Posted on 03/09/2025 3:53:54 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
President Trump’s fixation reinvigorated the debate over the role of the federal government in education, and created a powerful point of unity between the factions of his party.
Two months after the Education Department officially opened its doors in 1980, Republicans approved a policy platform calling on Congress to shut it down.
Now, more than four decades later, President Trump may come closer than any other Republican president to making that dream a reality.
Though doing away with the agency would require an act of Congress, Mr. Trump has devoted himself to the goal, and is said to be preparing an executive order with the aim of dismantling it.
Mr. Trump’s fixation has reinvigorated the debate over the role of the federal government in education, creating a powerful point of unity between the ideological factions of his party: traditional establishment Republicans and die-hard adherents of his Make America Great Again movement.
“This is a counterrevolution against a hostile and nihilistic bureaucracy,” said Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank and a trustee of New College of Florida.
Here is how the party got to this moment.
Conservatives make their argument.
Right from the start, Republicans opposed President Jimmy Carter’s signature on a 1979 law creating the department, citing beliefs in limited government control, fiscal responsibility and local autonomy. They argued that education should be primarily managed at the state and local levels rather than through federal mandates.
A year later, Ronald Reagan won the White House, his third attempt at the presidency, thanks to a promise that he would rein in a federal government that he said had overstepped its bounds on myriad issues, including education. In 1982, Mr. Reagan used his State of the Union address to call on Congress to eliminate two...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It’s just a money tree....It really has no educational functions. Let’s just call it Department of Educational Unions.
That's a fixation, boys and girls.
The Department of Education is a perfect example of how to destroy something with a government agency.
What is the explanation for this? Does anyone know or will anyone really investigate this?
USAID needs to fund a study to find out. 🤡
In the NYT, Democrats have bold ideas, Republicans have unhealthy fixations.
The NYT has an unhealthy fixation on President Trump.
No.
Maybe call it a money weed. A tree at least produces fruit or wood. Something useful.
The DOE consumes money but does not produce a useful product. Like a weed.
Because it’s done no good.
It’s a waste of money. Our kids were better educated before the DoE came into existence so they can’t justify their existence.
Trump is fixated on the cost to benefit ratio. And it’s lousy.
Abolish this pleasure palace for education bureaucrats. Abolish government employee unions. What a pathetic scam on parents and innocent children.
A) it’s ineffective
B) it’s expensive
Bye!
Apparently, it can be done with an EO for federal unions.
State, county, local government unions will take state legislation probably in all cases.
The key communist strategies for gaining further control in order to inculcate future communists were:
Only by burning the government indoctrination system and all those megalith school buildings to the ground and returning control to the neighborhoods will the once-great American education system ever be restored to some semblance of its former self...
Your comment pretty much says it all, on why it should be totally dismantled.
Because it’s indoctrinating, not educating. Plus, it’s really a state’s rights issue.
CC
Jimmy Carter thought it was a good idea.
It’s. A. Waste. Of. Money.
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