Former Trump Administration Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos pulls no punches in advocating for eliminating the department she led from 2017 to 2021.
"While it is true that no federal agency has ever seen its doors closed, there must be a first for everything. On the merits, the Department of Education has earned such a historic distinction," DeVos wrote in The Free Press.
DeVos wrote about the catastrophic results from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) standardized test and pointed to its grim findings as one reason why the Education Department needs to be shuttered.
"Seven in 10 American fourth graders are not proficient readers, meaning they struggle with reading grade-level literature and comprehending informational texts. Forty percent graded out at 'below basic,' meaning they struggle with basic comprehension. In math, the picture is similar: six in 10 fourth graders are behind in math."
Even worse, the gap between the lowest and highest-performing students increased by 10% since 2019. That's not just because of the pandemic. Student's scores have been dropping since the NAEP began testing in the 1990s.
"The lowest performing eighth-grade readers are significantly worse off than their peers were in 1992, the first year the NAEP was administered. In fact, their scores this year are the lowest in recorded history" (author's emphasis).
Nothing could be more important to our success as a nation than having well-educated citizens. But don’t be fooled by the name: the Department of Education has almost nothing to do with actually educating anyone.
The Department of Education does not run a single school. It does not employ any teachers in a single classroom. It doesn’t set academic standards or curriculum. It isn’t even the primary funder of education—quite the opposite. In most states, the federal government represents less than 10 percent of K–12 public education funding.
So what does it do? It shuffles money around; adds unnecessary requirements and political agendas via its grants; and then passes the buck when it comes time to assess if any of that adds value.
The FY 2025 budget for the Department of Education is $82 billion. The unholy alliance between the Education Department and teachers' unions has put educating children last while placing their own agenda and bureaucratic preferences ahead of that goal.
"We continue to plummet vis-a-vis the rest of the world. And the children at the bottom of the list are the ones who've been hurt the most. Coming through COVID was awful, but this started well before that," DeVos said on Newsmax.
"Continuing to do the same thing at the federal level and imposing everything on all the states and all the local communities simply has not worked in the 45-plus years the department has been in existence," she said. "President Trump is absolutely right. The department should be disassembled, should be dismantled, and Linda McMahon is exactly the person to get that job done."
Confirmation hearings begin next week, and Democrats will no doubt ask her why she wants to put herself out of a job. She will also face questions about her qualifications and the lingering scandal from her time leading World Wrestling Entertainment that alleges she knew about sexual abuse allegations from WWE employees.
It will be an uphill climb to get rid of the Department of Education. But Republicans, even if they support the Education Department, would also support radical reforms, including returning many responsibilities for schools to the states and cutting many of the programs and grants that serve little or no purpose in advancing the cause of education.
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