Peter Greene, veteran teacher, master writer, the voice of wisdom and experience, sets the record straight about the purpose of the U.S. Department of Education. Contrary to what wrestling-entrepreneur Linda McMahon (Trump’s Secretary of Education) says, the Department was not created to raise test scores. The Department was created to promote equal access to educational opportunity. That equalization of resources has not yet been achieved, but Trump intends to abolish the goal altogether. In his thinking, everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, unlike him, who was born into wealth and privilege.
Peter Greene writes:
The official assault on the Department of Education has begun.
If it seems like there’s an awful lot more talking around this compared to, say, the gutting of the IRS or USAID, that may be because the regime doesn’t have the legal authority to do the stuff that they are saying they want to do. The executive order is itself pretty weak sauce– “the secretary is to investigate a way to form a way to do stuff provided it’s legal.” And that apparently involves sitting down in front of every camera and microphone and trying to make a case.
A major part of that involves some lies and misdirection. The Trumpian line that we spend more than anyone and get the worst results in the world is a lie. But it is also a misdirection, a misstatement about the department’s actual purpose.
Likewise, it’s a misstatement when the American Federation of Children characterizes the “failed public policy” of “the centralization of American education.” But the Department wasn’t meant–or built–to centralize US education.
The department’s job is not to make sure that American education is great. It is expressly forbidden to exert control over the what and how of education on the state and local level.
The Trump administration is certainly not the first to ignore any of that. One of the legacies of No Child Left Behind is the idea that feds can grab the levers of power to attempt control of education in the states. Common Core was the ultimate pretzel– “Don’t call it a curriculum because we know that would be illegal, but we are going to do our damnedest to standardize the curriculum across every school in every state.” For twenty-some years, various reformsters have tried to use the levers of power in DC to reconfigure US education as a centrally planned and coordinated operation (despite the fact that there is nowhere on the globe to point to that model as a successful one). And even supporters of the department are speaking as if the department is an essential hub for the mighty wheel of US education.
Trump is just working with the tools left lying around by the bipartisan supporters of modern education reform.
So if the department’s mission is not to create central organization and coordination, then what is it?
I’d argue that the roots of the department are not the Carter administration, but the civil rights movement of the sixties and the recognition that some states and communities, left to their own devices, would try to cheat some children out of the promise of public education. Derek Black’s new book Dangerous Learning traces generations of attempts to keep Black children away from education. It was (roughly) the 1960s when the country started to grapple more effectively with the need for federal power to oppose those who would stand between children and their rights.
The programs that now rest with the department came before the department itself, programs meant to level the playing field so that the poor (Title I) and the students with special needs (IDEA) would get full access. The creation of the department stepped up that effort and, importantly, added an education-specific Civil Rights office to the effort.
And it was all created to very carefully not usurp the power of the states. When Trump says he’ll return control of education to the states, he’s speaking bunk, because the control of education has always remained with the states– for better or worse.
The federal mission was to make the field more level, to provide guardrails to keep the states playing fair with all students, to make sure that students had the best possible access to the education they were promised.
Trump has promised that none of the grant programs or college loan programs would be cut (and you can take a Trump promise to the… well, somewhere) but if all the money is still going to keep flowing, then what would the loss of the department really mean?
For one thing, the pieces that aren’t there any more. The Office of Civil Rights is now gutted and repurposed to care only about violations of white christianist rights. The National Center of Education Statistics was the source of any data about how education was working out (much of it junk, some of it not). The threat of turning grants into unregulated block grants, or being withheld from schools that dare to vaccinate or recognize diversity or keep naughty books in the library.
So the money will still flow, but the purpose will no longer be to level the playing field. It will not be about making sure every child gets the education they’re entitled to– or rather, it will rest on the MAGA foundation, the assumption that some people deserve less than others.
That’s what the loss of the department means– a loss of a department that, however imperfectly, is supposed to protect the rights of students to an education, regardless of race, creed, zip code, special needs, or the disinterest and prejudice of a state or community. Has the department itself lost sight of that mission from time to time? Sure has. Have they always done a great job of pursuing that mission? Not at all. But if nobody at all is supposed to be pursuing that goal, what will that get us?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Turning Title 1 over to the states is a way to undermine the education of disadvantaged students, many of whom are Black and Brown. It is unlikely that most red states will use those block grants for the same purpose that Title 1 was created. As Greene states, its original intention was to help “level the playing field” for disadvantaged children. Of course, it didn’t turn these needy students into middle class students, but it did make a significant difference in the academic achievement of so many struggling students. It is educational malfeasance that these funds will likely be squandered to pay for pet projects by so many red state governors.
Another big loss is civil rights. When there is discrimination or abuse based on color, gender or sexual orientation, there will be no federal agency to help the complainants, but that is exactly what these right wing extremists want. They intend to discriminate with impunity.
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“... It was (roughly) the 1960s when the country started to grapple more effectively with the need for federal power to oppose those who would stand between children and their rights.”
For many years, it was state and local governments that appeared to many people as the defender of personal freedom. This reputation was not always deserved, however, and anyone who lived In the age of White Supremacy and suffered its hostility recognized that local law enforcement was in cahoots with the very forces that sought to suppress a people. Nothing much has changed. When billionaires force the national budget into penury by not paying taxes, the rest of us compete for the scraps. So we make federal laws to force local government to pay for things it should support. And people get frustrated with a federal government that forces them to be good to its citizens.
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In theory the right supports personal freedom as long as it fits with their version of so-called freedom. These same “freedom defenders” openly step on the rights of others while they suppress the vote and freedom of speech. In reality most of them are hypocrites that mislead the gullible.
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Often local political entities champion the rights of the group at the expense of the other person. Thus the right can claim to champion the rights of one group and accuse the other of trying to take things from that group.
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FYI From Truthout: Leonard Leo is still at it. CBK
https://truthout.org/articles/dark-money-is-fueling-efforts-to-kill-consumer-protections-at-supreme-court/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=ad86419323-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_03_27_08_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-ad86419323-652229581
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I find Greene’s summary to be lacking historical context. It tells us about the era of1965 civil rights law forward, and speaks only to that function. What did Education do from 1867 to 1965? It was formed originally as the Dept of Education, but was demoted within a year [for fear it would interfere with local schools!] to the Office of Education, reporting to Dept of Interior, then to the Federal Security Agency, but never discontinued.
All I know about its original mission: collect stats on schools from all states and report status to the nation, as well as provide advice to schools. Eventually this included teasing out data on performance and comparing one region to another. In 1953, Eisenhower made it a part of Health Education and Welfare agency.
In the wake of ’65 civil rights laws, tasks were added: Title I funding, and in ’75, IDEA funding. Meanwhile since late ‘50s, Dept of Ed was in charge of administering college student loans; that program was hugely expanded in the mid-to-late ‘60s. And in late ‘60s, the NAEP was established.
One might infer the main reason to establish it as a separate agency was due its growth in scope. That reorganization also enabled the scooping up under one roof of various other ed tasks then scattered among DOD, DOJ, HUD, Dept of Ag, & a few more. Yes, it got its own Office of Civil Rights; so did the remainder of HEW, the newly-named Dept of HHS.
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