How Will Trump Handle Education Policy? I don’t know. You don’t either. By Larry Sand
https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/20/how-will-trump-handle-education-policy/
The education establishment is in a colossal snit over Donald Trump’s reelection.
At the college level, Berkeley’s official news outlet published a series of interview vignettes with nearly a dozen professors after the results were in, and they all suggested Trump’s “decisive” victory exposes sinister parts of America’s underbelly.
Additionally, some professors from at least three Ivy League schools—Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia—canceled classes.
According to The Free Press, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy concocted a “self-care suite” available to students to provide an escape from anxiety about the presidential election. The school reportedly informed students that the suite would be available from 10:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., where they will have the opportunity to enjoy Legos, coloring, and milk and cookies while visiting the suite.
The response at the K-12 level has been no less unhinged.
Virginia Education Association president Carol Bauer commented that its members may feel grief over the election results. Bauer noted that educators will likely have students coming to them seeking support and answers to “the hard questions.” Bauer warned VEA members that their professions and schools will “come under attack as never before” under the incoming Trump administration.
Bauer also proclaimed, “I know today feels like a dark day for many of you. Questions and doubts are likely swirling through your head, and it will take time to digest what happened and why. That is understandable.”
In California, a high school teacher from Los Angeles County allegedly stormed out of her classroom at the sight of a student wearing a “Make America Great Again” shirt after the election. The teacher said that wearing merchandise supporting President-elect Donald Trump is “a hate crime when worn at school.”
According to several reports, an Advanced Placement history teacher at a California high school was recorded engaging in a profanity-laced anti-Trump rant after Tuesday’s presidential election. Valley View High School’s Maximiliano Perez told his students that “this sh*t [the election] is not a f**king game” as they could “end up in a concentration camp” and “with no human rights” within their lifetimes.
There is also mass hysteria over what many writers have deemed “Donald Trump’s Project 2025,” a 920-page blueprint for the next Republican presidency created by the Heritage Foundation. However, Trump disavowed any connection with Project 2025 in July, calling some of its notions “ridiculous and abysmal.” During his debate with Kamala Harris on Sept. 10, he asserted, “I haven’t read it. I’m not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference.”
Freakouts aside, what will the effect of Trump 2.0 on education really be?
On November 10, Trump released his Ten Point Education Plan in a video on X, and there are ideas here that should warm the hearts of conservatives. For example, he wants to teach students to love their country and bring back prayer to schools. He thinks we should reward great principals and teachers and fire the bad ones. He suggests that classrooms should focus on knowledge and skills, such as reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and other valuable skills, not political indoctrination.
However, he then posits that we need to “send all education back to the states. End education from coming out of Washington, D.C.”
So, at the same time that Trump is proposing a national plan to implement his educational agenda, he contradicts himself by claiming that he wants the states to be in charge of education.
You can’t have it both ways. If the states are indeed the ultimate decision-makers, what Trump thinks doesn’t matter much. Sure, he can cheerlead, but if left to the states, education will look very different in California and New York than in Oklahoma and Wyoming.
More than anything, Trump has suggested that the U.S. Department of Education must go, and it most assuredly should. Even if you are a Democrat, you should support eliminating it so that Trump doesn’t get the chance to implement any education policies that you despise.
While the federal government has spent money on education and developed education policies since the 19th century, the U.S. Department of Education didn’t become a stand-alone agency until 1980, when it split off from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, courtesy of President Jimmy Carter.
Carter advocated creating the department to fulfill a campaign promise to the National Education Association. Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act in 1979. Interestingly, some Democrats and even the American Federation of Teachers opposed the idea due to fears about excessive federal meddling in local education decisions.
As Chalkbeat explains, the U.S. Department of Education does many things, “like monitor school performance and promote evidence-based practices. Its biggest K-12 programs by dollar amount provide money to high-poverty schools and for students with disabilities. Some of its most high-profile and controversial work involves enforcing civil rights protections.” While the DOE distributes financial aid for schools, it is far from being the primary funder. “Before the infusion of pandemic relief dollars, the federal government only covered about 8% of K-12 educational costs. In recent years, it’s been closer to 11%.”
In reality, it is doubtful that the DOE will be eliminated. As Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, explains, “Recall that Republicans had the trifecta during Trump’s first two years in office (after he’d promised in 2016 to abolish the department), and yet it survived. It’s hard to see how you abolish the department without legislation, and the Republicans won’t have the votes. Even with a narrow House majority, they’d get no Democratic votes, and insiders laugh at the idea they could even keep enough Republicans on board. (It’s safe to say they’d lose at least Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins.) Unless Republicans nuke the filibuster, they’d need 60 votes in the Senate, where they’ll have 53 seats. Plus, there’s a contingent of Trump-aligned education conservatives who’d much rather use the department to promote their vision the same way the Obama or Biden teams did. There may be efforts to trim the department or move parts of it, but anything more seems unlikely.”
Hess wrote a piece in September, “What Would Trump 2.0 Mean for Education?” and the subhead read, “I don’t know. You don’t either.”
Hess is right. It’s anyone’s guess.
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