut grants for anti-Israel professors funded under National Resource Centers and Foreign Language Area Studies grants.
6. DOE’s Office of Civil Rights should be transferred to DOJ. At DOJ, invalidate any education lawsuits alleging discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” since no such law has been passed by Congress authorizing this defense. These are not federal civil rights.
End the recent planned revisions to Title IX, closing any cases based on the unauthorized changes. And any school district that has adopted the unauthorized changes proposed under Obama and Biden, will receive no pass-through DOE funding or funding through any other federal agency.
Here’s what the DOE budget writes in requesting an increase in funding for the Office of Civil Rights: “The Office of Civil Rights needs additional resources to address a rising volume of complaints, including those related to a recent surge in anti-Semitism, anti -Arab discrimination...” [ p.66] Actually, what is needed is for schools to crack down on anti-Semitism themselves, so that the federal government justice arm will not be approached as often. And schools need to be very clear that criticism of terrorism, of the tenets of Islamic jihad, or Gaza/Hezbollah/Iran and their murderous activities, etc., do not constitute “discrimination.”
7. Eliminate any program requirements for DEI or “LGBTQ” behaviors and identities. This includes, but is not limited to, school “safety,” disability education, teacher training programs, special needs education, “Promise Neighborhoods,” “Fostering Diverse Schools,” magnet schools, “Equity Assistance Centers,” migrant education services, programs to reduce delinquency, programs for homeless students, rural education, Indian education, Native Hawaiian education, Alaskan native education, pre-school programs, and Head Start. All DOE programs that mention these as stipulations in any way need to be cut in part or perhaps, totally.
8. Eliminate the School-Based Mental Health and Mental Health Service Professional grant programs, which fund 14,000 new psychologists and counselors. We need fewer, not more mental health counselors in most schools.
Cut funding for “full-service community schools” to promote school based health clinics, social emotional learning ( SEL), adult education, and other community services. All Medicaid funding through schools should be under immediate review and no new Medicaid funding added.
In no circumstance should federal funding support abortion, abortion referral, or referral to groups/counselors that promote “LGBTQ” behaviors or medical interventions.
9. Cut “Innovative Approaches to Literacy” program unless it eliminates all books/media that promote divisive racial concepts, “LGBTQ” identities or behaviors, or contain obscene/pornographic passages and situations.
10. Cut history and civics education grants that use material from inaccurate/propagandized resources like the “1619 Project” or any similar invalid historical revisionism, or anti-American, Marxist or CRT premises.
11. Substantially cut “Arts in Education” grants.
12. Take a hard look at DOE funding for students with disabilities, for workforce development, and for career and tech education and adult education. There seems to be an immense amount of pork in these programs. And again, mandate that all programs drop any DEI and “LGBTQ” requirement or metrics.
13. Student access to the Javits Gifted and Talented Education program should drop special preference for “underserved” students or “English learners.” Students should be evaluated equally on academics only.
14. Drop “Family Engagement Center” funding through DOE and similar social service programs. Before sending to HHS, evaluate whether such programs are needed at all.
15. Drop Comprehensive Center programs.
16. Plans to support “free community college” should be dropped, as well as funding for mental health services in FIPSE (Fund for Improvement of Post Secondary Education) and funding for college student child care services (CCAMPIS). Also look hard at the funding for the new Postsecondary Advancement Success Technical Assistant Center through the states.
17. Cut teacher training programs that emphasize DEI and teacher recruitment programs not based on performance and merit.
18. Tie all in-school English-learning programs, if sent back to states, to every students’ citizenship requirements and require that all students be immersed in English language classes prior to other class attendance. No children should be deposited in a 3rd grade class with no English skills, for instance, which is unfair to the student, the teacher and all other classmates.
19. Cut “school safety” programs that emphasize schools’ role in managing “trauma” in the lives of students and defining sexual/gender identity issues as in need of “protection.” This is blatant discrimination against other viewpoints and ignores health/social science research. If students need mental health counseling, it should in most cases occur outside the school and under parental guidance/consent.
20. The Institute for Education Services deserves a hard look at potentially overlapping services and lots of pork. The enormous amount of statistical data collected has not improved US academic standing. Is all this really needed?
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It’s up to individual states and local school districts to manage the education of their students, and up to colleges to get back to their original missions. We are distracted by many other priorities in education, including trying to meet social service needs, trying to bypass parental authority and in some instances, having schools act primarily as daycare centers in order to maintain order in communities where family lives are in chaos. These may be needs, but they should not the school’s responsibility.
Let’s re-focus on what’s really important in education: reading, writing, math, and science.
