When an organization fails in its mission, the employees lose their jobs.
The headquarters of the U.S. Department of Eduction, which were ordered closed for the day for what officials described as security reasons amid large-scale layoffs, are seen Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
The Left – which for this discussion includes most Democratic members of Congress, most of the media, and the top leaders at the country’s teachers’ unions – is aghast that the Trump administration just laid off about 1,300 employees at the Department of Education. That’s roughly half the staff.
National Education Association president Becky Pringle’s statement was predictably apocalyptic and predictably predictable. She said:
Firing – without cause – nearly half of the Department of Education staff means they are getting rid of the dedicated public servants who help ensure our nation’s students have access to the programs and resources to keep class sizes down and expand learning opportunities for students so they can grow into their full brilliance. The Trump administration has abandoned students, parents, and educators across the nation.”
Will someone help me here? Can someone please show me how the Department of Education has been helping American students grow into their “full brilliance?” Because the data I read says that reading scores, math scores and overall educational attainment scores have been in freefall since the Department of Education was created under Jimmy Carter in 1979.
Most Americans alive today don’t remember when American public education was the envy of the world. American public schools, under the control of the citizens in the communities that they served (that’s why we persist in calling them “independent” school districts in Texas), did an amazing job turning out young adults that were competent in math, English, history, geography, and the basic sciences.
That was then.
America now ranks fourth in the world – behind Luxembourg, Norway and Iceland – in education spending per pupil yet ranks a dismal 31st in student achievement.
Emblazoned at the top of the Department of Education website you’ll see the words, “Fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” The part about “equal access” harkens back to the vestiges of discrimination against black students that still existed in 1979. Let’s leave that discussion for another time and for now agree that “fostering educational excellence” is simply not happening.
What is happening is that the Department of Education is passing out money. Gobs of it. Just for the exercise I clicked on the “Grants and Programs” tab on the department website. That’s where I found the link to the “Asian American and Pacific Islander Data Disaggregation Initiative.” (No, I have no idea what that means.)
So, I dug a little deeper and learned that this program works, “…in consortia with local educational agencies to obtain and evaluate disaggregated data on English Learner AAPI subpopulations…” (Still no idea. Rule of thumb. If a federal program can’t be explained in plain English, the program is very likely a total waste of money.)
But with due respect to “data disaggregation” and all, the Department of Education cost $268 billion in 2024 and yet American kids can’t read or do math at grade level. Since its establishment in 1979, the DOE has, by any objective measure, failed to improve education in America.
If half the employees just got laid off, we should ask, “When will the rest get their pink slips?”
Your last sentence expressed my sentiments exactly!
During the Jimmy Carter administration, the Department of Education was created in 1979. Since then that department has accomplished absolutely nothing but provide employment for an ever growing body of adults who clearly understand nothing about children and how they learn. Since 1979, at every level, the educational bureaucracy has grown and aggregated more and more control over our children. The result has been that as this control expanded and parents in turn lost local control, the quality of education deteriorated to the abysmal, even as so-called educators demand evermore funding for their failure.
President Donald Trump is taking us in the right direction by seeking to abolishing the Department of Education. But control needs to be returned not just to the states, but to local school districts. The Texas State education bureaucracy is every bit as useless and bloated as its federal counterpart.
“The Department of Education has been helping American students grow into their ‘full brilliance.'” Come on! What Becky Pringle and her like are doing is turning out children into a nation of marching morons.
Abolishing the Department of Education is the first step toward a better future for children.
Guess I missed the job for life guarentee
Longview ISD sees fit to put TVs out by the loop and Hawkins so the students can pay attention to these instead of driving. How much did these cost? Plus a fancy fence with brick columns? Can’t the students build these?
Back when I was in school, things were WAY different. I went to a rural school and I remember that it was either once or twice a year that Coleman Dairy used to bring supplies out to the children like those big ole tablets you learned to write on. Those big ole fat pencils to write with and many other things children NEED to start learning with back then. Was nothing fancy but we learned what we needed to, but most of all we had GOOD teachers! Not ones who were hired because of race or party! These people genuinely loved their jobs and it showed in HOW they taught us and how the kids responded. We do not have much of that now days. Too many distractions and devices that do things FOR the kids. Not enough research by them. One thing that stands out in my mind from back then was my third grade teacher brought some tadpoles in and showed us how frogs came about. She brought in an abacus to show how it worked and how people used it for counting. Course, I don’t think kids now days even know what one is let alone use it!
A lot of reading was done and we had to research when writing papers. A lot more is learned by this than just for papers we had to write. The teachers that teach grades 1, 2,and 3 are more than just teachers of reading, writing and basic math but how they view the world.
Something has been needed for a super LONG time in our educational houses to encourage kids to WANT to learn that just isn’t there today. It has become a playground for politics in hiring, teaching or indoctrinating if you want to be real about it.
There is something to be said about the past, like what worked and what hasn’t. Definitely current things are NOT working so we need to figure out what HAS worked past and presently and figure out a new way! For me, we need a different method of picking TEACHERS! We have too many who want to indoctrinate instead of TEACH and those need another line of work!