When the Department of Education became Trump's Patsy for failed educational attainment

A DELIBERATE ACT OF MISDIRECTION

A carefully framed shot of Trump and portrayed as the classroom teacher with an inclusive set of children

In a made for TV moment, one of the least educated men to hold the office of president called a press conference. This is a man who daily commits crimes against the English language, grammar and sentence structure. He sat before the world’s media, surrounded by a carefully chosen group of children. In a classroom type setting, the day’s royal proclamation was to shutter the Department of Education. Even the framing of the image above is designed to make his fake classroom students look ‘inclusive’. This at a time when his administration is erasing equity and inclusivity from American life and history. In my view, it was a sickening act of child exploitation, as the children held up copies of his executive order designed to steal money from the poor and most vulnerable children in America. It reminded me of the image of Stuart Lockwood, the child held hostage and pictured below with Saddam Hussein. Stuart was one of the human shields held by the dictator in Iraq before the start of the Gulf War.

Stuart Lockwood a child hostage of Saddam Hussein before the start of the Gulf war

Trump claims he’s shuttering the Department of Education because it has failed American children. He said and I quote, ‘We have the worst education almost in the large world, the world people know about” I’ll leave you to pick the bones out of that literary masterpiece of a sentence. I can only assume this must be an act of retribution for his own failed education? Joking aside, this is just another in a long line of lies and disinformation. He’s suggesting his Executive Order will shift the responsibility for educating America’s children, from a failing government department to the States. This is a cynical and deliberate bare faced lie, given education is already the responsibility of the states, both in funding and education curriculum.

Before we address the core issue, let’s talk voter demographics. Overall, 34% of registered voters identify as independents, 33% as Democrats and 29% as Republicans. It’s an absolute fallacy that US politics is MAGA vs Liberals. The real sway still lies in the center ground of American politics and in any event, the education of America’s children should surely not be party political?

Over decades, Republicans have worked diligently to abuse power when they are in office and obstruct power when in opposition. Their biggest strength has always been their ability to control the narrative. In 2008 Obama was on the precipice of changing America for the better. He had been left the biggest financial crisis in decades as a direct result of Republican fiscal mismanagement and deregulation.

The people were angry and he brought hope where there had been none for decades. The response from Republicans was 8 years of obstruction using every lever of power they had, to obstruct the change so desperately needed in the US. Let’s not forget, 11 out of the last 12 recessions were under Republican administrations. Every piece of economic evidence points to Republicans not just being fiscally incompetent, but criminally negligent in the management of the country’s finances. Yet every cycle, they own the narrative and present the opposite argument. To make matters worse, Americans buy it time and time again.

So why is all this important in the context of Education? The sole Republican driver for everything is PROFIT over people, even over over children. It doesn’t matter what it is, profit MUST be the primary objective. Healthcare, Education, Prisons, Public Transport, I could go on. At the same time, the thing they LOATHE most, is regulation. They believe health, safety and protections for the vulnerable and disabled, are obstacles to the maximisation of profit for them and their friends. There are no sacred cows in Trump’s world.

Education has been a privatisation target for decades. It’s viewed by Republicans as an opportunity. All big business needs to commoditize children, is a president prepared to create a permissive environment for them to hoover up huge amounts of taxpayer dollars. This Executive Order is simply Trump weaving a web of deceit that facilitates yet more transfer of public funds to his corporate benefactors.

In a very informative piece in Education Week by Mark Lieberman, (linked below), he notes ‘The approved law (funding bill), lacks an explicit requirement for the Trump administration to spend all of the money appropriated by Congress.’ He goes on to say, ‘…it gives the executive branch more discretion over how to allocate resources than it would have if Congress had approved its full annual budget on schedule.’

https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/what-the-latest-federal-funding-law-means-for-schools/2025/03

In short, it gives Trump the ability to substitute his own priorities, because the bill does not spell out what the administration is specifically required to do with the money. It’s typical Trump, he operates where vagary is king.

Rest assured, Trump’s corporate donors are ready and waiting to gorge themselves on taxpayer dollars. To them, throwing American children under the bus, is just the price of doing business. Be in no doubt, this has nothing to do with improving educational standards, it’s about PROFIT and nothing else. Using the DOE as a Patsy, provides a perfect opportunity for big profits.

The biggest victims in this cash bonanza for the rich, will be poor children primarily in red states. If improving educational attainment is the objective, you don’t need to shutter the Department of Education. States control education funding and the curriculum. The Department is not failing children, the states are. DOE is is just conveniently taking the blame for their failure. The department is Lee Harvey Oswald and Trump is Jack Ruby.

The facts show, students in blue states score significantly higher on outcome measures of math and reading in grades four and eight than do students in red states. There is generally speaking, higher levels of investment in blue versus red states and this is arguably reflected in outcomes. Of course, this is a very simplistic measure of what is a more complex picture.

If we look at the distribution of federal education funding, there is little doubt, red states benefit the most from DOE support. Once again those who voted for Trump are the people with the most to lose from the very measure they are applauding. Yet another example of MAGA voters cheering while punching themselves in the face, on the road to poverty and substandard education. This is the tragic result of the false narrative being created to steal tax dollars to hand to the rich.

To get into the heart of the problem, we need to take a much deeper look at education reform, but that’s a separate debate for another day. There are clearly a whole host of factors as to why educational attainment has been consistently declining, and not all of them are about schools. However, the question at hand, is not societal shifts, but the simple lie that the DOE is responsible for educational decline.

Without micro analysis, the primary purpose of the DOE is NOT to educate, but to provide SUPPLEMENTAL ASSISTANCE to meet the needs of low income areas and special educational needs. It is a national EDUCATION ENABLER, designed to provide a level playing field for learning. If you look at the budget on average over the years, only around 9% of public school funding came from the federal government. In 2021/22 this increased to 13,7% as a result of COVID and the subsequent recovery period. This was the highest it had been since 1989/90.

So what percentage of the budget is used for the programs it delivers?

• Child nutrition programs - 27.9%

• Education for the disadvantaged (Title 1) - 19.0%

• Special educational needs - 15.1%

• Head Start 11.2%

Of course there are other disbursements, but they are minor in relation to the above. While each of these provisions are designed to help students, they are enabling measures to provide a platform for the states to better deliver education. They’re there to help provide a level playing field for less well off children to achieve their best educational potential.

To claim the DOE is a failed department is utter nonsense nonsense. It is delivering on the parameters that were set. Whether it is doing it efficiently is a separate but important question that should be constantly under review. In any event, this is not a justification for shuttering the entire Department. Certainly if we wanted to look at waste in government, we wouldn’t have to look much further than Congress and the amount of waste generated by the Republican Party on circus hearings and performative legislative acts. There were numerous nothing burger legislative proposals, put forward merely for social media publicity and political fundraising. Indeed, if Marjorie Taylor Green and many other Republican legislators were paid on results in the 118th Congress, they would now been living in a homeless shelter.

There are so many ways to dice and slice stats, but Republicans are obsessed with stripping government to the bone. It’s such and obsession that they are prepared to sacrifice the economic welfare of their own voters including it appears, future opportunities for their children. There is a constant drum beat that Woke Liberals are destroying America, their acceptance of gay and transexual communities is destroying American family values. Frankly this is an insult to the intelligence of right minded citizens.

The Brookings Institute shows (adjusted for trump 2024 wins), around 67%, of America’s GDP comes from blue counties. In blue states, the average family income is roughly $10,000 higher than in red states. In states like Mississippi and Louisiana, the difference is above 30% lower. Republicans represent an economic base situated in the nation’s struggling small towns and rural areas, hence the reflection of support provided for education by the very department Trump is gutting. As for family values, Republican-controlled states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:

• Spousal abuse

• Obesity

• Smoking

• Teen pregnancy

• Sexually transmitted disease

• Abortion (prior to the Dobbs decision)

• Infant mortality

• Maternal Mortality

• Opiate addiction

• People on welfare

• Low educational achievement

I could go on but it’s frankly embarrassing. On X I defended the DOE, only to be met with a tsunami of abuse, being called a moron and much worse. The sad truth is, America really does have a stupidity crisis. Republicans are shielded from their gross fiscal incompetence by the Electoral College. Well educated Americans live primarily in blue states. That’s not a judgement, it’s simply a fact. Republicans have relied for decades on the uneducated to vote against their best interests. It’s well known that if you mix poor education with religion, the cultivation of a cult is almost inevitable. That’s exactly what Trump has achieved with the help of the Heritage Foundation. Any interaction with his supporters on social media is met with uninformed lies, conspiracy theories and visceral hate. It represents a state of political religious fervour that is truly terrifying and very difficult to overcome.

Education, just like real investigative media, is Trump’s ‘enemy of the people’. What he actually means is, it’s the enemy of his cult of personality. The Electoral College is the Republican’s last barricade to defend the epidemic of stupidity they rely upon in the ranks of it’s new breed of supporters.

I’m afraid until Democrats engage with those for whom apathy is their default position, there is no way to break this fever.