Democrats are in a tizzy this week after former President Donald Trump took aim at the Department of Education at a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday.
“We spend more money per pupil than any other country, by far, and yet we’re at the bottom of the list,” Trump told supporters. “Out of 40, we’re ranked about No. 40, and I’m going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states, and we’re going to do it fast.”
This is not the first time Trump has suggested that he wishes to abolish the Education Department. Speaking at a rally at Temple University in June, he vowed to dissolve the department.
“We’ll be able to cut [spending on] education in half and get much better education in some of the states,” Trump said. “We’ll have the best education anywhere in the world.”
I’d like to remind exasperated liberals and overly optimistic conservatives that Trump was, in fact, the leader of the free world for four years and showed absolutely no interest in abolishing the Department of Education or any other bloated, dysfunctional government agency, for that matter. Trump’s history of hiring leaves a lot to be desired, and he repeatedly denounced and thoroughly humiliated his staunchest supporters, namely the folks behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
If Trump were to win a second term, he would be dealing with, at best, historically thin majorities in Congress, not exactly a recipe for wide-ranging, albeit necessary, reforms to the federal government.
That said: Trump is correct. The best time to abolish the Department of Education was Oct. 17, 1979, the day it was created, and the second best time is now. Using the department’s Digest of Education Statistics, the Cato Institute tracked trends in public education from 1970 to 2012, and while overall spending per pupil increased by nearly 200% and the number of public school employees increased by 100%, math, science, and reading scores remained stagnant or decreased during that time. In a sane world, any taxpayer-funded entity with such a record of abject failure would be on the chopping block.
Ineptitude aside, perhaps the most glaring problem with America’s public education system is that it has been consumed by the benefactors of the Democratic Party. Frequent Democratic surrogate Randi Weingarten and her American Federation of Teachers lobbied against children, ensuring that schools remained closed indefinitely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A public school English teacher featured last month at a rally in Las Vegas for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) boasted, “I always knew I wanted to be a teacher because I saw education for what it really was: the greatest instrument of social justice in this country.”
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Between 2021 and 2023, the Biden-Harris administration spent $244 million on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in public schools. Clearly, the Left views the Department of Education not as a tool to improve the education of children but as a weapon to use against its political opponents. Instead of capitulating to an increasingly rabid and dangerous Left and its handlers in corporate media, Republicans should move to make Trump’s recent campaign promise a reality.
Abolish the Department of Education: Children don’t need it, and the taxpayers can’t afford it. The future of education is school choice, and the GOP must take up this cause boldly and unapologetically.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.