Here's what Trump's win means for schooling in America — and the Education Department



President-elect Donald Trump has big plans for education in America.

When asked about what the Republican has in mind, Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Time, "The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver."

If Trump delivers on his campaign promises and corresponding Agenda47 plan for education, then the Education Department as it now exists is toast, and most of its present responsibilities are likely headed back to the states.

Extra to hollowing out the Education Department, Trump has also promised universal school choice; protections for prayer in public schools; a prioritization of reading, writing, and arithmetic and an ejection of leftist propaganda; a switch from tenure to merit pay for teachers; and a federal reinforcement of parental rights.

In a September 2023 video outlining his ten principles for improving schools, Trump noted, "The United States spends more money on education than any other country in the world. And yet we get the worst outcomes. We are at the bottom of every list. In total, American society pours more than a trillion dollars a year into public education systems. But instead of being at the top of the list, we are literally right smack — guess what — at the bottom."

According to the Education Data Initiative, K-12 public schools blow through around $857.2 billion annually, with the federal government covering at least 13.6% with taxpayer funds. Costs have grown rapidly over the years.

The nationwide public K-12 annual spending per pupil in the 2011-2012 school year was $10,648. This year, the per-pupil cost for a substandard education was $17,280.

Despite the U.S. ranking fourth among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development members for spending on elementary education, the quality of education leaves much to be desired.

Recent estimates from the National Literacy Institute indicated that roughly 40% of students across the nation cannot read at a basic level. The National Center for Education Statistics revealed that when compared to 80 other nations' education systems in 2022, the U.S. average math literacy score for 15-year-old students was lower than the average in 25 education systems. The NAEP also found that as of 2022, only 26% of eighth-grade public school students across the country were proficient in math.

A Pew Research Center survey revealed earlier this year that 51% of American adults figure the public K-12 education system is headed in the wrong direction. A separate survey of public school teachers found that 82% of respondents figured the state of education has worsened over the past five years.

'You can't do worse.'

"Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material, which is what we're doing now, our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world of work, and in life and the world of keeping our country strong, so they can grow up to be happy, prosperous, and independent citizens," said Trump.

The once and future president indicated that in order to optimize education and schools in America, it is necessary to:

  • "respect the rights of parents to control the education of their children";
  • "empower parents and local school boards to hire and reward great principals and teachers, and also to fire the poor ones";
  • "ensure our classrooms are focused not on political indoctrination, but on teaching the knowledge and skills needed to succeed";
  • "teach students to love their country";
  • "support bringing back prayer to our schools";
  • institute "immediate expulsion for any student who harms a teacher or another student";
  • "ensure students have access to project-based learning experiences inside the classroom";
  • "strive to give all students access to internships and work experiences that can set them on a path to their first job"; and
  • "ensure that all schools provide excellent jobs and career counseling."

Trump also indicated that his administration would effectively "close" the Education Department, which has been a Cabinet-level agency since 1980, and send "all education and education work and needs back to the states."

"We want [the states] to run the education of our children, because they'll do a much better job of it," said Trump. "You can't do worse. We spend more money per pupil, by three times, than any other nation. And yet we're absolutely at the bottom. We're one of the worst. So you can't do worse. We're going to end education coming out of Washington D.C. We're going to close it up — all those buildings all over the place and yet people that in many cases hate our children. We're going to send it all back to the states."

'I figure we'll have like one person plus a secretary.'

Blaze News reached out to the Education Department but did not immediately receive a response.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, told Time, "It is entirely feasible to close down the Department of Education, but the functions of the Department of Education will need to continue."

With the Republican trifecta in Washington, D.C., Trump will likely be able to significantly reduce or possibly even cut funds for racist DEI and critical race theory programming.

Virginia Rep. Ben Cline (R) recently told Fox Business that it would be possible to slash trillions of dollars in government spending as Elon Musk, the potentially oncoming Department of Government Efficiency head, has proposed.

When asked where deep cuts could be made, Cline said, "Well, let's just look at the Department of Education and how billions of dollars stay in Washington, funding bureaucrats whose simple goal is to interfere in the decisions about educational choice at local and state levels."

In October, Trump signaled at a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, what his ideal Education Department would look like after he's done with it:

I figure we'll have, like, one person plus a secretary. You'll have a secretary to a secretary. We'll have one person plus a secretary, and all the person has to do is, "Are you teaching English? Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing, and arithmetic. And are you not teaching woke?"

"All they're going to do is see that the basics are taken care of," added Trump.

Trump's proposal in some ways resembles the memorandum advanced in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan's Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell, which advocated for turning the department into a foundation tasked primarily with administering block grants, collecting information, and conducting research.

Education Weekly reported at the time that Bell's unrealized proposal suggested that most of the department's activities would ultimately be "transferred, terminated, or modified as new Administration policies are implemented." For example, the functions for the department's Office for Civil Rights could be moved to the Justice Department.

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Why most parents can homeschool — so don't believe this viral lie



Every few months, the dumpster fire formerly known as Twitter informs me that I shouldn't be homeschooling my kids. The accusations are often hurled down from Mount Olympus as stern rebukes: They won't be properly socialized! They'll receive a substandard education! They'll become Republicans!

More recently, however, Dr. Caitlin Baird raised concerns that were more bemused than disparaging. She wrote "seriously…what makes anyone believe they're qualified to homeschool their kids K-12?" Even with "4 degrees in both the sciences and the humanities," she said that she "would never presume to believe [she] was qualified to teach."

"But," she added, "maybe I'm missing something."

If your public school taught you to read well, then you can teach your kids to read well. And if public school didn't teach you to read well, why exactly do you want to send your kids there?

In the spirit of dialogue, I'd like to address her concerns, because she is indeed missing something. My goal is modest: to assure nervous young parents that they are qualified to teach their children and to encourage them to at least consider homeschooling as an option.

First, I find it extremely odd for educated people to insist that they aren't qualified to homeschool. I want to ask them, "Can you read? Can you write your name? Do you know your shapes and numbers? What does the cow say?" If you answered "yes," "yes," "yes," and "moo" to these questions, congratulations, you have mastered kindergarten. If you can add, subtract, and multiply, your knowledge will carry you all the way through third grade. Throw in long division and fractions, and you're probably good through fifth. And if you need a refresher on percentages, take a few weeks and relearn them. If Billy Madison could do it, so can you.

Some commenters on Twitter argued that it's arrogant to claim you're qualified to teach reading simply because you know how to read. To them, that's like claiming you're qualified to manage a restaurant because you once ate at an Olive Garden. But that's a bad analogy. In reality, if you spent 13 years learning how to manage restaurants from teachers who knew how to manage restaurants and have been managing restaurants for your entire adult life, then yes, you probably are qualified to teach your kids how to manage restaurants. Believe it or not, this is how many family trades worked for centuries.

In the same way, if your public school taught you to read well, then you can teach your kids to read well. And if public school didn't teach you to read well, why exactly do you want to send your kids there?

Second, some parents may feel capable of teaching their kids reading, writing, and math. But they ask, "What about other subjects like history, science, and art?" I'm only partly joking when I say, "They can learn those later." When I think back to my own public school education, it feels like I repeated the same lessons about the Pilgrims, photosynthesis, and torn paper collages every year until I turned 12.

Be honest: Do you really remember all the facts you memorized in your fifth grade social studies class? What you've likely retained are those skills that you continued to use throughout your life, skills like … drum roll … reading, writing, and math. Consequently, these are the topics you should emphasize in the early years.

Moreover, the internet is teeming with high-quality content on a variety of subjects. Some of it is for purchase, but much of it is completely free. Lean into these tools. After that, you can add art, music, sports, and foreign language as you see fit. However, these activities mostly take place outside school hours already.

The bottom line is that if your child's primary school education is focused on the three Rs, he’ll probably be fine. Your voracious 11-year-old reader will not be permanently handicapped in U.S. history because he didn't make a macaroni-art picture of the Mayflower in first grade. And once children enter high school, there are all kinds of options for supplemental and concurrent education through community colleges, summer schools, and distance learning programs.

Third, how can you ward off the question homeschooling parents most dread, "What about socialization?"

One word: co-op.

This frequent, individually tailored instruction will be provided by someone (you) who knows and loves your children better than anyone else in the world.

There are thousands of homeschool co-ops scattered all over the country that employ a variety of educational frameworks. Not only will they often provide you with a complete curriculum that covers all the major subjects, they will connect you to other seasoned homeschooling parents who can answer your questions, point you to resources, and offer advice. Between our Classical Conversations co-op, church, youth group, Trail Life, Science Olympiad, and cross-country practice, my kids spend plenty of time with their peers. The only "socialization" they're missing out on is being stuffed into a locker, having their lunch money stolen, and being forced to watch the chorus teacher sing a Janet Jackson tribute medley during morning assembly.

Fourth, when people complain that homeschoolers receive a substandard education, they need to be asked, "Compared to what?"

Let's be honest: Public schools aren't doing well. In 2019, only 37% of 12th graders were deemed proficient in reading, and 30% did not even achieve a basic reading level on a national test. Many parents were very dissatisfied by what they witnessed in their kids' virtual classrooms during COVID lockdowns.

Since studies routinely show that homeschoolers academically outperform their public school counterparts, why isn't it considered a viable educational alternative?

Finally, homeschooling has benefits that no public or private school can provide. Unless you have your own reality TV show with a title like "Tim and Jean Have Seventeen," your student-to-teacher ratio will be far lower than anything a traditional school can offer. This frequent, individually tailored instruction will be provided by someone (you) who knows and loves your children better than anyone else in the world. And you'll be able to shape your kids' character in ways that public schools can't. Some of my family's most important and educational conversations about science or theology or economics happen not while we're in the classroom but while we're in the car on the way to the grocery store.

Homeschooling isn't for everyone. Sometimes it's an impossibility due to financial constraints or the special needs of your kids. Sometimes parents are truly unequipped to teach even basic skills. Sometimes local public or private schools are excellent. However, I want to encourage every parent to consider homeschooling as a live option, at least for the first few years of elementary school.

Today, with homeschooling exploding across the country, I hope that skeptics like Dr. Baird will talk to a few homeschooling families and homeschool alumni in their areas and will try to keep an open mind. Like public school or karaoke or dad jokes, homeschooling can be done poorly. But it can also be done well. And when it's done well, it is joyful and fulfilling in a way that few things can be.

The cost of public schooling demands that Christians answer this important question



Christian parents have long understood that it is their responsibility to raise their children "in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). Yet today, many have entrusted this duty to a system that is rooted in secularism.

Since its birth, the modern public education system has been a seedbed of naturalistic secularism. With this foundation, it is no surprise that schools often lean heavily toward progressive, leftist ideals. Karl Marx said, “The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions.” This is a recurring theme among secularists who view the human as a tabula rasa, or blank slate. Education and proper conditioning are their guides to achieving paradise.

Even if you don’t buy the premise above, it is undeniable that public schools have been a battleground for the left to promote its progressive views on gender and sexuality. What is a woman? What is a little boy? Who are you to tell your child that God made him male and that wearing dresses while in school, without the consent or knowledge of his parents, is unacceptable?

If private or homeschool education can provide a far superior outcome than the public education system while instilling future generations with a solidly Christian worldview, why do some Christians continue sending little Tommy and Susie to be discipled by the state?

It all boils down to a matter of priority.

For many middle-class evangelical families, two incomes seem necessary to maintain a certain lifestyle — complete with a $500,000 home in the suburbs, a white picket fence, and two cars in the garage.

Self-sacrifice should be the natural reflex of Christian parents toward their children, especially regarding education.

Of course, they’ve listened to Dave Ramsey and only maintain a single car payment. Mom and Dad both have hobbies, which they enjoy on the weekends. They go to church on Sunday, except when it's baseball season because little Tommy made the travel league this year.

After dinner, the children spend hours on homework because having high-performing kids is a priority. Never mind the well-known failure of Common Core math and the historical revisionism that is rampant in today's curriculum. Perhaps one of the kids will bring up something uncomfortable his civics teacher said in class. You know, the one with blue hair, tattoos, and multiple piercings; she talks about transitioning even though it has nothing to do with the subject matter. “Hmm,” Dad says, “that’s odd. You should ask your youth pastor about that on Wednesday.”

That is the extent of discipleship because everyone needs to get to bed, so they can go to school and work and perform this daily ritual again.

Families like this across the country have taken to social media to decry the abuses in the school system. They show up at school board meetings and give their 10-minute rants to people who could not care less. Beyond all reasoning, they continue to send their children into these environments.

Would parents continue sending their children to school if they knew the risks of emotional, spiritual, and even physical harm were high? How high would that risk need to be before they reconsidered?

This is a personal decision all parents need to make for their situations, but the times have shown an alarming increase in the risk of harm.

One has to ask: If the public education system is riddled with so many problems, why are Christian families still sending their children to be chewed up and spit out as transitioned Marxists?

The answer is affluence and comfort.

As Francis Schaeffer wrote in his book "How Should We Then Live?"

Politics has largely become not a matter of ideals — increasingly men and women are not stirred by the values of liberty and truth — but of supplying a constituency with a frosting of personal peace and affluence. They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them.

In other words, most people just want to be left alone with all their modern comforts and conveniences. Schaeffer was speaking mainly about politics, but the symptoms are the same among evangelicals unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices to obtain a Christian education for their children.

Private schools are expensive, so something is going to have to give in the budget. Homeschooling, while not necessarily expensive, requires at least one parent to be present to teach. That reduces the family to a single income. They could maintain two incomes with creative scheduling, but homeschooling children is a full-time task.

'Here for the third time I am ready to come to you. And I will not be a burden, for I seek not what is yours but you. For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls.' (2 Corinthians 12:14-15)

The apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, considered himself their spiritual father. In 2 Corinthians 12:14-15, Paul uses an analogy of the disposition of parents to their children. Parents are the ones who “save up” for their children. This is how God designed familial relations. This is natural.

Self-sacrifice should be the natural reflex of Christian parents toward their children, especially regarding education.

For thousands of years, theologians and pastors have agreed that parents — specifically fathers — are responsible for their children’s education. Moses says you are to teach them “when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deuteronomy 6:7).

Youth and young adults coming out of evangelical churches today apostatize at an alarming rate. Pastor Voddie Baucham quipped, “We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.”

Raising children is Great Commission work. Children are the immediate image-bearers parents have been called to make into disciples of Christ.

Christians, the call is clear: Education is a significant part of the discipleship of your children, and the future of their faith hangs in the balance. Will you make the sacrifices necessary to teach them that "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3) are found in Christ, the solid rock? Will you, like Paul, “be spent” for the souls of your children?

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Scientific American demands federal regulation and background checks for homeschoolers



Scientific American, a 178-year-old science magazine published by the German-British Springer Nature Group, has prioritized ideology over science in recent years, having made clear its commitment to "advancing social justice" and to promoting progressive leftist perspectives absent counterpoint on various issues.

The publication, which broke with nearly two centuries of convention in 2020 and endorsed Joe Biden for president, has pushed social constructivists' pseudoscientific claims about gender; suggested Western science invented the sex binary; advanced the suggestion that the science informing legislation against sex change mutilations is "disinformation"; and championed the use of irreversible and dangerous puberty blockers, which were long used to sterilize sex offenders.

Extra to arguing that the deep state isn't real, denying the possibility that wealthy elites profited from the pandemic, stressing the COVID-19 vaccine was safe, and declaring the lab-leak theory regarding COVID-19 "false," Scientific American has also wasted ink, time, and money on multiple articles claiming that math, the NFL, and fighting obesity are racist.

Scientific American recently directed its activistic energies to concern-mongering about homeschooling.

In its Monday "Today in Science" newsletter, Scientific American reiterated claims from an article published in the June issue of the magazine entitled, "Homeschooling Needs More Uniform Oversight," by "The Editors."

'Federal mandates for reporting and assessment to protect children don't need to be onerous.'

The magazine's editor in chief is Laura Helmuth, a University of California, Berkeley, graduate who was called out by a peer-reviewed medical journal, the BMJ, last month for ignoring science that undermined her preferred crumbling narrative on gender. Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard University, recently called Helmuth a "woke fanatic."

Jeanna Bryner, the managing editor at the magazine, appears to be an ideologue of similar stripes.

The editors suggested that the Biden administration "must develop basic standards for safety and quality of education in homeschooling across the country."

"It is clear that home­school­ing will continue to lack accountability for outcomes or even basic safety in most states," wrote the editors. "But federal mandates for reporting and assessment to protect children don't need to be onerous."

Scientific American suggested that in order to teach one's own children, parents "could be required to pass an initial background check, as every state requires for all K–12 teachers."

In addition to securing approval from Washington, D.C., to do what their forebears otherwise did freely, the editors suggested that parents "could be required to submit documents every year to their local school district or to a state agency to show that their children are learning."

While the editors sounded the alarm about the potential for abuse of students at home in the absence of federal regulation — despite the rampant abuse in the otherwise regulated public school system — they appeared more concerned about curricular content and the prospect some students may not be subjected to the orthodoxies of the day.

"Many parents are attracted to homeschooling because they want to have more say in what their child learns and what they do not," they wrote. "Nearly 60 percent of home­school parents who responded to the 2019 NCES survey said that religious instruction was a motivation in their ­decision to educate at home. Some Christian home­school­ing curricula teach Young Earth Creationism instead of evolution."

"Most states don't require home­schooled kids to be assessed on specific topics the way their classroom-based peers are," continued the editors. "This practice enables educational neglect that can have long-lasting consequences for a child's development."

It's unclear how productive the proposed changes would be granted the standards set by the government for the public education system appear to accomplish very little.

The Hill noted earlier this year that in 44 Chicago public schools, not a single student was performing at grade level in math. In 24 schools in Chicago, not a single student was reading at grade level. In 40% of Baltimore's city high schools, not a single student was satisfying standards in math.

Blaze News noted last year that the National Assessment of Educational Progress' 2022 assessment revealed that grade 8 students' history scores last year were the lowest they had been since the NAEP began monitoring in 1994. Significant declines in academic ability were also observed amongst public grade-schoolers in reading and mathematics as well as in other subjects.

In fact, the poor quality of the public education system is one of the reasons why homeschooling is so popular today.

The National Center for Education Statistics revealed in a September 2023 publication that the top reasons parents gave in a 2019 survey for homeschooling were: concerns about the school environment; to provide moral instruction; to emphasize family life together; dissatisfaction with schools' academic instruction; to provide religious instruction; to provide a nontraditional approach to education; and/or to help with their child's special needs.

In the years since, ruinous school closures, sporadic teachers' union strikes, and the politicization of the classroom likely also had a substantial impact.

The Washington Post revealed late last year that the number of home-schooled students jumped by 51% over the previous six years while public school enrollment dropped by 4%.

The Post found that for every 10 students in public schools during the 2021-2022 academic year across 390 districts, there was one home-schooled child. By October 2023, there was an estimated 1.9 million to 2.7 million home-schooled students in the country.

Writer and home-school mom Heather Hunter responded to the Scientific American article, stressing it "selectively picked extreme examples from every anti-homeschooling argument."

"'Horrific abuse'? Many parents are taking their kids out of school because their child is getting abused/bullying and schools are doing nothing," wrote Hunter. "There have been numerous examples in just the past year of students ending up in critical condition in the hospital because of other students beating them so severely. People forget that there is also negative socialization. The vast majority of homeschool parents are loving and going above and beyond in their child's education.

"'Poor education'?" continued Hunter. "My daughter will be a second grader this fall (but now doing third grade curriculum in language arts) and can count to 100 in French, is learning about ancient civilizations, Latin, math, playing soccer, socializing with her friends at the homeschool co-op while doing art projects and learning science hands on in field trips and in nature."

Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and executive director at the Educational Freedom Institute, said of the proposed regulations, "Hell no."

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