We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we’re ranked number 40….
SHUT IT DOWN
Posted on 02/14/2025 6:50:58 AM PST by MtnClimber
Americans who care deeply about education were treated to a rare sight on Thursday. In her testimony before Congress to be the head of the Department of Education, Linda McMahon openly and proudly outlined a plan to not just get rid of her job, but take the federal government out of the education business. We wish her luck.
In January, before Trump first bruited his idea to close the Education Department, I&I archly suggested that “The most successful secretary of Education will be the one who shuts it down.” Little did we know that President Donald Trump would propose just that, and let his pick to lead the department make the case for doing so to Congress.
“I’d like it to be closed immediately,” Trump said on Wednesday. “The Department of Education’s a big con job.”
He’s right. McMahon, that ultra-rare unusual appointee whose greatest desire is to close her department and put herself out of a job, outlined a day later why and how she’d do that.
While Trump’s criticism sounds harsh, in fact, even under his plan many pieces of the current Education Department would remain in place — but within other parts of government. The Ed Department has failed in its mission and needs to be dismantled, though that will require lawmakers’ approval.
“I will work with Congress to reorient the department to helping educators, not controlling them,” McMahon said, adding: “Defunding is not the goal here.” Defund, no; dismantle, yes.
McMahon noted in her questioning that, for instance, aid for disabled students would likely be better handled by the Department of Health and Human Services, rather than the Education Department. And she vowed more than once that Congress’ federal aid to low-income school districts and students would be maintained.
So does the department really need to be dismantled? You bet. And McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment but also former head of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s previous four years in office, is just the woman to do the job.
The recent experience with COVID underscores why education is too important to be left to Big Government. Under President Joe Biden, the Ed Department presided over teacher-union-friendly school shutdowns and shoddy “remote learning” programs that caused literally millions of American school kids’ of every race and ethnicity to lose ground against previous generations.
Many if not most of them will pay for this with shrunken incomes and fewer choices over their lifetimes. It’s an epic disgrace.
This was from a report from just two years ago: “The COVID-19 pandemic spared no state or region as it caused historic learning setbacks for America’s children, erasing decades of academic progress and widening racial disparities, according to results of a national test that provide the sharpest look yet at the scale of the crisis.”
But surely, you say, things are better now. After all, COVID’s over, so test scores must have recovered, especially after additional spending of $90 billion during COVID.
If you thought things would be better, you were dead wrong. The shock report two weeks ago that showed test scores plunging from five years ago was alarming to say the least.
As we wrote then:
(T)est scores remain abysmal, with no improvement. Average reading scores for 8th graders (America’s future workforce, mind you) have fallen from 263 in 2019 to 258 in 2024, erasing 33 years of slow improvement in reading. Math is just as bad, if not worse. True, the 274 level is the same as in 2022, but it’s way below the level five years ago.
So, no, nothing has improved. Instead, it was revealed to what extent the Department of Education had become a money-launderer for powerful teachers unions and their allies in major Democrat-run cities’ school districts. Trump is right; it’s a massive scam.
If you want proof, just look at the nation’s capital. There, spending per pupil was $27,425 in 2022, second only to the state of New York’s $29,873, according to the Census Bureau.
So how did the District do with all that extra cash? The recent National Assessment of Educational Progress scores was summed up recently by the Dallas Express:
Despite the high level of spending compared to other districts, 48 jurisdictions scored significantly higher on the 2022 NAEP assessment for fourth grade math, and 49 scored higher than D.C. on the eighth grade assessment.
For reading, D.C. was significantly behind 42 other jurisdictions in fourth grade reading. In eighth grade, it was behind 44 other states and districts, which includes districts like the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA).
The Education Department has little to do with educating, and a lot to do with mollifying the teachers unions, some of the biggest political donors in the nation. Indeed, as we noted recently, recently deceased President Jimmy Carter created the Education Department expressly at the behest of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association (NEA).
Ever since then, the Ed Department has been beholden to teachers unions, particularly during Democratic administrations (in the 2024 political cycle, education unions gave 98.4% of all their contributions to Democrats). For instance, under Biden, schools received an added $190 billion during COVID, an unparalleled influx of money.
But it did nothing to improve student scores. In fact, scores fell.
Nothing new there. Since the Education Department was formed in 1979, things have pretty much been the same. A lot of taxpayer spending, no big changes, and few if any results. An exercise in bureaucratic waste and futility. Kill it off, and use its demise as a model for other useless bureaucracies.
Yep. Trump is right. It’s time to dismantle the Education Department, which has failed us for 46 years. In its place, we need innovation: school vouchers, school choice, professional trade education for the non-college bound, and a renewed emphasis on teaching basic skills such as reading, writing, and math.
Before we can get those things, however, we need to decentralize education. That means taking control of education away from Washington, D.C., and handing power back to parents, teachers, and locally elected school boards – where it belongs.
Remove the emphasis on indoctrination and let the local school districts get back to education.
I would like to think that 40-50 years from now historians will look back and say
“what in the world was the nation thinking having such a miserable department of education which failed so completely for so long? Thankfully then president Trump ended the failed institution, and our kids benefited like crazy from it and are the world leaders today that they could have never been had they continued in the failed education system”
It is mind boggling how the rank and file Dem voter supports whatever crap the blue team shovels their way.
Our education system ineffective? We are rated 40th out of 40? Out of control spending putting us at 1st in money per pupil?
No worries! The Dems tell their voters we need the Dept of Ed. or the system will crash, children will die, Trump will take over the world. That’s all the libs around me need to hear, they stick with their Dem masters.
But all my schools have vastly more spending on SPORTS.Basketball coaches,volleyball coaches,baseball coaches,artificial turf,bigger gymnasiums.
Reading,writing,arithmatic are so old school.
We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we’re ranked number 40….
SHUT IT DOWN
Why collect monies from the several states, send it to Washington, so they can send it back?
Sorry, Mr. President, Congress must defund it, then you can fire em all.
Cartah’s Department of Education is nothing more than an ATM money machine for a bunch of union thugs. Nothing more.
Any department not specifically listed in the 18 enumerated powers of Congress has to go. The last 115 years have been a total nightmare for the USA. Thanks democrats./s
“school vouchers, school choice”
How about letting private companies bid to run schools?
NEA Big City 2025-2026 Proposal for MLK High School
....
Brighter Futures Education Corp. 2025-2026 Proposal for MLK High School
....
Let the parents of the assigned students vote in July and August.
The parents of schools with the worst school scores would vote first.
MLK High: staff mixer July 31st, voting August 1st
Claymont High: staff mixer August 7th, voting August 8th
Greenville High: staff mixer August 14th, voting August 15th
Stop blaming the schools, the teachers and the Department of Education.
The fault is mainly with the students and their households.
Put a federal tax on cell phone service of 10 cents a minute from 9:15pm to 5am, to be prepaid.
Put a federal tax of cable service of $5/day on residential cable and Internet service that functions at any time from 9pm to 5am starting from 9pm on the fourth Sunday of August to the fourth Saturday of June, to be prepaid.
If the kids get a good night’s sleep, they’ll learn better.
I presume when the Dogefather gets around to this Department, money flowing to politicians will be discovered.
It’s important to keep your eyes on the prize. Everybody here keeps posting stories about chump change for Tranny Comic Books in Peru, as if that’s the problem with the budget.
The problem is elected officials raping the taxpayers to become multimillionaires, or even billionaires, on their government salaries, and subverting the political process to keep their organized theft going.
All the low-rent stuff is protective coloration. If they can get you looking at Drag Queens in Burundi, they can keep the main objective - getting rich - hidden.
School Zone
By federal law, all cell phones entering this zone are subject indefinitely to control of the teachers’ union serving this school.
Misbehave and your phone will almost certainly not work for at least a week.
Yet the article describes all the ways they functions of the Dept. of Ed will STAY in FEDGOV, but be sent to other departments.
I do not like the sound of that.
” Fundmentely, Education is, and must always be a local responsibility, for it thieves best when nurtured at the grassro7ts of our Democracy.” JFK
Excess immigration of non-English speaking students also deteriorates the quality of education.
Excess Indoctrination that you need a sex change.
President Trump was exactly on about the dismantling of DoED when he said paraphrasing, “give it back to the states.”
Hopefully this will set the precedent for 100 other things.
USA is 40th among 40.
Oregon can bottom that with the worst in the nation for math and reading.
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