Notes on the Taxpayer Funded Department of Education
The Education Department’s main functions include sending states money to help fund low-income school districts, though that’s something Washington managed before the existence of a stand-alone education department. It also enforces civil-rights laws and manages student loans. There’s no reason, however, that the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights couldn’t be absorbed by the Justice Department, and the outstanding loan portfolio could be handled by Treasury. Doubtless these are the kinds of efficiencies that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will recommend to the new administration.
For Mr. Trump and many Republicans, however, the Education Department’s problems extend well beyond its redundancies. In their view it and its personnel have come to represent much that is wrong with education today. Two-thirds of American children are unable to read with proficiency, yet education bureaucrats are obsessed with trans rights, DEI initiatives and ensuring that elementary-school libraries are stocked with pornographic texts.
People who have a problem with someone who swam on the boys team last year swimming on the girls team this year are attacked as bigots. Students are taught that math is racist, that standardized tests are biased, that “objectivity” and “hard work” are traits of white supremacy. Curricula based on the widely debunked New York Times “1619 Project,” which claims that the American Revolution was launched not to rebel against British rule but to preserve slavery, is being taught in elementary and high schools across the country. Instead of being instructed in basic skills, young and impressionable minds are being polluted with ideological propaganda masquerading as scholarship.
