Project 2025 would destroy the U.S. Department of Education

Get the Point!

As noted in this blog space last month, I harbor serious concerns about Project 2025, the blueprint for the next conservative president as designed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank that has provided the policy heavy lifting for right wing politicians since 1973. 

Today begins the first in a series of articles that will delve into specific planks that could prove the most problematic for progressives, in general, and racial minorities and other minority demographics, specifically, should Donald Trump defeat President Joe Biden this coming November. 

The U.S. Department of Education in jeopardy 

For as long as I have been seriously following politics, conservatives have often mentioned a desire to eliminate all (or most) of the functions of the U.S. Department of Education.

First, it is important to note that the Department of Education is one of the younger cabinet level departments, as it came into formal existence in May of 1980—several months after President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Education Reorganization Act, one that broke what had been previously known as the Department of  Health, Education, and Welfare into separate cabinet level agencies (with the Department of Health and Human Services being the second).

When Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in the 1980 presidential race, the Department of Education, not yet a year old, became one of his prime targets for marginalization if not elimination.

Why? 

So, one of the key aspects of Reagan's campaign platform was "States' Rights," the old slogan that is racially neutral on its face, but one with a disturbingly racist history here in the United States. "States' Rights" was the rallying cry of slaveowners in Ante-Bellum America, as the planter class cloaked themselves in the language of the 10th Amendment to push their beliefs that the individual states had full autonomy to allow (or abolish) slavery.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

After the Civil War and the 13th Amendment ended all notions that the individual states had the right to permit slavery, "States' Rights" reared its head again, this time as the rallying cry for Jim Crow segregation proponents across America from the late 1870's, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Fair Housing Act of 1968 were signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson over a century after the Civil War.

States' Rights opponents of school integration

Now, while integration of public schools had been mandated "with all deliberate speed" by the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision in 1954, Southern states fiercely fought full implementation of that order well into the 1970's in some areas. 

And while President Johnson is often lauded for signing the above mentioned civil rights legislation into law, there are other aspects of his "Great Society" that heavily impacted civil rights, too, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. This Act introduced the ever important Titles I-VI into the academic lexicon; each of these Titles was designed to enhance the educational experiences for historically disadvantaged Black students—and students of all races mired in abject poverty. 

But the one “Title” that has drawn the most incoming fire from conservatives over the past four decades has been Title I, the rubric which provides federal funding to school districts that maintain a higher percentage of students hailing from lower income families. Title I provides myriad opportunities to ensure that students in financially strapped areas are afforded the necessary tools for learning, including an emphasis on "pull outs," a practice which allows struggling students to receive one on one time with teachers and paraprofessionals who supplement in-class learning. 

A Title I teacher working with students in Denver, Colorado

Such measures were besmirched by Reagan Republicans in the 1980's, and Ol' Hobbs is just old enough to remember nightly news reports about the Reagan administration's push to gut everything from school breakfast and lunch options, to the after school and in-school enhancing programs that were considered wastes of taxpayer dollars by those self described "fiscal conservatives."

Those attacks have NEVER stopped from the ideological right, despite the fact that actual federal spending for Title I programs pales in comparison to military spending and foreign aid. For example, in fiscal year 2023, the Department of Education allocated approximately $14 Billion dollars in Title I spending, while $65 Billion in military and civilian aid was allotted to Ukraine, and over $17 Billion was allotted to Israel—approximately $14 Billion more than usual $3 Billion in annual earmarks that were approved by Congress in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel last October. 

How would Project 2025 impact the Department of Education?

I would be remiss if I didn't push back against a lie that Donald Trump is telling on the campaign trail, which is that he doesn't know much about Project 2025—or who is behind it. Below is a picture of then President Trump at the White House with John McEntee, the senior advisor to Project 2025 who served as Trump's Director of Personnel during his presidency!

Trump's “Know Nothing” about Project 2025 lies noted, even a cursory look at Trump's campaign platform on education reveals how in lock step his plans are with the same. Regarding plans to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, Trump noted at a recent rally in North Carolina that it should be disbanded to “move everything back to the states where it belongs.”

And there it is, the old "States' Rights" two step that’s still being danced by modern day Republicans! And if Project 2025's architects have their way, a second Trump administration would start by scaling down the responsibilities of the Department to strictly a "statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states," per Lindsey Burke, the Heritage fellow who drafted the Project 2025 chapter on education. 

If such comes to fruition, that would mean that billions in aid to Title I schools would be cut off, with students in poorer districts left at the mercy of state level funding sources. My fear in that regards is that when one looks at the list of the most academically inept states in America, most are in the Deep South, where ruby red MAGA Republicanism reigns supreme in statehouses, courthouses, and governor's mansions.

According to recent rankings by Scholaroo, the majority of the bottom 10 states for education are Ruby Red Republican bastions

What's worse is that among these same Republicans, the push to eliminate the federal Education Department is accompanied by state level pushes to siphon funds earmarked for local public school districts to voucher and "school choice" programs shifted to private and parochial schools that are often led by major donors to Republican candidates and campaigns. 

This last aspect is arguably one of the most sinister of Project 2025—and a potential second Trump administration—which is the desire for Republicans to extend their culture war into local school systems. Trump's campaign platform includes his plan to:

*Cut federal funding for schools that are pushing critical race theory or gender ideology on our children and open civil rights investigations into them for race-based discrimination (against white and Asian students);

*End access for trans youth to sports;

*Create a body that will certify teachers who “embrace patriotic values;

*Reward districts that get rid of teacher tenure;

*Adopt a parents’ bill of rights;

*Implement direct elections of school principals by parents.

Conclusion

As it currently stands, Project 2025 and Mr. Trump's education platform are goals that have been set out quite plainly for the voting public to view. Whether those goals come to immediate fruition depends, first and foremost, on whether Donald Trump defeats President Joe Biden in the general election. As of last week, a number of major opinion polls have Trump leading Biden 49 percent to 43 percent based upon likely voters, a margin that is daunting at this juncture but not entirely insurmountable if Democrats and Independents turn out in sufficient numbers in support of the Biden-Harris ticket come November. Stay tuned…

The second issue is the ever important down ticket Senate and Congressional races; should Democrats hold the advantage in one or both chambers after November, even if Trump wins, he would not be able to abolish the Department of Education or Title I funding through the use of executive orders alone. Such would serve as a check and balance—for now!

But I caution “for now” because the one thing that the ideological right always has been, if nothing else, is relentless, and the tenets of Project 2025 aren't just going to go away in 2025, 2026, or 2027! Thus, the need for those who respect the role that the Education Department plays in supplementing education and providing loans and grants to vote BLUE to protect it from the RED culture vultures that are circling above and just hoping to pick away at its carcass.