Good reasons to preserve the federal Dept. of Education

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As disrupter in chief, President Donald Trump has issued numerous executive orders regarding education. It appears that the administration’s strategy is to chop away at federally supported school programs to achieve the goal of eliminating the federal Department of Education and send all education decisions to states and local government.

It’s a red herring. The truth is that states and districts already make the bulk of policy setting decisions. The 10-15% of school budgets that come from the feds are for essential provisions like school meal programs or ensuring constitutionally mandated equal access to education. The “state’s rights” approach — especially for people of color like me — conjures up memories of a foregone era when schools could legally discriminate based on choices made by state and local governments.

Trump campaigned on a promise to shut down the federal education department and send more of its funding to school choice programs. But did supporters of the idea fully realize the real and unintended impact the effort might have on local schools? I doubt it.

What the president and Elon Musk propose hardly seems designed to serve the best interests of American students. Some provisions in the orders — including funding freezes and slashing of the federal education workforce — are already causing harm for districts, students and families in Minnesota and across the nation.

The federal DOE was created as a stand-alone department in 1980 for good reasons. After being part of the massive Health, Education and Welfare Department, its mission was to promote equal access and opportunity in education, collect and analyze national education information and to ensure that important human and civil rights were upheld consistently across the nation.

DOE is still needed. It provides critical oversight and sorely needed funding for special education and gender equality in sports, and continues to help create opportunities for students who hail from historically discriminated against groups. The department has allocated an estimated $1.2 billion to Minnesota this year for a variety of things including financial aid, Pell Grants, community learning centers and more.

Some lawmakers and others are challenging the assault on the DOE. Minnesota Sen. Heather Gustafson, DFL-Vadnais Heights, told journalists last week that the moves that Trump and Musk are making against the federal DOE have created so much chaos that the Minnesota Department of Education and local school districts are struggling to understand compliance. It is difficult for them to plan, she said, when special education programs and initiatives such as Math Corps and Reading Corps can’t count on essential federal funds.

State Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL- Apple Valley, said the harm is already occurring. School districts have already spent money in areas where they were assured of federal reimbursement. Who is going to issue those payments now, she asks, when Musk appears to control the payment systems and is looking to furlough or dismiss employees who know how to perform the work. Both lawmakers encouraged citizens to contact their Republican Congress members to register concerns.

“We’re supposed to build a budget for the next two years,” she said. “How are we supposed to do that when we can’t even count on the next two hours?”

It’s not clear that the DOE can be legally dismantled through executive orders. The department was created by Congress and can likely only be completely eliminated by House and Senate members. In the meantime, the clock is ticking. The efforts to kill it with “death by a thousand cuts” must be challenged in federal courts, along with vigilant push back by elected representatives who refuse to stand idle as their legal authority is usurped and American schoolchildren abandoned.