Education Department Closure Will Hurt – But Not Kids

The harshest critics of President Trump and all he’s doing are sounding more superlative, angry, and existential every day. Oh, and in the educational arena, they’re sounding downright foolish.

The complaints are rolling in about closing the Department of Education

He’s ruining America, they predictably say. But really, he’s ruining the financial and power-wielding prospects of those with prime positions at the government trough – government unions.

At the Department of Education, unions’ voices are growing panicked. The context of all this is Trump’s vow to dismantle the department. Predictably, prompting those profiting from it to claim “the children” will suffer.

In reality, the unions’ golden goose is getting gored. And, as usual, they’re enlisting useful idiots to ape their weak talking points, as a recent Education Week essay by a retired teacher dramatizes.

Eugene Butler Jr. says that “contrary to popular belief,” kids in private schools don’t score any better than those in public schools. He cites a Louisiana study that he says corroborates his assertion. This is shameful propaganda: The most recent NAEP report states flatly that students in private schools consistently outperformed their public school peers in nearly all subject areas. No reputable non-union study says otherwise.

Butler also says dismantling the DOE “may re-establish de-facto segregation in school,” but completely ignores the blatant racism and segregation in our public schools today, which stems directly from destructive DEI policies that the DOE imposed.

The bureaucracy is bloated, and the kids are doing poorly

The recent order to cut staffing in half at the federal office has only amplified the angst. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the reductions were to eliminate “what I think is bureaucratic bloat.” But to unions who benefit from large sums in dues and insider corruption, these are the most essential personnel ever to occupy a federal chair.

It’s instructive to note that the DOE was started by teacher unions, and after they helped get Carter elected in 1976, his gift to unions was an independent DOE with a powerful cabinet position.

That’s why teacher unions complain the loudest about wiping out the corruption at the DOE.

“The children” have been suffering for decades. A look at the scandalously low reading and math scores achieved by our children on our nation’s report card shows the large-scale decline unions have engineered in public education.

Only 31% of fourth graders and 30% of eighth graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level in reading. Only 39% of fourth graders and a shocking 28% of eighth graders performed at or above proficient in math.

Think about it: After starting the DOE, pouring trillions into our schools, and allowing unions to control the entire educational system, America now has 45 million functional illiterates. The National Literacy Institute puts U.S. adult illiteracy at 21%, with another 54% of adults having literacy below a sixth-grade level.

Failure at this level is intentional.

The unions wrecked the education system to enhance their own power

All this suffering, all these Americans denied a chance at a successful life, all because unions and their DOE worked to damage our educational system and enlarge their wealth and power.

Speaking of wealth and power, when teacher unions demanded the DOE shutter schools during COVID-19, denying our children the opportunity to learn, we all still had to pay taxes toward our schools, and the National Education Association’s leader, Becky Pringle, pocketed $534,243 in pay between September 2020 and August 2021.

Unions and their DOE are a cancer and must be immediately barred from our schools.

The DOE metes out cash, lots of it. Its 2024 budget was $268 billion. Unions claim this money is “for the children,” but since the DOE’s founding, the bulk of that money has gone to people and programs supported by the unions’ education establishment – the very establishment that has lived large off American tax dollars while horribly (and purposely) failing to educate American children.

Before teacher unions gained traction and long before they imposed their corrupt DOE, our students were thriving. Americans were highly successful across the educational spectrum; our country was flourishing, and our schools were the envy of the world. Prior to 1917, 80% of our school funding was from local sources, 20% from state sources, and ZERO from the federal government.

We need to return there, and that’s why President Trump is right to shutter the DOE.

Just one more thing…

There’s one last assertion made by Butler in his article that is just as specious as the others. He says that taking down the department would “undermine decades of settled law.” Academics probably like to write the word “settled” in front of the word “law” so they can feel erudite. But baby, that law is about to be settled in a grave somewhere, and kids and everybody else in the country will benefit.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.