Professor Association Using Millions In Taxpayer Dollars To Undermine Trump Admin
'Fueling this crisis on our campuses'
While liberals across the country are horrified, conservatives couldn’t be happier with President Donald Trump’s executive order to end the Department of Education.
The move will return education to the states, prioritize parents over bureaucrats, and protect resources for children with disabilities — and Erika Donalds, chair of America First Policy Institute’s Center for Education Opportunity, is thrilled.
“The biggest win, what Republicans have been looking for for the past 45 years, literally, is this executive order and Trump making good on his promise to the American people that he’s going to shut down the Department of Education,” Donalds tells Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson on “Blaze News Tonight.”
While the move is exciting, it won’t come without serious pushback.
“Some powerful interests are going to oppose that and have for a very long time. Teachers' unions and an entire colossus of, really, government is going to be against this,” Peterson says.
“Well, remember also, that the president put out an executive order regarding school choice prior to the executive order to shut down the department,” Donalds responds. “We’re going to also see some guidance from the Department of Education in the coming weeks on how some of these federal funds can also be used to enhance school choice.”
“Now, we know that in blue states, perhaps that are more controlled by teachers' unions, they’re going to continue to use that on bureaucracy. More union members, more administrative bloat, non-teaching positions, as they have done for decades,” she continues.
“But in red states, in states that have embraced school choice, parents are going to have more options and more funding to go along with it,” she adds.
What this will lead to, Donalds believes, are families migrating for school choice.
“Think about Florida, where if you have three children, you could get $9,000 per child to send them to a private school. Whereas just above the border in Georgia, you get zero dollars to help with private school,” she explains.
“If I live near the border in Georgia, I’m going to Florida to make sure that my kids can get a better education,” she adds.
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A new bill that will soon be passed along for a full vote in the Illinois state House takes aim at religious schools and parents who homeschool their children.
On Wednesday, lawmakers on the House Education Policy Committee gathered to consider HB 2827, better known as the Homeschool Act.
The bill not only requires all private and religious elementary and secondary schools to register with the state annually, but it also requires these schools to share sensitive information about their students, like names and home addresses. It also requires these private schools to make plain their policies and specifically promise not to restrict hairstyles "historically associated with race" or "ethnicity."
'This bill invades our privacy, is unconstitutional, and ... interferes with parental rights.'
Furthermore, the bill requires all homeschooling parents and guardians — who must have a high school diploma or the equivalent — to fill out a homeschool declaration form about their homeschooled children and submit the form to the public school or school district the children would otherwise attend. The form must be resubmitted every year that the children are homeschooled, or the child may be considered truant.
District and/or office of education officials may also demand that homeschool administrators provide a homeschooled child's "educational portfolio" — comprising "samples of any writings, worksheets, workbooks, or creative materials used or developed by the child" — on demand.
Homeschooled children who wish to participate in extracurricular activities at public schools, such as sports, must likewise submit proof of immunizations and health examinations or provide a certificate of religious exemption.
Homeschooling parents and guardians who fail to comply with the measure could face misdemeanor charges, WTTW reported.
The bill was introduced by state Rep. Terra Costa Howard (D-Glen Ellyn) and enjoys more than a dozen cosponsors, all of whom are Democrat, many of whom are women, and at least one of whom has blue hair.
Costa Howard claimed the bill is necessary to protect children who may be the victims of abusive parents or guardians. Such parents, the theory goes, can conceal their maltreatment by keeping their children at home and away from the scrutinizing eyes of teachers, administrators, and coaches.
"Currently, Illinois has zero, I’m going to say it again, zero regulations," Costa Howard said during deliberations about the bill. "Thirty-eight states have regulations. Illinois is an outlier. This is not something we want to be an outlier on."
"We have tracked over 500 cases of extreme abuse and neglect in homeschool settings where the abuse escalated because of the isolation afforded through homeschooling," claimed Jonah Stewart, research director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
However, homeschooling parents and advocates decried such presumptions about their motives.
"The proponents claim that children who are being homeschooled are at greater risk of abuse and neglect. This is not supported by the two peer-reviewed studies that have been produced," countered Will Estrada, senior counsel at the Home School Legal Defense Association.
"This bill targets homeschool parents and treats us as criminals, guilty until proven innocent," said Aziza Butler, a former public school teacher who now homeschools her children.
"We believe [this] is religious persecution," added homeschool parent Latasha Fields. "That's what we believe. We believe it really is because this bill invades our privacy, is unconstitutional, and it does. It threatens, and it overreach[es], and it interferes with parental rights."
Some worry that the bill could be selectively enforced and possibly lead to harassment of law-abiding Christians and other homeschoolers, though Costa Howard insisted that investigations into homeschooling families would occur only in response to serious allegations.
Others noted that children have not necessarily been safe on the campuses of their local public schools. Just last week, Christina Formella, a 30-year-old special education teacher and soccer coach in Downers Grove, Illinois, was charged with multiple sex-related offenses after she allegedly engaged in a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy inside a classroom in December 2023.
Thousands of concerned parents like Fields and Butler crowded the capitol on Wednesday, singing hymns and patriotic songs to protest the bill — a far cry from the disruptive and sometimes violent demonstrations by leftists at other capitol buildings around the country in recent years.
These parents and homeschooling groups also submitted a staggering 40,000 witness slips opposing the bill, while supporters garnered fewer than 1,000 witness slips.
Nevertheless, the bill passed the House Education Policy Committee 8-4. All Democrats voted in favor of it except one, who voted present. The bill will now move on to the entire state House floor for a vote.
Of note, three of the Democrat cosponsors of the Homeschool Act are among the top recipients of political donations from the Illinois Federation of Teachers. Since 2010, the campaigns for state Reps. Costa Howard, Katie Stuart, and Janet Yang Rohr have received more than $630,000 in donations total from the IFT, according to watchdog group Illinois Policy.
The Illinois Education Association even honored Costa Howard with an award for her "deep support of public education" and positive impact on "all our education support personnel."
"Costa Howard is champion of the rights for our education employees. We are proud to honor her with our Friend of Education award," the union stated in April 2022.
Costa Howard did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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For decades, the Department of Education has existed as a bloated, useless agency whose only real function has been to funnel money into the pockets of teachers’ unions, fund radical leftist social experiments at universities, and ensure that American children graduate high school barely able to read or do basic math. Now, President Trump is finally doing what should have been done long ago and shutting it down.
Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to close the department as soon as it's feasible, with the consent of Congress. This step is necessary to address the ongoing collapse of American education and our declining international standing.
Trump’s plan to dismantle the Education Department isn’t just sound policy — it’s essential for saving the next generation of Americans.
Standardized test scores have plummeted not just for years, but for decades. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress results show that U.S. students’ math and reading scores have taken a sharp dive since 2020. In cities like Chicago and Baltimore, nearly 80% of students fail to reach proficiency in core subjects.
Many students leave school unable to read or do basic arithmetic, yet they can recite pronouns and explain why America is supposedly systemically racist. The Department of Education has prioritized ideology over academics for years. Shutting it down is the first step toward real reform.
The Department of Education controls billions in taxpayer dollars — $80 billion in 2024 alone — but instead of improving literacy or ensuring that schools hire competent teachers, it pours money into DEI programs, bloated bureaucracy, and unnecessary administrative positions.
The people making decisions in this agency are not educators; they are political activists. While rural and inner-city schools struggle with crumbling infrastructure and a lack of basic supplies, the department prioritizes funding for transgender bathroom policies and “anti-racist” curriculum mandates.
The real beneficiaries of this system are the teachers’ unions. These unions collect billions in dues, protect bad teachers from being fired, and fought to keep schools closed during COVID while their leadership vacationed. The Department of Education exists not to serve students, but to shield and enrich these unions.
When Democrats claim abolishing the DOE will “harm students,” they really mean it will harm their campaign donations. The education system functions as a financial pipeline between the government and the unions: The government funds the DOE, the DOE directs money to the unions, and the unions take their cut before funneling it back into Democratic political campaigns.
The numbers are clear — campaign finance reports reveal that politicians like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (R-Calif.), former Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) rake in union cash while claiming to champion the middle class. In reality, they are enabling the destruction of America’s education system.
Leftists are panicking over Trump’s move because they prioritize control over education, not the well-being of students. If they cared about children, they wouldn’t have allowed generations to graduate functionally illiterate. They wouldn’t fight to keep students trapped in failing schools while blocking every attempt at school choice. Their goal is to maintain control, keep taxpayer dollars flowing, and produce generations just smart enough to pass standardized tests — but not smart enough to question the system.
Standardized testing is another disaster created by the Department of Education. American schools no longer focus on actual education; they train students to regurgitate test answers. Federal mandates force teachers to “teach to the test” instead of instructing students in critical thinking, history, or real-life skills. Schools don’t care if students understand the material. They only care if they pass the test because that determines their federal funding.
The result? Generations of students graduate without the ability to write a coherent paragraph or balance a checkbook, but they know how to fill in the right bubble on a multiple-choice exam. America’s declining educational rankings reflect this failure. While other nations teach coding and computer skills, our schools focus on test performance and gender identity lessons.
Trump’s plan to dismantle the DOE isn’t just sound policy — it’s essential for saving the next generation of Americans. The federal government has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to improve public schools. For more than 40 years, it has failed to produce better outcomes. The only solution is to return control of education to states and local communities, where parents have a voice and schools are accountable to the people, not to Washington bureaucrats.
Democrats will claim this move spells the “end of public schools,” presumably to “pay for tax cuts for billionaires.” Nonsense. States are fully capable of running their own school systems, as they already provide the majority of education funding. The DOE doesn’t teach children, manage classrooms, or ensure school performance. Instead, it enforces ideological conformity, enriches teachers’ unions, and punishes states that refuse to comply with its mandates. It’s a bloated bureaucracy with no real benefit to students. It’s well past time to cut it loose.
America’s children deserve a school system that puts education over ideology. They need teachers hired for their competence, not their union connections. Parents should have more influence over their children’s education than distant bureaucrats or union bosses. Schools should equip students for success, not leave them unprepared, dependent, and burdened with student debt for degrees that offer no real career prospects.
The Department of Education has had decades to prove its value — and it has succeeded only in squandering billions of dollars. Shutting it down is the right move. Any politicians defending this bloated bureaucracy aren't protecting children’s futures; they’re protecting their own financial interests.