Project 2025: Department of Education
/With comments by Brent Brayko and Ed Dorff
This department is, of course, close to my heart, as I was a teacher over many years, across five states, and I currently serve on the local Board of Education. Still, I will strive to provide my readers a thorough, objective – but dramatically shortened – summary of this section, which occupies 43 pages of the original mandate.
About the Author
Let’s begin, as always, by learning something of the author. Lindsey M. Burke directs the Center for Education Policy for the Heritage Foundation. She also serves on the board of Learn4Life, a national network of free charter schools, and she has written very clearly about her position on the federal government’s work in the preschool arena: She employs the word “incompetence” and says “the rhetoric does not match reality when it comes to the effects of early childhood education.” Burke has also published much in opposition to the Biden Administration on all aspects of education. She opposes Title IX changes and the effect of “illegal immigration” on our schools. Her published work clearly indicates support for universal school choice.
Eliminate the Department of Education
Ms. Burke makes her position on this department clear at the outset: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” She advises that we should follow the path outlined by Milton Friedman in 1955, “wherein education is publicly funded but education decisions are made by families.” To accomplish that, Burke explains, “every parent should have the option to direct his or her child’s share of education funding through an education savings account (ESA), funded overwhelmingly by state and local taxpayers... block- granted to states without strings.”
Her introduction to higher education is also worth considering early on. She says “many institutions of higher education” are “hostile to free expression, open academic inquiry, and American exceptionalism. Federal post- secondary policy,” Burke asserts, “should be rebalanced to focus far more on bolstering the workforce skills of Americans who have no interest in pursuing a four-year academic degree.” She advocates for technical education on an equal footing with college degrees and warns that our “higher education establishment” has been “captured by woke ‘diversicrats.’”
History of the Department
Burke offers a short history of the US Department of Education, a concept born of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, part of a Congressional effort to “improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged students by providing additional compensatory funding for low-income children and lower-income college students.” She then mentions many of the huge funding programs that have, over the years, supported the department and public schools, including pandemic-related ESSER funds, as well as the outlay of funds through Pell grants, student loans, etc. Burke reminds us that the department was formally established in 1980 by Jimmy Carter as a “corralling” mechanism. And what needed to be “corralled”? She asserts that, “Since 1965... dozens of new laws and programs” were enacted “as federal ‘solutions’ to...education problems.” She says that, “for those interested in expanding federal funding and influence in education,” such a department would act as “a single, captive agency” that “would allow them to promote their agenda more effectively across Administrations.”
Although establishment of the Department of Education, Burke explains, was to “reduce administrative costs and improve efficiency,” it has, she claims, “had the opposite effect.” She cites an $80 billion outlay in 2022, not including student loans, and she mentions “red tape,” citing “Biden’s requirement that state education agencies and school districts submit ‘equity’ plans [to receive] COVID recovery ESSER funds in the American Rescue Plan (ARP).” Other words Burke employs to introduce the Department of Education include “ineffective... duplicative... unproductive.” She recommends that states be entrusted with “flexible, formula-driven block grants,” citing these likely improvements:
More educational freedom for families, possibly including education savings accounts “managed by charitable foundations”
More choice for “federal children,” meaning those in D.C., on tribal land, or part of a US military family – but the administration “housed in agencies that are already serving these families”
State and local control over education funding
Expected repayment of student loans, “treating taxpayers like investors”
Protection for “the federal student loan portfolio from predatory politicians”
Rejection of gender ideology and Critical Race Theory to safeguard civil rights
End of executive overreach
A History of Failure
Here the author provides a series of charts I cannot possibly replicate well in this space, so I will do my best to summarize the information:
A chart of average eighth-grade reading scores is based on a small sample, only 270 students, but it is alarming, nevertheless: an upward trend from 1992 to 2013, followed by a markedly downward trend from 2017 to 2022.
Average reading scores for fourth-graders follow the same trend: upward until 2015, then downward from 2015 to 2022.
The eighth-grade math scores chart shows a steady upward trend from 1990 to 2013, followed by a somewhat steady downward trend to 2024.
Average fourth-grade math scores trend upward until 2013, level off from 2013 to 2019, and then fall to 2022.
[Here Burke cites a 1998 US House of Representatives committee report called Education at a Crossroads: What Works and What’s Wasted, which did, in fact, find that, even back in 1998: 40 percent of fourth-graders did not read at even a basic level; half of students from urban high school districts failed to graduate on time; the average 1996 “nation’s report card” scores for 17-year-olds were lower than they’d been in 1984; US high school seniors’ math performance was superior to only 2 out of 21 nations to which it was compared; the longer American students are in school, the farther behind the rest of the world they fall; and “public institutions of higher education annually spend $1 billion on remedial education.”]
How to Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness
Now, the data cited directly above did not come from Ms. Burke’s report but from the original report she mentioned. Let’s now return to the Mandate. Burke says that report (above) suggests “that states completed nearly 50 million hours of paperwork just to get their federal education spending,” and that only 65-70 cents of every federal dollar actually reached the classroom. What she proposes is this: “dollars are sent to states through straightforward per-pupil allocations or in the form of grants that states can put toward any lawful education purpose under state law.” Therefore, she advises, “reform, eliminate, or move the department’s programs and offices to appropriate agencies.”
The author suggests “program and office prioritization with the Department,” summarized as follows:
The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) includes 36 programs: She offers 9 specific suggestions for transfer of programs to different federal agencies or departments, block-granting them to states, or eliminating them.
Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education: Transfer of all to either the Dept. of Labor or Bureau of Indian Education
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS):
Block-grant IDEA funding to local education agencies through HHS
Transfer grants for Native Americans to Bureau of Indian Affairs
Move anti-discrimination services to Justice or Civil Rights
“Phase out earmarks for a variety of special institutions, as originally envisioned.”
Office for Post-secondary Education (OPE): Eliminate it or move it to Dept. of Labor; block-grant funding specifically to HBCUs and tribal colleges; move programs important to national security to Dept. of State
Institute of Education Sciences (IES): move to Census Bureau and National Science Foundation.
Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA): “spin off FSA and its student loan obligations to a new government corporation with professional governance and management.” Governed by presidential appointees, funded with Congressional appropriation. Assign federal loan program to Treasury Department.
Office for Civil Rights: Move to Justice Department
Additional bureaus and offices: as offices close, allow staff to join other agencies if needed, based on expertise.
Legislative Changes Recommended
At this point Ms. Burke cites specific laws related to education “that require repeal.”
Charter School Grant Program: First authorized in 1994, it should be repealed, she explains, because it “increases the federal footprint in the charter school sector by ignoring statute and adding to the list of requirements imposed on charter schools.” She proposes: “rescind the new requirements and lessen the federal restrictions.”
Civil Rights Data Collection: Changes made in late 2021 should be rescinded, she says. They “proposed to create and collect data on a new ‘nonbinary’ sex category” and to “retire data collection” about the number of teams/sports “in which only male or female students participate.” This is “contrary to law,” she explains, and “impinges on student and parent rights.” She says to “rescind these changes.”
Student Assistance General Provisions, Federal Perkins Loan Program, and William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program Final Regulations: Were dramatically expanded in 2023, Burke says, “without clear congressional authorization at tremendous cost to taxpayers.” Rescind them.
Title IX (nondiscrimination on basis of sex): “The Biden Education Department seeks to gut the hard-earned rights of women.” He “trample[s] women’s and girls’ athletic opportunities and due process” and “threaten[s] free speech and religious liberty, and erode[s] parental rights.”
“Prohibit” any appropriations or regulations under Biden.
“Restore” the Betsy De Vos regulations of 2020 (“sex” as recognized at birth)
Protect “faith-based educational institutions, programs, and activities”
Restore “due process protection for accused individuals”
Numerous reasons to reverse regulations, including “no scientific or legal basis for redefining ‘sex’ to ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ in Title IX”; encourages children to seek “experimental medical interventions.” Therefore:
“Redefin[e] ‘sex’ to mean ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’”
Sex is “a fixed biological fact”
Review Title IX investigations and drop all ongoing investigations; school districts should be free to drop policy changes pressured by Biden administration
“publicize the nature of the overreach engaged in...”
Address “paperwork obfuscation” associated with FERPA
Title VI – School Discipline and Disparate Impact: “Federal overreach has pushed school leaders to prioritize racial parity in school discipline indicators... over student safety.” Obama policies led to “restorative justice” policies which substantially harmed academics and school climate. Trump rescinded them and corrected the overreach. Review all Title VI cases and resolution agreements and be clear that “the agencies will no longer investigate Title VI cases that exclusively rest on allegations of disparate impact.” Finally, “Although... mainstream news outlets are sure to frame it as an attack on civil rights... assure that the purpose of the Civil Rights Act is not inverted through a disparate impact standard to provide a pretext for theoretically endless federal meddling.”
Equity in IDEA (students with disabilities): Rescind the 2017 regulation requiring consideration of race and ethnicity in serving students with disabilities. Such identification is now based on “flawed assumptions.” Burke asserts that “this can mean raiding special education funding to pay for CRT-inspired ‘equity’ consultants and professional development.” She urges to rescind without replacement and to compile “the best research on this subject and share it directly with state superintendents and state special education leaders... who have been led by this regulation to believe a false problem diagnosis.”
“Provide school meals to children in need; do not use federal meals to support radical ideology.” The program has been expanded since the 1940s, Burke says, and is now “an entitlement for nearly all students, regardless of family income levels.” Prohibit connecting the school meals program with Title IX enforcement.
Income-driven repayment (IDR) plans should be phased out. They have “proliferated beyond reason” and are now “so generous that they require no or only token repayment from many students.” They’ve become “delayed grant programs.” She recommends “an income exemption equal to the poverty line and require payments of 10 percent of income above the exemption [with] no loan forgiveness [or only] after 25 years.”
Student Data and Student Loans
Here the author urges “other structural reforms the Department of Education requires.” She focuses first on federal data collection, explaining that “one of the most important factor[s] influencing student educational achievement and attainment is family structure.” Burke says such student data related to family structure should be made publicly available, but the collection be done by the Census Bureau. Data focused on “graduation rates and average earnings” are not as telling, she suggests, as the impact of “socioeconomic factors on student outcomes.” Data must be “risk adjusted.” She also recommends eliminating the “negotiated rulemaking requirement” and then suggests reforming the Office of Federal Student Aid. She says we must “end the abuse of FSA’s loan forgiveness programs” and “consider returning to a system [of] private lenders, backed by government guarantees.” If Congress will not reform federal student aid, Burke says, we should “consolidate all federal loan programs into one new program”; she offers four specific recommendations for its success. Finally, she says “The Biden Administration has... pillaged the student loan portfolio for crass political purposes without regard to the needs of current taxpayers or future students. This must never happen again.” She advises: “spin off federal student aid into a new government corporation with professional governance and management.”
New Ideas for 2025+
Ms. Burke offers “new policy priorities for 2025 and beyond,” including some “new legislation that should be prioritized”:
“Rescind the NEA’s [teachers’ union] congressional charter,” she advises, because it “is a demonstrably radical special interest group that overwhelmingly supports left-of-center policies and policymakers.” She suggests the NEA has used taxpayer money “for radical causes favoring a single political party.”
Reinforce “the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and prohibit compelled speech.” Apparently this “compelled speech” is compelled in teacher training programs and is related to Critical Race Theory. She claims that CRT forces students to “defend the false idea that America is systemically racist.” Furthermore, Burke asserts, CRT is “disrupting community values such as equality under the law and colorblindness.” Her goal, she says, is “robust classroom discussions, not censorship.” She advises that parents should be able to review curricular materials online, and states should prohibit “compelled speech.”
Advance “legal protections for parental rights in education,” Burke advises, her two main concerns being that schools will assist students in “social or medical gender transition” and might demand “curriculum or lessons regarding critical race or gender theory.” Her solution? A Parents’ Bill of Rights” and amendment to FERPA and PPRA to provide parents (and students 18 or older) “relief, together with attorneys’ fees and costs if a prevailing party, against educational institutions and agencies that violate rights.”
Protect parental rights in policy related to “a social contagion in which minor children, especially girls, are attempting to make life-altering decisions using puberty blockers and other hormone treatments and even surgeries to remove or alter vital body parts.” Parents must be notified before any school system support for “radical gender ideology,” she says. This includes: a ban on school personnel addressing a student with pronouns not related to the birth certificate or biological gender without parental permission; keeping secrets from parents about their children.
Advance school choice policies through a broader voucher program, the ESA program, and/or full control of the admissions process for private schools.
Transform school systems controlled by the federal government (tribal, Dept. of Defense, District of Columbia) through the ESA (Education Savings Account) program, allowing parents to spend taxpayer money in their schools of choice. Why? “Educators at Department of Defense schools ... world[wide] are using radical gender theory and critical race theory in... lessons... advocating for more racial discrimination.”
“Sunset the Department of Education altogether... Over a 10-year period... federal spending should be phased out and states should [make decisions].”
DEI, Loans, China and More
Additional Reforms, both K-12 and higher education, include these recommendations: Allow states to opt out of federal education programs and “put their share of federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law”; several recommendations regarding higher education, including concern about the “extent to which accreditors have forced colleges and universities, many...faith-based institutions, to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that conflict with federal civil rights laws, state laws, and the institutional mission and culture of the schools”; prohibit DEI mandates; protect faith-based institutions by prohibiting standards that conflict with their religion.
Regarding student loans, numerous specific recommendations are offered for the next administration, including an end to the reckless “policy fetish of forgiving and canceling student loans with abandon.” The following advice is also offered: “Cap indirect costs at universities... [they] cross-subsidize leftist agendas and the research of billion-dollar organizations such as Google and the Ford Foundation... use this...cash to pay for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts.” Also cap donations from private organizations to “help reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas.” In addition, confront “the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on higher education,” allow “competency-based education to flourish,” and reform funding for “Area Studies.”
Burke recommends the executive orders the next conservative president should issue, to include the following goals:
Treat guidance as nonbinding to: uphold the First Amendment; ensure no college degree is required for a job unless specifically demanded by the job description; eliminate the “list of shame” related to religious exemptions for faith-based colleges.
Related to FERPA and PPRA, ensure “that the law does not deprive parents of their right to access any school health records.”
Regarding private schools and the “D.C. Scholarship Program... issue an executive order expanding the list of allowable accreditors.”
To increase transparency around program performance and DEI influence:
Account for the spread of DEI/CRT/gender ideology via federal programs and grants
Review outcomes for GEAR UP and other programs for low-income students
Report “on the negative influence of action civics” [encouraging students to learn history and citizenship by doing]
“... show the impact of family structure on student achievement”
Account for CARES Act education expenditures
Show “how many dollars make their way to the classroom in every federal education grant and program.”
Pursue antitrust legislation against the American Bar Association.
Coordinate with the White House and Other Agencies
Regarding “regulations arising under civil rights laws,” Burke says, the department must coordinate wtith others to:
Examine the increase in Congressional appropriations to the department from $14 billion to $95 billion with “lack of improvements in student outcomes.”
Transfer department programs to other agencies, including: Eliminate competitive grant programs; “end time-based and occupation-based loan forgiveness”; accept that it’s “not the responsibility of the federal government to provide taxpayer $$ [for] a pipeline from high school to college.”
Finally, Burke closes her discussion with a note that the annual salaries and expenses for the 4400 employees of the Department of Education total $2.2 billion. She concedes that mission-essential staff should move with their constituent programs as they are relocated, but the department should be eliminated.
So, what do readers think?
Following my own analysis of this section of the Mandate for the purposes of summarizing it, I turned to the commentary offered by two local educators Brent Brayko and Ed Dorff. I will share their insights with you now.
Brent Brayko has worked in education for 32 years as a high school teacher, curriculum coordinator, and administrator in both the US and overseas. Currently he is an adjunct professor at St Norbert College in the Teacher Education Department. Brent offers his reactions to the Mandate as it relates to the Department of Education:
Decentralization has always looked good on paper or in theory. However it has rarely worked well in practice. For issues as important to the future of our republic as education, consistent implementation of policy is vital. If education were completely disseminated to the states, we would end up with fifty vastly different approaches and philosophies. Federal mandates such as Title I and IX have moved us forward as a nation, and it would be a step backward if states could decide what to implement and enforce – or not – based on political whims. I have never heard of anything so backward in thinking about education in this country.
Concerning families being given access to an education savings account (ESA) and school choice thereby expanded, I believe that free public education was created to give access to all, and it has been largely a successful institution in US society. The answer to helping solve school problems (most notably urban) lies in increasing funding - not decreasing. School choice often simply amplifies inequity in this country.
As for Critical Race Theory, mentioned often by Burke, I believe CRT has been misunderstood and twisted to suggest that teachers are encouraging the dominant culture to question their race and be ashamed of past practices. Critical Race Theory, from my understanding, has always been a way of CRITICALLY examining race issues (which are primarily a man-made social construct) and exploring the causes and the effects. It seems to me that people who don’t want to see issues examined from different perspectives in school would be thrilled to see them simply not addressed. That would be a tragedy.
Burke wishes to eliminate Obama-era language indicating schools would lose federal funding for not implementing “lenient” school policies such as restorative justice to ensure equitable discipline in dealing with different races. Restorative justice and other programs work. I have seen it firsthand as an educator and principal. Zero tolerance has little effect other than to speed up the school-to-prison pipeline. The skills learned in these programs teach lifelong coping skills and more. The underlying causes of serious misbehaviors are societal; the response to simply “get tougher” does nothing to address the underlying causes.
Finally, I want to agree with Burke on one point: the emphasis on jobs and careers not requiring college degrees. Based on my thirty-plus years in education, I would argue that this has been an emphasis for decades. There is no explicit push for four-year degrees being the only solid post-secondary path. On the contrary, we’ve seen steady growth in partnership between vocational and tech schools and high schools, and this trend is only growing.
Ed Dorff, a retired educator, has served as principal at elementary, middle and high school levels. He has taught elementary through graduate school. He’s a Wisconsin Master Educator, former school board member, and twice recognized as a Wallace Fellow in Urban School Leadership. Here is what Ed has to say about Lindsey Burke’s treatise.
As I see in much of Project 2025, statements, rationale, and determinations made regarding the Department of Education are highly subjective. It is fair to ask of each recommendation, “Where is the data to support this?” Granted, there are plenty of statistics scattered through this chapter that support Lindsey Burke’s assertion that traditional schools have been performing “beyond incompetence,” but, as with so many statistics, they fail to tell a complete story.
I was a school principal for thirty years, and most of the schools I served were high-poverty, high-mobility schools. There is no denying that oftentimes our standardized test scores were below average. This was at a time when no consideration was given to the effects of poverty, high-mobility, second language acquisition, and most importantly, value added. This last consideration refers to the amount of learning gained during a school year. Regularly, when we studied the amount of gain our students made, it was as high as and often higher than the district averages.
Dr. Burke of the Heritage Foundation uses a lot of phrasing that at first glance would find agreement with anyone. How could anyone be opposed to such issues as education freedom, local control, safeguarding civil rights, reducing red tape, and, of course, choice? Well, as someone once said, “the devil is in the details.”
Three of the ideas in this section of Project 2025 I found especially troubling were effectively eliminating Title I (recommended in the Health & Human Services section), rescinding IDEA regulations, and abdicating federal oversight of the latter by issuing “no-strings block grants” to individual states. How hard is it to imagine that, should the proponents of Project 2025 come into political power, we could see the eventual repeal of Brown v Board of Education (1954)? “Impossible,” you say? (Yes, it has stood for 70 years, with many challenges both de jure and de facto.) However, with enough pushing from certain quarters, along with the “no-strings attached” block grants, could it go the way of Roe v Wade?
Perhaps the most laughable element of Dr. Burke’s recommendations is the scope and scale of funding and programming she wants to send to other federal agencies – after eliminating the Department of Education. There’s too much red tape! There’s too much bureaucratic overreach! There’s too much paperwork! Let’s fix all that and more by sending all those functions now carried out by one department to the departments of HHS, Labor, Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, and Defense. Yes, I can see how that will be so much more effective and efficient!
There is one part of this reform suggestion I do agree with: Funding for school meals should never be tied to ideology. The purpose of school meals is to feed children, and it should never be tied to partisan politics. We have already seen school districts threaten to refuse some forms of aid rather than follow certain federal mandates/guidelines – a perfect example of the adage, “when elephants fight, the grass suffers.”