Education scholar David Kirp, in an op-ed originally pub lished in the LA Times, expolains how the current administration is a threat to public education.
Donald Trump has it in for public education.
Don’t be fooled by last week’s release of DOE billions for the coming school year. Education Secretary Linda McMahon claimed that since the surprise decision in late June to withhold the funding, the government vetted all the programs to make sure they met President Trump’s approval. In reality, the White House was inundated by protests from both sides of the aisle, from teachers, parents and school superintendents all over the country. A week earlier, 24 states had filed suit against the administration for reneging on already appropriated education funding.
The reprieve will be temporary if the president has his way. Shuttering the Department of Education, and its funding priorities, was a marquee Trump campaign promise.
Already, about 2,000 DOE staff members have been fired or quit under duress. That’s half the agency’s personnel. On July 14, the Supreme Court lifted an injunction against the firings as lawsuits protesting the firings work their way through the courts. In essence, the ruling gives Trump a green light to destroy the department by executive fiat now, even if the Supreme Court later decides only Congress has that power.
The high court majority did not spell out its reasoning. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, deplored the “untold harm” that will result from the ruling, including “delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.”
McMahon touts what she considers her agency’s “final mission”: ending federal funding for school districts that cannot prove that they have eliminated diversity, equity and exclusion initiatives, or what Trump calls “critical race theory and transgender insanity.” The stakes are high: What’s at issue is the withdrawal of nearly $30 billion in aid.