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- You'll hear a lot of unrebutted lies about public education tonight at the SOTU
You'll hear a lot of unrebutted lies about public education tonight at the SOTU
Kay W.
March 04, 2025
Trump will probably announce he’s abolishing the US Department of Education tonight. It’s a lie- Congress established the DOE and Trump can’t abolish it but the Trump supporters here in Ohio believe he will abolish the USDOE and also hand them 10k a year to homeschool their children. When I tell people what Trump supporters believe he is going to do they’re amazed. Ten thousand in cash for home schooling, no interest on credit cards, no payroll taxes…I had a young Trump supporter tell me “now I can buy a house!” I didn’t say anything but this person doesn’t even work consistently. His inability to buy a house has nothing to do with mortgage interest rates or home prices.
Trump has also announced his intention to ban liberal and Leftist political speech on college campuses. Right wing speech will of course still be permitted. This goal should be a little easier to meet because college administrators already folded and banned any criticism of US policy in Gaza under Biden, so we’re mostly there already. I actually don’t think it will work. I think banning speech usually makes the speaker just dig in and talk more, so I expect this will lead to the revitalization and growth of liberal and Leftist political speech on college campuses. Good!
Jennifer Berkshire is a wonderful freelance writer, podcaster and advocate who supports public education. This is her most recent piece in The Baffler:
Making the case for the continued existence of the Department of Education requires explaining what it actually does, territory that bears little resemblance to the fervid imaginings of right-wing ideologues. There is Title I, the Johnson-era program that distributes more than $18 billion a year to schools and districts that serve low-income students. There is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the nearly fifty-year-old law that gives students with disabilities the right to attend public schools—a right they previously didn’t have. There is the Pell Grant program that helps low-income students attend college.
All of these functions are intended to give students the same opportunities. And because of that, they are essentially DEI under the Trump administration’s increasingly expansive definition. Under the new administration’s rule-by-key-word-search, both equity and equality are now banned terms.
John King, Obama’s second Secretary of Education (who came after the horrible Arne Duncan) said that the US DOE was a civil rights agency. It’s true. And that’s why the Right wants to abolish it.
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