By Ben Johnson
The Washington Stand
Some officials wait in trepidation to find out if President-elect Donald Trump will follow through with his campaign promise to abolish the Department of Education. Some wait with glee.
In an online video posted last July, then-candidate Trump promised that, if elected, “very early in the administration” he would begin “closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work and needs back to the states. We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it. You can’t do worse.”
The promise echoes back to 1980, when Ronald Reagan promised to close the department, which President Jimmy Carter opened that May. Bob Dole made the same promise in 1996. But Trump’s allies believe the 47th president will be the man to follow through. “In his first term, President Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as so many Republican candidates had promised before him. I am hopeful that closing the Department of Education will be President Trump’s second term version of that long-term promise keeping,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council and a former Trump administration education official, told The Washington Stand. “Nearly every Republican candidate for president has campaigned on this. It’s time to make good on that promise.”
Officials at the state level are already planning ways they can improve the quality of education once the federal government no longer dictates the curriculum, standards, and conduct.
“When he eliminates the federal Department of Education, it is going to be tremendous for our states,” Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Tuesday. “Literally every educational statistic has gotten worse since Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education.”
The most recent “Nation’s Report Card” — the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)’s long-term trends exam (LTT) — found that the average 13-year-old student’s math scores ranked the lowest in more than three decades. The number of high school seniors who did not read a single book for pleasure in the last year nearly quadrupled between 1976 and 2021-2022.
The United States is losing ground compared to other nations. “In 2022, there were 5 education systems with higher average reading literacy scores for 15-year-olds than the United States, 25 with higher mathematics literacy scores, and 9 with higher science literacy scores,” reported the National Center for Education Statistics, analyzing data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the first year of PISA, 2000, only three nations had higher average reading literacy scores than the U.S., eight outperformed the U.S. in mathematics, and seven countries did better in science literacy.
The Department of Education “was formed to close the achievement gaps, and they have not budged one little bit,” former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told Newsmax on Tuesday. American taxpayers “spent over $1 trillion … trying to do it, and we’ve gotten nothing but worse results. It’s time to do something different.”
Education results declined as per-pupil government education spending rose from $11,221 in 1979 to $17,700 in 2023 in inflation-adjusted dollars. The Biden-Harris administration boasted of the “largest annual spike in public school spending in over 20 years,” when per pupil spending increased 8.9% between 2021 and 2022. President Joe Biden — a longtime labor union ally who boasts that his wife, Jill, belongs to a teacher’s union — requested $90 billion in discretionary spending in his most recent budget, an increase of $10.8 billion or 13.6%. Congress appropriated $79.1 billion in fiscal year 2024.
“Abolishing the Department of Education is an important and necessary step in reforming the American education system. Returning the focus of power to the states demonstrates an understanding that families are the main ‘stakeholders’ when it comes to educating children and the next generation of American citizens and leaders,” Kilgannon told TWS. “Closing the U.S. Department of Education also proves that there are consequences for poor results. It’s a rejection of the overly credentialed, expert-reliant model of policymaking and a return to the basics of local control.”
“President Trump laid out the greatest vision for education in our nation’s history. It was bold. It was conservative. These were the reforms we needed,” Walters told FRC President Tony Perkins.
Walters noted that the federal government promoted radical left-wing curricula from the top-down. “Remember, that’s also the federal Department of Education that brought you” critical race theory, diversity, equity, and inclusion; and “Common Core math. They also brought in this anti-American hatred through the curriculum and through the grants that they pushed,” said Walters. Under Biden-Harris, the U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) taught CRT and extreme transgender ideology to the children of enlisted soldiers in its 160 schools in 11 countries.
“Only about 9% of the funding comes from the federal government, but 90% of the regulation comes from the federal government,” noted DeVos. Teachers unions used DOE “as a beachhead” and “exercise tremendous power over one party.” As it stands, the Department of Education does not act “to benefit the kids. It is only to benefit the adults.”
“My goal is to see the department closed down, phased out, and depowered,” in favor of universal school choice programs, she said. “The money should follow the kids.”
Education experts say the incoming Trump administration could use a host of policies to transfer power from Washington to states and, ultimately, to parents. DeVos noted the federal government may continue providing education funds to states, for instance, through block grants. “Until the Department of Education is closed, however, we need capable leadership from folks who will ensure the department’s focus and footprint is restrained. There are many ways to reduce the size of the department, putting it on a trajectory for eventual closure,” Kilgannon argued.
Walters agrees that parents should have the greatest voice in their children’s education. If given a block grant, he would assure the money goes to parents, to choose the schooling they find best suited for their children. “[E]very child is unique. God created us that way. And the people who are going to know best for what that individual child needs are going to be the child’s mom and dad,” he said.
“The closer we can get resources and decisions to the parents, the better,” said Walters. “That’s what the elimination of the federal Department of Education does.”
Walters has tasked a state advisory panel to guide the transition of educational authority from the national to the state level when the Trump administration closes the Education Department. “They’re going to help us put together recommendations for the state moving forward. When the federal Department of Education is gone, how can we direct those dollars? How can we make sure that families know about the options available?”
“We’re also rewriting our history standards. We want to make sure that we are pro-patriotism, pro-America,” and highlight “the role faith played in our country’s history. So we’re rewriting those history standards to make sure that takes place. We’ve also eliminated CRT, any kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our schools,” Walters told Perkins. He added that the state has instituted “merit pay for teachers. … We’ve also created an ability for us to navigate how many illegal immigrants are in our schools.”
He also announced on Tuesday that the state “created the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism that will continue to navigate any time a teacher is persecuted because of his or her Christian faith. We will investigate it, and we will not stand for it.”
When asked about likely impending lawsuits from the ACLU and other secularist pressure groups, Walters replied, “We’re not scared of the teachers union or a Woke mob. We’re going to continue advancing the ball.”
“We are going to take back our schools. We will not allow a Marxist teachers union to control the future for our young people,” he said. Walters also asked Christians nationwide to “continue to pray for the students of Oklahoma, for the families. … Pray for our parents; pray for our teachers; pray for our kids.”
“Don’t believe the left-wing lies that the sky is falling” when President Trump formally signs legislation abolishing the Department of Education, said Walters. “We can’t wait to implement it for the betterment of our state.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
