Multiple Republican presidential candidates made it clear at this week’s debate that the Department of Education is in danger if they are elected.
“Let’s shut down the head of the snake, the Department of Education,” Vivek Ramaswamy said. “Take that $80 billion, put it in the hands of parents across this country.”
Conservatives see the department, which has more than 4,400 employees and in its current form dates back to 1979 after first being established in 1867, as a prime example of Washington’s meddling in Americans’ lives. The time has come to “shut down the Federal Department of Education,” former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday.
But what would it mean to actually shutter the massive agency?
How could the department be eliminated?
Killing the Department of Education (DOE) would be easier said than done.
Conservatives have said since the creation of the department they want to get rid of it. From President Ronald Reagan and his Education secretary to President Trump and his own, Republicans have decried the department’s existence but failed to abolish it.
That is because the decision to do so is not only up to the president and would have to go through Congress.
“There would have to be some legislation to specifically outline this, but I do think it would need to have the support of the executive branch and, obviously, this is a Cabinet-level agency, so I think having the president — would have to take a leadership role and help to make sure that the proposal is carefully crafted,” said Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman senior research fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation, which supports nixing the DOE.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) proposed such legislation in 2021 and reintroduced it earlier this year.
“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” Massie said two years ago. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable. Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational opportunity for their children, including home school, public school or private school.”
DOE did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
DOE’s duties would be absorbed by other federal agencies
DOE has an enormous number of responsibilities, including handling student loans, investigating complaints against schools and tracking education progress across the country.
None of the 2024 candidates during Wednesday’s debate detailed how they would handle eliminating it, but conservatives have longed to see many of its tasks either completely eliminated or absorbed into other departments.
“For example, the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education. I think that any duplicate responsibilities that it shares with the Department of Justice should be eliminated, and then the rest of that office should go to the Department of Justice,” Butcher said.
Got to make these people as dumb as possible so they’ll believe anything
That plan is clearly working flawlessly in many parts of this country. There are more people alive today that believe in mythological deities, or that the earth is flat than at any other point in human history.
By population percentage we we seem going in the right direction, but the same old bullshit continues to be effective at pulling the wool over the eyes of the average rubes who are coopted by religion or social dogma before education can get to them.
There are more people alive today that believe in mythological deities, or that the earth is flat than at any other point in human history.
In absolute terms? Maybe. There’s more people alive today than there ever have been.
In relative terms, i.e. fraction of believers to non-believers? There is no way in Hera’s great grassy brassiere I’m believing that without sauce.
That is why I said on a population percentage basis we appear to be trending in the right direction.
They want private schools, which basically means not everyone will actually go to school if this happens.
Or parents will go into debt to put their kids through K-12.
Or they put their kids in a cheap “school” without regulations and can be abused or whatever while the parents have to go to work
Or be home schooled
Or they have to go into the labor force early
All of these are terrible options
That’s very literally what they want.
They want to make education something that’s only available, with any quality, to those with money.
From there it’s only a matter of time until you’re back to a feudal state, with an ownership class and a worker class and a vast gulf between them. Where the only way out of that life is an education that they will make sure that you and your children and grandchildren can never afford.
Education is the first target because an uneducated populace is a more desperate, and more easily manipulated populace. They can be both made fully dependent on the upper class as well as more easily influenced (through deception, fear, and token incentives) to support measures to perpetuate that system.
In other words, your typical middle to lower class GOP voters already.
And for now, the GOP and the interests they serve currently still need some of these people to go along with their plans.
Until they get to the point in their plan where they can do what they want with no regard for the people, making more people less educated makes things easier for them.
Not if you’re rich 😏
K-12? It’ll be K-6 and into the workforce the way they’re trying to go
Chim chimmidy
Which is what they prefer. An easily manipulated population.
And legalized child labor.
Also means all the antidiscrimination rules no longer apply. The situation is right now a private religious school can pretty much hire and fire whomever they want for whatever reason. And this also kills tenure, which I am not sure is a system worth saving but at the same time I don’t trust the GOP to replace it with something better.
And in certain states you dont even need to be credentialed to teach at private schools
I assume they want the states to have full autonomy over their education for starters. RIP kids in the south, they’ll never even be taught how badly they’ve been screwed.
They want school choice, where parents take their school funding vouchers to charter schools, so they can segregate their children from the “less-fortunate” and “woke” (read people of color) and teach them all about the whitewashed history of the world and nothing about climate, healthcare, or gender and sexuality.
No joke, read this:
https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
There’s an entire section on the department of education and what they plan to do.
Read at least the Forward. It’s disgusting and important that voters know exactly what the Republicans plan to do if they win the next election.
Worth it to continue reading until you get to the part where the founding fathers would have wanted you to be a good Christian and not choose whatever life is best for your family, but then in the next paragraph also state that only the family can choose what is right for themselves.
Couldn’t make it much further because I don’t want to be angry on a beautiful Monday, but knowing they couldnt keep their ideology straight for 2 paragraphs is all I need.
It’s absolutely filled with contradictions. Should the government have more power or shouldn’t it? Do you want to protect children or don’t you? Do personal freedoms matter or don’t they?
It gets as specific as one section claiming to get rid of the department of homeland security, then a following section wanting to expand it for border control.
There’s no real policy, it’s just “anti-woke” nonsense.
charter schools do provide a reliable and well rounded educational experience. public schools are rather dependent on the public
In a report from The Heritage Foundation back in 2020, the group estimated billions would be saved …
in a better world, it wouldn’t matter what the heritage foundation thinks. they’re a conservative propaganda machine that pushes climate change denial, transphobia, and voter fraud claims. it’s dishonest reporting to cite them without mentioning their track record and credibility.
Someone should tell the Heritage Foundation that we could save hundreds of billions of tax dollars per year if we just completely eliminated the Defense department. I mean, who cares about consequences when you have all those S A V I N G S, am I right?
Nope, the Republicans want to increase the military budget by a huge margin and eliminate the department of homeland security, department of education, the FDA, the EPA, the NIH, CDC, and more.
See here:
https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
It’s about consolidating power under the executive. Too much bureaucracy means too many people to stop your bad ideas from going through.
There’s definitely a good argument to be had for splitting up the beast of Homeland Security back to its original parts. Its creation was an overreaction to 9/11 that sacrificed privacy, checks and balances, and possibly even homeland security. I understand the efficiencies of scale having one overall organization in control of everything from various secret police to spying to electronic espionage to criminal investigation, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. See various authoritarian and repressive regimes
Totally agree. It’s a Koch-funded propaganda machine.
In a better world the Heritage Foundation would not exist at all.
DOE’s duties will be absorbed by other departments
Name one. The real problem is this mainstream media let’s these assholes run with such irresponsible statements.
Then if they name one, ask them how much it would cost to reorg and run over there. Anything more than “free” is already too much, according to them.
They’ll say dept of energy, and then try to shut it down, too.
Just another thing the Republicans want to eliminate without any forethought or planning for what comes after. And just like their ‘repeal’ of ACA, they will cry for years that this needs to happen, and they’ve got a plan to handle it. Only to have it all blown up in their faces once they actually have the opportunity to make it happen.
The Republican party is a dog chasing a car. If it ever catches the car, they’ll fuckin get run over.
Fucking beautiful analogy 😙👌
It will look like that scientific knowledge survey they did in subsaharan africa. People won’t know that the earth orbits around the sun.
This isn’t hyperbole, they won’t teach science if they can avoid it.
I got to experience evangelical science indoctrination as a child, and they literally do not want science taught. It contradicts the pop up books.
One of the first acts a burgeoning Fascist State takes
is to close the Schools and Universities
Happens every time
I still don’t understand how this would close any schools or universities. The public school and state university system has been here since the 1600s. Other than e.g. military academies, what schools do the feds run? Not many. They slosh a lot of money around, but it isn’t clear to me that it’s been a net positive in the 40 years it’s been active, judging by effects on tuition, student debt, etc.
There’s a lot of dumb rhetoric (and people) behind some of these calls to end the DoE, but the schools survived for 300+ years before it existed.
So is the goal to revert the education system back to the way it was in 1600s?
If so, I accuse you of witchcraft! Prepare to defend yourself in court!
Continuation of their Starve the Beast policies that they’ve been pushing for some 4 decades now.
In short, they cut funding for a department because they claim it is too expensive. There is a limit to how much can be cut before services suffer. That is true for anything - workers don’t work for free, and equipment and supplies cost money. So then after they cut funding, they then declare that the department isn’t meeting their goals and should be cut. They are setting up these departments to fail and then use that excuse to try to eliminate them altogether. The latest push is to kill the Department of Education, but over the years Republicans have been playing this game with the Post Office, the IRS, Amtrak, the EPA and a bunch of other “unnecessary” departments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Be educated in what these clowns are trying to do because unlike the Left which has an attention plan of a goldfish, these conservatives play the long-game. They have been pushing these awful ideas since Reagan (and some even before that).
They want government to fail and create chaos and they actively try to push polices that will do it.
This is definitely one of those places where it’s easy to get frustrated with rural conservative voters, voting against their own best interests.
Kids in a state like mine already have a huge advantage because we value education and we fund it better. We also can afford to do so.
Conservative states already have less opportunity for their kids, by interfering and limiting their education. Those kids are already disadvantaged because many areas can’t afford adequate funding. I understand authoritarian politicians wanting power and control, but how can parent vote for limiting their kids’ future like that. Department of Education helps fund those schools, while also requiring equal opportunity and requires it be an actual education. Again, I understand politicians spreading divisiveness and outrage to control the populace, but how do parents firstly fall for the BS, and secondly vote against accepting “free” funding to improve their kids’ education?
DoE is one of those “transfer of wealth” programs where blue states pay more, and red states take more. If I don’t mind paying extra to help those disadvantaged, why do they not want to accept more money to invest in their kids’ future. Someone needs to talk to them about “family values”
It’s simple. Rural parents and older people have been convinced over time via propaganda that “the school system” is why younger people don’t generally share their values and ideology. This can be used in all kinds of ways to create emotional responses later.
For example, many conservatives in the western states are convinced young arsonists are burning down forests and fields because they are homeless and feel entitled to housing. Of course, there is no proof of this, and they don’t think it can be climate change because they don’t think climate change is real.
As a result of all this, they are very willing to take their kids out of school and switch to some homeschooling program so they don’t raise homeless arsonists.
I wish I was kidding.
Damn, this is why we can’t have satire anymore. Who would laugh about something so unbelievable?
If I don’t mind paying extra to help those disadvantaged, why do they not want to accept more money to invest in their kids’ future. Someone needs to talk to them about “family values”
Because they want to teach hate to keep the poor poor and the rich rich. A DoE will never allow that, the existence of a DoE is “woke”.
Take $80 billion, divide by the number of households in US with children ~ 30 million. That’s about $2700. Anyone who’s a parent knows that doesn’t go far at all in terms of education expenses. Good luck privatizing education and funding it out pocket for $3k/yr. Complete idiots.
Generous of you to assume they’d redirect that money to anyone else but themselves and their cronies.
That’s kinda the point. They actively want the poors to have to send their kids to the ‘budget’ schools. The ones that charge exactly $2700 / yr / student. Broken computers, empty libraries, overworked and severely underpaid teachers, no extra curriculars.
Meanwhile, the
oligarchsrich people can send their kids to the schools that cost more, teaches their kids how to be shitty to the proletariat, and has a pipeline directly into colleges.The whole point of this venture is to siphon even yet more money from the poor into the hands of the rich, meanwhile depriving those same poor of a worthwhile education and giving the rich an even greater advantage.
would make sense with the move to deregulate child labor laws in the usual states. get them littles back in the coal mines!
Aren’t schools funded by county property tax and not the DOE?
yeah I thought the dept of edumcation was administrative overhead
Depends on the state, but finding isn’t really the issue here. It’s a move to a voucher system.
The idea that they are pushing is to privatize the entire education system. Privatization has been a wet dream for Republicans for many years now, and not just in education. It would further corporatize the country and allow for more money that was once ‘the people’s’ to be siphoned into private pockets.
So the state gives money to families with children. Those families send their kids to a private school and give that money (plus probably a lot more) to that private school. Public money flowing into private hands. Add to that deregulation of the industry - no standard tests or textbooks. Education will be chaos.
You can’t indoctrinate kids nearly as easily in public schools, and there’s no way to turn a profit on them. By contrast, a solid public education makes kids more likely to grow up and vote Democrat. The GOP especially today knows that it can’t win legitimately; rage baiting and cheating are their only remaining strategies.
Why would ending a 40-yr-old Federal department end the 400-yr-old colony/state-based public school system?
Of all the departments that could be eliminated, it’s only after Homeland Security in terms of one with a previous status quo in living memory.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html
the Federal contribution to elementary and secondary education is about 8 percent
the Federal role in education as a kind of “emergency response system,” a means of filling gaps in State and local support for education when critical national needs arise
comprehensive set of programs, including the Title I program of Federal aid to disadvantaged children to address the problems of poor urban and rural areas
While you may think 8% of school funding isn’t much to lose, look at what it would impact
At this point I really have to wonder if Republicans even want a federal level. I mean to me it looks like they are trying to disassemble the USA.
Hmm… rural southern voters wanting to disassemble the USA… I feel like I’ve heard this one before?
They want the largest amount of control at the highest level. If the federal level doesn’t work, they’ll dismantle it as far as possible and instead reign at the state level.
That’s also why they are against “big government” - it’s always the government above their highest one that’s problematic. Never the one they are at.
They don’t really want that federal control. They want to pretend they didn’t lose the Civil War and have the federal government be responsible for international relations and military defense only.
This will allow them to pass whatever laws they want in their state, with effects I’d bet you can predict pretty easily, and depressingly.
Nah, they absolutely want federal control. Just federal control that’s only MAGA nonsense. Look at what happened with abortion. First it was about “states rights” and now they want to make it illegal for residents of one state to do a legal thing in another state and make abortion illegal nation wide. It’s never about “states rights”. It’s always about forcing their agenda on everyone no matter what.
They don’t really want that federal control. They want to pretend they didn’t lose the Civil War and have the federal government be responsible for international relations and military defense only.
That doesn’t fit together with their legislature whenever they are in power. They seem to like federal control when they have it.
This will allow them to pass whatever laws they want in their state, with effects I’d bet you can predict pretty easily, and depressingly.
But why don’t they stick to state governments? Why do they seem to use whatever power they have if they are in control of a city, a state or the federal government? Why do they not behave in real life the way you describe they do?
Most of the federal control they impose is just tied to the basic concepts of “white Christian theocracy” and not the actual governance.
As they fundamentally don’t see non-white/Christian as equal or American, it kind of fills a grey space in their ideology as to federal control.
Most of the federal control they impose is just tied to the basic concepts of “white Christian theocracy” and not the actual governance.
But that’s also governance. Things don’t stop being governance because we disagree with what is being done. They use the power they have to push through their White Christian theocracy.
As they fundamentally don’t see non-white/Christian as equal or American, it kind of fills a grey space in their ideology as to federal control.
And yet they use their federal control. They don’t leave things as-is while they are in power.
I assure you that I think policies I don’t like count as governance, which is why I’ve been involved in both lobbying and local politics my entire adult life.
Not sure what you’re arguing against, since I’m talking about their general philosophy. That level of governance is assumed within this philosophy because they do not consider those different from them as truly American.
I’m arguing against your point “they don’t want federal control”, because it’s wrong. They try to get as much federal control as possible. You yourself said they use the control they have to push White Christian theocracy.
I do not understand why you repeat that they don’t want control. It’s a tired talking point of conservatives and easily disproven by looking at their governance. If they don’t want federal control, why do they always try to get federal control, and use it when they have it?
You could convince me by showing me that they don’t want federal control from their actions. Show me a recent time they had federal control, and used that to reduce the amount of federal control on a topic they want controlled.
I hate to break it to you, but that’s exactly what they want.
“Grover Norquist, who founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 at the urging of President Reagan, declared in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.””
https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-drowning-government-in-the-bathtub-111333
Oh man, you’re gonna flip your shit when you read Project 2025’s policies.
Of course they do, they are advocating to strengthen it more then anybody. They just want to strengthen it in all the worst possible ways by making their fascism on the federal level.
But SCOTUS seems to be working out for them.
Maybe we should just get rid of the other two branches of government, and let them rule like kings.
God King/Emperor. haven’t you been paying attention?
“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,”
So they say…
Conservatives have established a series of charter schools designed to eliminate liberal thinking and to embrace Conservative Religious values (hate, discrimination, and conformity).
“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,”
I think politicians instead of professionals being in charge of intellectual and moral development of children would be the worse choice. Like letting the fox guarding the hen house.
You don’t need anyone in charge of education if there’s no education! Republicans seem to want to eliminate all education except for private “Christian” indoctrination centers.
Imagine your kids’ education at the mercy of an authoritarian governor, acting to promote spite, hatred, scapegoats, outrage. Imagine a small group of racists, religious zealots, repressives steer your child away from actual education and towards whatever dreck they’re promoting.
These people are so fucking infuriating with their intentional ignorance…
WE VOTE FOR YOU TO CHOOSE THEM YOU NAZI FUCKS!
They know how representatives are supposed to work in government, they know that we (should be) electing people that we trust to make the right decisions with legislation and staffing. They’ll defend Boofer McBooferton on the SCOTUS without blinking an eye. We didn’t vote for him. We voted for the president that
was handed a list by the federalist societychose him. Our vote for the (insert politician) was a vote for their choices…I swear we need to force people to sit down and watch old PBS civics cartoons…
