Thoughts on Public Education

This may seem contrarian to people who know me as the tree-hugging liberal I actually am.

My position is, we don’t need a federal department of education. We do need federal laws, the kind that all the states and territories have to honor, about what educational services the states and territories have to provide, and a few conditions on how they can deliver those services (hint: not within a framework of religion, because First Amendment).

Therefore, as noted during my close reading of Project 2025 (see part 13), I am - and trust me, this astonishes even myself - in favor of dissolving the federal Department of Education (hereinafter “ED”).

Savings to be achieved at the federal level are fairly trivial: ED has a $103 billion budget allocation, which is .95% of total budget resources. Yes, that’s less than one percent, for what’s arguably the fourth most important function of any government.

The current administration and DOGE aren’t going after ED to save money. So what’s their real interest? Here’s a breakdown of how that funding is allocated.

As you can see, the vast majority of the funding - $68 billion - goes to federal student aid, meaning loans for college.

Thus, we can deduce that this administration’s true motive for killing ED is to make higher education more difficult, and in many cases impossible, for aspiring students who don’t come from money.

Surprise! It’s about discrimination, same as all the anti-DEI measures, the anti-trans measures, and the “spy on your co-workers or risk getting fired yourself” measures. It’s about making it even harder for working-class people to attain the professional credentials that would help them move into positions of power. It’s about perpetuating the advantages of the mostly white rulers of American business, and perpetuating the disadvantages of everyone else.

Has institutional discrimination ever made any country great? It’s made some countries rich (looking at the colonizers) but in no country ever has discrimination produced any benefit to its citizens who were not members of the ruling class.

The USA isn’t supposed to have a ruling class. It’s supposed to have government of the people, by the people, and for the people. “The People” means everybody.

Anyway, given that ED has become a political football while contributing less than 14% of most states’ K-12 public education funding, I think the Democrats of the 119th Congress should get off their asses and submit a bill for the official, legal, organized dissolution of this department.

Part of that should be a line-by-line deletion of all federal laws and regulations concerning the states’ use of their education dollars, including Title IX, which is being employed to actively discriminate against gender-nonconforming students in the same way government funding policy used to be (and foreseeably soon will be again) employed to discriminate against non-white students.

To replace the civil rights and human rights measures tacked onto the current ED structure, part of the new legislation should be a bill of states’ and students’ rights in education.

What happens for college students if federal student loan programs are discontinued? A bill of dissolution would have to lay out alternatives, but you can be sure the billionaires’ club is poised to create a range of student loan structures within for-profit finance corporations that they own and operate. The loans already active may have to be handled that way – i.e. privatized – which has long been an option for many. At least if you start out with a commercial loan, you won’t get screwed by having your public loan sold to a commercial bank later on.

Citizens, at the state level, should be a lot more vocal about the costs and benefits of higher education. In view of a majority of voters choosing as they have, arguments in favor of tax dollars going to college loans are less likely to attract support than in the past. Too many people have been burned by expensive college degrees that haven’t produced actual careers, and a lot of people disagree with student loan forgiveness. Take this off the table.

Back to K-12, I found a breakdown of public-school funding per student by state, with lots of statistical analysis and global context. Which states spend the most and the least, how much of that is federal, state, and local funding – it’s all laid out here.

So what happens for the states if federal K-12 funding stops?

The first thing is that every state has to either cut its spending per student by around 14% or find a way to make up the deficit locally. There are tons of ways to do that, which won’t be popular, because they mostly involve higher taxes. Either a state can institute a specific education tax (I’d suggest taxes on gaming transactions and on all smoking-related products) or it can raise property taxes – or it can solicit sponsorship by the state’s major industries. Personally, I think that would be more than fair. You want skilled workers? Help educate our kids. If that means more vocational training in the public schools, well, GOOD. It’s probably easier for a qualified plumber to get into college ten years on than it is for an education-debt-laden lawyer to switch to plumbing.

Property taxes as a school funding mechanism are problematic for me because the funds are not pooled. Schools in low-property-value areas get less money than schools in high-property-value areas (this is what “school district” means). So, in case it isn’t obvious: property taxes should be pooled and all schools should receive the same amount per student.

Now, what would be actively good about getting the federal government’s nose out of public schools?

It might be easier to keep religion out of public schools, because the citizens of each state would have more leverage to demand true religious liberty – meaning nobody’s pet version of the Christian bible becomes a school text. It would also be easier to keep the military out of public schools. No federal dollars? Okay, fine: no ROTC or ASVAB, either.

Where could schools immediately reduce expenses without damaging educational outcomes? Cut intermural sports programs.

By all means, teach the games as part of physical education. Have intramural games with teams chosen by height and weight, versus genitalia. Maybe hold a sports camp during the summer (along with arts, science, theater, and citizenship camps), but no more acting like our public schools exist to feed athletes into the pro sports machine.

(Would this mean colleges have to stop considering sports proficiency in admissions? Why yes, yes it would.)

I have approximately a thousand ideas about the ideal K-12 curriculum, though it’s been so long since I was in school myself that I honestly have no clue what’s current. I also have a thousand ideas about what services should be provided on campuses. In any case, those are not the true issue.

Upholding the public value of investment in our younger generations is the true issue.

Postscript: there will be some states that cannot or will not invest more in their schools, or who permit public schools to choose the unconstitutional route of religious dogma over actual education. Parents who value a good education will home-school, enroll their kids in private schools, or leave those states. They’ve been doing it for years. So those states will get less and less educated; industry and business will invest less and less in those states, because they can’t get qualified workers. It’s an easily forecast downward spiral, entirely within the power of citizens to arrest and correct – if they choose to.