By Kaitlyn Serafin
Carol Burris, the Executive Director of Network for Public Education, opposes dismantling the department. She also echoed the sentiment from the department’s website and said that it does not determine curriculum, state tests, or teacher hiring as that is in the power of the states.
Burris also believes that such cuts to the Education Department would create a new problem; fraud.
“My organization, for example, does a lot of work on the federal charter schools program which doles out money to create more charter schools. We found a few years ago, that over one billion dollars were being wasted by people who were given money to start new schools and never did,” said Burris “That was found with a fully staffed department, one can only imagine the extraordinary waste with no one there to check on where the money goes. “
You can read Kaitlyn’s piece in WMNF – Tampa here.