The Trump administration says its plan to dismantle the Education Department offers a fix for the nation’s lagging academics — a solution that could free schools from the strictures of federal influence.
Yet to some school and state officials, the plan appears to add more bureaucracy, with no clear benefit for students who struggle with math or reading.
Instead of being housed in a single agency, much of the Education Department’s work now will be spread across four other federal departments. For Donald Trump, it’s a step toward fully closing the department and giving states more power over schooling. Yet many states say it will complicate their role as intermediaries between local schools and the federal government.
They’re shifting work that all has to do with education onto a bunch of departments that don’t do education work, which will cause massive reduplication of efforts while results are diminished. America’s public school system was once the envy of the world, when we invested in ourselves and our strong welfare state, our social democracy. It’s what put us ahead and made us the superpower we once loved, but now half of America hates and wants to tear down. Everyone benefits from strong public education, society benefits, that’s why we have a government to begin with. If you want to just be lawless, go somewhere else, that’s not America.