A Sense of Doubt blog post #3460 - Why The Radical Right Wants to Shutdown the Federal Department of Education
As it goes in our country, there's a group of paper who blame others for what they themselves are doing or want to do.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/07/11/project-2025-explained/
- Eliminating the Department of Education. The plan explicitly proposes, "Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated." The report also calls for bans on so-called "critical race theory" (CRT) and "gender ideology" lessons in public schools, asking for legislation that would require educators who share such material to register as sex offenders and be imprisoned.
Cries to shutter the U.S. Department of Education have grown louder and more constant as the 2024 presidential race heats up. Announced and potential candidates are already on message: The department has devolved into a lobbying platform for a continuously more expensive and expansive federal role in support of a heavily unionized education system, with tragic results for the nation and its students.
One difficulty in closing the Education Department is that the agency has become ingrained in the minds of policy-makers and the law. For more than 40 years, Congress has willingly assigned most K–12 and postsecondary funding and rulemaking
The Education Department has been on Republican hit lists since it was created in 1979. President Ronald Reagan campaigned on getting rid of it in 1980 and tried to kill it off while he was in office, but didn’t succeed. Instead, in 1983 a landmark federal report called “A Nation At Risk” argued mediocre education was endangering the United States. That report made improving education a national priority, and the argument that there should be no federal role receded for more than a decade.
The Education Department is basically a giant grant-making agency. About 95 percent of the department’s $67.3 billion budget is devoted to grant-making, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The department gives out K-12 grants to states for educating low-income children and children with disabilities and for training teachers. It makes K-12 grants to school districts for children who live on military bases and other federal land. Those federal funds make up about 12 percent of all education spending.
In higher education, the department doesn’t give out massive grants but rather individual vouchers to students with financial need.
The Education Department also makes all new federal student loans and, through contracts with private companies, ensures those loans are serviced and paid back.
Getting rid of any Cabinet-level agency, even if the functions are simply transferred to another department, is a long shot. Only five Cabinet-level departments have ever been eliminated, and four of those were combined into the Department of Defense in 1949. (The fifth is the Department of the Post Office, an independent executive agency since 1971.)
Getting rid of federal grants entirely is even more unlikely. It would be disruptive and almost certainly unpopular. The federal government provides only about 12 percent of K-12 education funding nationally, with the rest provided by states and school districts. And only about half of that money is from the Education Department; the rest comes from the Department of Agriculture for school nutrition programs, the Department of Health and Human Services for Head Start, and other agencies.
Eliminating an agency is not the only option. If an agency is dissolved, it is usually reorganized into something else.
For example, the Department of Education was created when then-President Jimmy Carter signed a law that separated it from a bigger agency, known as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
Similarly, the Department of Homeland Security was created after the 9/11 attacks by combining 22 different agencies — including the Coast Guard, FEMA and Secret Service.
Trump on Wednesday outlined several other education priorities for a potential second term, including introducing prayer in public schools, teaching children to “love their country” and increasing access to internships for students. Trump has said he wants to allow parents to control where their child goes to school and give parents and local school boards the ability to hire and fire school principals.
Spoiler alert: The Education Department is unlikely to be eliminated, particularly by a bill that declines to specify who or what would take over its $68 billion annual budget and the functions of data collection, oversight, civil rights enforcement and student aid, among others.
"Whatever you think about the Department of Education, the idea you could eliminate it with a one-sentence bill is just posturing," Schoenbrod says. "Posturing is not something that's just done by Democrats or by Republicans. It's done by both."
https://www.businessinsider.com/abolish-education-department-thomas-massie-doesnt-address-student-loans-2023-2
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2408.08 - 10:10
- Days ago = 3324 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
