Project 2025: The Department of Education and Funding
Read my opinions on the agenda for the next conservative administration, Project 2025. Let's talk about abolishing the Department of Education and the funding that comes with it.
7/30/20241 min read
Let’s continue the discussion on the dangers of Project 2025.
The education section of the agenda was written by Lindsey Burke, chief of the Heritage Center’s Center for Education Policy. One of the broad goals Burke writes about is the elimination of the Department of Education. The reasoning behind this is to re-regulate schools and allow families more choice in their student’s education.
To this, I ask, “Is there limited choice in a student’s education now?” I haven’t seen evidence of such. If a parent is unhappy with their student being in public schools, they can put them in a charter or private institution.
Abolishing the Department of Education doesn’t give anyone any more freedom - actually, it does the opposite. With this proposal comes the idea that federal money goes to schools in the form of block grants with no rules or regulations attached. I cannot begin to explain how problematic this is. If you know anything about school finance, you know that just giving schools money with no strings attached never works out well. Over the decades of federal school finance programs (e.g. ESEA, No Child Left Behind, ESSA, etc.) we’ve established a system that works well to incentivize poor-performing schools to improve, among many other things. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly better than no system at all. Without a system or department in place, proverish schools will only continue to fail. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
There’s a whole other host of aspects of education that the Department of Education regulates (rather obviously) - things like: ensuring needs of Special Education students are met, sexual harassment is limited and dealt with accordingly, and identifying information about students is kept safe (FERPA).
The way I see it, Project 2025 is another way for the voice of the few to attempt to outweigh the many. It’s a way to sneakily push an agenda that allows people to simply do what they want with no regulations or repercussions.
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