Opinion and Commentary By Donna Westfall – March 20, 2025
Today I watched another Executive Order (EO) signed by President Trump. This one has to do with dismantling the Department of Education.
WHY?
Is it because public education is so dismal? 13 year old’s test scores for math is the lowest in 21 years, and reading scores lowest in more than 30 years. This is unacceptable. And definitely, definitely our public education is dismal. We’re not getting our monies worth, and I’m talking about our tax dollars being wasted.
How about the cost of the Federal Dept of Ed? Since 1979, $3 TRILLION dollars has been spent so again are we getting our monies worth? I think not. Get the wrecking ball out. For fiscal year 2025, Congress allocated $102.24 Billion.
The Dept of Ed was created under Pres. Jimmy Carter and had to be approved by Congress. During Ronald Reagan’s administration he wanted the Dept. of Ed dismantled. He wasn’t successful. Pres. Trump is also going to have to get this through Congress, but his EO will start the steps to break-up and deconstruct this bloated bureaucracy.
1st step: Appoint Linda McMahon to the position of Secretary of Education, admonishing her that the job will probably be short lived. (Who is she? She’s a billionaire. She and her husband made their money in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) promoting professional wrestling. Get this. She and Vince married in 1966. She was 17 and he was 21. They met in church in North Carolina. They separated last year.)
The Dept of Ed is one of the smallest agencies in the Federal government and getting smaller.
2nd step: Reduce the size. Last week half the staff was fired which equates to about 1300 losing their jobs, which is to take effect March 21st . For those employees that were willing to quit or retire, a $25,000 Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment was offered. Meanwhile, California sued to reverse the firings
3rd step: Keep in place the following: Student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking along with formula funding, which I had to look up. It a predetermined formula established by Congress to fund non-competitive grants.
This move to deconstruct the Dept of Ed should come as no surprise. While Trump was campaigning, he stated in speech after speech his plan to do away with it and turn it over to the states.
After 45 years, the United States spends more money than any other county and we spend the most money per pupil while being at the bottom of the list in terms of success.
Some of the top countries in terms of education include Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Finland. China runs their education program so successfully they outperform our students in nearly every area.
It doesn’t seem to matter on the size of the population of countries. What matters is that some countries just know how to do a better job. Let’s hope that the message gets across that we must do a better job.
With DEI and transgender being scrapped from our curriculum, maybe the states will evolve into concentrating on the basics and once again we can regain our status in the world of having highly educated students.
