Matthew Stone of Education Week described the plans for K-12 education in a second Trump term, as they appear in Project 2025, a document written by hundreds of former Trump officials. The 44-page education section emphasizes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, distributing its functions to other agencies, converting categorical funds (like Title I for low-income children) into block grants, and rooting out “critical race theory” and any recognition of the existence of LGBT students. The document emphasizes the primacy of parental rights.
Trump has distanced himself from the document, because its recommendations are so radical, but it was prepared under the watchful eye of Kevin Roberts, president of the ultra-rightwing Heritage Foundation. Roberts is a close associate of Trump’s.
Stone wrote:
What would Donald Trump do in the realm of K-12 if voters return the former president to the White House?
He and his campaign haven’t outlined many specifics, but a recently published document that details conservative plans to completely remake the executive branch offers some possibilities. Among them:
- Title I, the $18 billion federal fund that supports low-income students, would disappear in a decade.
- Federal special education funds would flow to school districts as block grants with no strings attached, or even to savings accounts for parents to use on private school or other education expenses.
- The U.S. Department of Education would be eliminated.
- The federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws in schools would be scaled back.
The proposals are contained in a comprehensive policy agenda that’s part of a Heritage Foundation-led initiative called Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project, which includes nearly 900 pages of detailed plans for virtually every corner of the federal government and a database of potential staffers for a conservative administration. It will also feature a playbook for the first 180 days of a new term.
The agenda is designed to be ready for a conservative president to implement at the start of a new administration next year, depending on the outcome of November’s election.
Project 2025 involves former Trump administration officials and other allies of the former president, as well as dozens of aligned advocacy organizations. One of those is Moms for Liberty, the Florida-based group that rose to national prominence fighting school boards over COVID-19 safety protocols and has endorsed conservative school board candidates across the country in recent years.
On the campaign trail, Trump has said that parents should elect school principals, called for merit pay for teachers and the abolition of teacher tenure, promised to cut federal funding to schools pushing progressive social ideas, and pledged to establish universal school choice.
But because he’s released little in the way of detailed plans, Project 2025’s 44-page agenda for the U.S. Department of Education offers the clearest picture yet of the education priorities Trump could pursue in a second term, and how a second Trump administration could use the federal government to advance conservative policies like private school choice and parents’ rights that have taken root in many Republican-led states.
Trump is trying to distance himself from Project 2025 because it is so radical. But no one takes his protestations seriously.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Department of Education has been active in addressing civil rights violations as well as providing districts with additional support to serve under served populations. The GOP is on a campaign to expunge DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion. The GOP is pretending we live in post racial America where opportunity is equal for all, but segregation and discrimination remain our dirty little secret. It remains much more difficult for people of color to buy a home or get a loan. Red lining, food deserts and discrimination remain features of racially isolated communities. Right wing extremists seem to only care about the rights of white male Christians.
Title 1 was created to address inequities in educational services. The federal government acknowledges that educating disadvantaged students is costly, and Title 1 provides additional funds in order to offset some of the costs of educating these students. These funds are often used to provide direct, much needed instruction to at-risk populations. Using this money for block grants to states would defeat the purpose of these grants. Biased red states will spend the money on useless vouchers that will benefit the affluent, and services to poor students will be reduced or eliminated. Many red state public schools will collapse, and these states will be closer to creating the unfair, publicly funded, segregated private schools of their bigoted dreams. The poor and underfunded will have to fend for themselves.
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So ya thought ya was running the show
To heal the swarm of confusion, with that state luminary glow
Tell me, is something eluding you, sunshine?
Is this not what you expected to see?
If ya was running the show
Ya wouldn’t have to stage a plea
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On the stump, Donald Trump said he would like to cut Federal funding of public education by half and that it would be a wonderful thing. It blows my mind the number of times reporters ignore of forget about the most outrageous things he says. In another campaign rally, Trump literally said to his supporters, “I don’t care about you, I just want your vote.” The Biden campaign posted this the next day to be rarely heard again. Trump has nominated an arrogant Machiavellian to be his running mate, he continues to coddle to Vladimir “The Failure” Putin, bribes fossil fuel execs to fund his campaign, and kiss the ring of the Heritage Foundation despite half hearted denials of his campaign’s connections to 2025. The public schools, our common schools, are the most important institutions for our democracy. I use the plural because these are organizations that work for the immediate communities they serve, not a unitary monolith of instructional practice. It is the most important entity that has, when supported, allowed for Americans to prosper. Donald Trump doesn’t care about public schools because he has no connection to their work. and doesn’t give a damn about students or teachers. He rides from his gilded cage in South Florida to his golf course or airplane hanger in an armored limousine. He doesn’t engage in conversation with his followers, he merely stands before the sad lot of them as most of them leave his dwindling rallies well before they are over. Our public schools are in trouble because Trumps Republican Party is a grifting enterprise salivating over the resources they could purge from public schools. However, Trump didn’t start this grift. The Republican Party of old did. Yes, some Democrats have participated, but it is Republicans who are leading this charge. Reagan wanted to end the Department of education and many Republicans have promoted that for decades now. I find it ironic that the federalist approach to school governance that allows states and localities to appropriate resources and funds to their identified priorities are attacked by a political party that claims to be for local control of governance. Trump does not advocate educational policy, he salivates over institutional theft. Democrats better get their act together and get this message out. Otherwise, the only Horace Mann we will reference in the future is the private school in NYC that charges kindergartners $61,000 to attend, not the education pioneer who understood that the common school was critical for democracy.
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I once heard Frank McCourt, public school teacher and author of “Angela’s Ashes” speak at an event. He maintained that public schools and libraries are the two most democratizing forces in America. Access provides opportunity. This idea has always made sense me. These extremists are rejecting democracy and the federal government and embracing autocracy and states’ rights. They don’t even think the federal government should fund public TV.
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They don’t give a damn about the public.
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The GOP has been trying to defend PBS for decades. And anything to do with the arts.
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Good points, Paul
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well said, Paul
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He’s not distancing himself because P2025 is so radical. He is distancing himself because it has been getting bad press. Trump would run on a ” making sandwiches of babies” platform if he thought it would get him elected. He is utterly amoral and without any particular views other than, does this help Trump? He figured out that playing an ultra-conservative on his beloved TV would win him votes. Remember that his daughter’s husband, Slender Man, told Donnie that measures to stop COVID would hurt the economy, which he was running on, and encouraged him to downplay the epidemic. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans died who didn’t have to. One of his mini-mes probably told him that Project 2025 was getting a lot of bad press and that he should distance himself until the election is over with.
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Here’s a thought. Trump is kicking back because an instinct in him is begining to stir that….
‘He’s in danger of not being in charge’
Trump will hate that. So far he has been locked into the adulation he’s not noticed he’s been dancing to his audience’s tune.
Now that ‘the folk with the agendas’ are getting in on the act, he is begining to smell ‘board of directors’ take over’….. Oh no. Not in Trump’s world. He is not going to let someone publically tell him what to do.
Time for tantrums and hoo-hahs?
We can but hope that if Trump gets back in there will be so much toxic in-fighting between Trump and his cult and the Right-Wing prophets and true believers….nothing will get done.
A slender hope I know, but we have to have Hope of some sort.
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Here’s another nugget from Trump’s Project 2025:
“Congress should rescind the National Education Association’s
congressional charter” and “should conduct hearings to determine how much federal taxpayer money the NEA has used for radical causes favoring a single political party.” – page 342.
These architects of Trump’s Project 2025 are delusional and cruel.
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
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