The Post & Email by Linda Harvey, New American Prophet
As the Trump administration evaluates the Department of Education and hopefully plans to shut the whole thing down, the current thought is to distribute those funds to other agencies or send certain elements of funding back to the states.
Actually, there are large swaths of Department of Education functions and funding that need to be eliminated altogether. In other words, these programs should not be sent to states where they can become bloated little fiefdoms driven by the progressive agenda.
So what should stay and what should go? Here is my “death wish” list for certain programs/policies at the Department of Education. It is not exhaustive by any means, but just a place to start. I am hoping that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, through DOGE, will make this happen.
Let’s start with the FY 2024 budget of the USDOE. It’s around $228 billion, $120 billion of which goes to federal student aid/loans.
The department’s budget for FY 2025 requests a 4% increase over FY 2024.
This is a ton of money, and it’s loaded with administrative self-perpetuation along with reckless “wokeness.” Let’s get real about what is actually required to realize the Number 1 goal: educate children.
Academic achievement—that’s the bottom line.
So consider these thoughts:
1. Any dollars returned to the states would have the federal mandate that no pass-through funds go to a school with lower than 75% student proficiency in 4th grade reading and math. Literacy development grants must be made only to schools where significant progress has been made in the past five years.
2. No state will receive pass-through funds in any category unless the state has passed and implemented a comprehensive school choice plan for all families, applicable to attendance at any school, including home schooling.
No K-12 school will receive funds unless at least 2 teacher in-service workshops are held every year outlining the staff and teachers’ option to bypass membership in the local, state or national teachers’ unions.
And all schools and universities will be required to cooperate with federal immigration law.
3. Any DOE program not directly related to academic achievement should be under high scrutiny to eliminate.
4. End student college loan administration through DOE or through state pass-through programs. Perhaps Department of the Treasury should handle this. No existing loans should be cancelled. Students should pay back all loans.
More:
https://www.thepostemail.com/2024/12/23/top-20-fed-education-program-death-wish-list/
