The Party Line: Department of Education (Part I)

[Editorial]

I was just skimming an article in the New York Post and the question that popped into my head… where are his sources. He makes some very strong indictments on our education system.

Opinion

As a teacher for 26 years, I’ve seen how we dumbed down education — and how kids suffer

By Jeremy Adams

November 29, 2024

Recently, writing in the Acton Institute’s Religion and Liberty Online, a Texas high-school teacher, Auguste Meyrat, brilliantly formulated the most precise description of education in post-COVID America: vegetative education. 

As he writes, “Teachers in past decades have been faced with two choices: educating students with challenging material and frequent grading or engaging them with fun projects and participation grades.”

What is he talking about?

Yeah, what is he talking about? And what facts does he have to back it up?

We can abolish the federal Department of Education, offer lip service about bolstering parental rights and abolishing DEI policies.

But unless we acknowledge the hollowness of conventional classroom instruction, it won’t make a bit of difference.  

Here’s the dead giveaway: Our students suffer from a pathology of low expectations for themselves and especially for their teachers.

Whew! That is a pretty strong accusation… where did you get your data from?

When do we get to have fun?

Hold on, I have to read at home?   

Their expectations of ease don’t come from nowhere. 

Instead of classrooms powered by lectures, student note-taking, robust discussions and frequent exams that require actual studying, we teachers are often encouraged to “meet students where they are.” 

As a result, American students often spend their time watching YouTube videos, endlessly gaming online or engaging in distractions without end.

He makes these statements without and evidence. To me this seems to be right out of the Republican play book casting dispersion on the education system. Their play book Project 2025 calls for doing away with the Department of Education! Some Republicans see the department as promoting liberal ideologies in schools, particularly on issues like LGBTQ+ rights and race-related concepts. We want to discriminate. It is our god given right to discriminate!

Chalkbeat writes…

When Donald Trump told Elon Musk one of his first acts as president would be to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states,” he was invoking a GOP promise that goes back to President Ronald Reagan and the department’s founding.

Yet through multiple Republican administrations, including Trump’s first term, the U.S. Department of Education has persisted.

[…]

The department has become a “kind of trophy” in a larger debate about the meaning of public education, said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

The article goes on to say…

Why do conservatives want to end the Department of Education?

Some of the dislike is purely ideological.

For conservatives, less government is better. Education is not mentioned directly in the U.S. Constitution. And a new department overseeing functions that remain mostly the purview of local government is low-hanging fruit.

[…]

In his conversation with Musk that aired on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, Trump said the U.S. had a “horrible” education ranking at the bottom of developed countries while spending the most.

It’s not totally clear what sources Trump was using. On recent international tests, the U.S. ranked sixth in reading, 10th in science, and 26th in math among 81 countries. Older test results show the U.S. ranked lower, especially in math. The U.S. does spend more per-pupil than most developed nations, including many that score better on key measures.

Through lies and unsubstantiated accusations he is building his to support the hatch job he want to do on the department.

Former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party would push for universal school choice, expand parental rights over education, end teacher tenure, and prohibit transgender girls from playing girls’ sports if they win the White House and majorities in Congress in the 2024 election. 

In an article in Education Week they say that,

As it relates to K-12 schools, the platform mimics much of the rhetoric Trump and other conservative politicians have used repeatedly in recent years, championing parents’ rights and criticizing schools for teaching “gender ideology” and critical race theory. The party pledges in the platform’s preamble, in all caps, to cut federal funding to “ANY SCHOOL PUSHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY, RADICAL GENDER IDEOLOGY, AND OTHER INAPPROPRIATE RACIAL, SEXUAL, OR POLITICAL CONTENT” and promises to “KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS.”

The platform’s education section outlines nine K-12 positions to “cultivate great K-12 schools, ensure safe learning environments free from political meddling, and restore Parental Rights.”

Many echo priorities outlined in far greater detail in Project 2025, a 900-page conservative policy agenda created by the conservative Washington think tank the Heritage Foundation that would scale back the federal government’s role in education to that of a “statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states.” 

Ed Wk goes on to write…

2. Implement universal school choice in every state

Universal school choice, which allow parents and families to use public funds to pay for private school tuition and sometimes other educational expenses outside of public schools, has swept across Republican-led states in the past few years. According to Education Week’s private school choice tracker, 12 states have programs that are accessible to all students or are on track to be universally accessible.

You remember Betsy DeVos, her big thing was defunding public schools with vouchers.

There is an organized attack on public education and in part II I write about vouchers.