Goodbye Department of Education: Trump wants to eliminate the DOE and cut funding for schools

It is no surprise to anyone who has followed Trump’s campaign that he wants to make some major changes in the education system on a federal level. The new president is going to prohibit diversity initiatives and promote patriotic programs to highlight the “American Way of Life.”

What does the Department of Education do and what will happen if it is eliminated?

The DOE was established in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter to “strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal education opportunity for every individual.” The agency’s goal is to improve education and management of Federal education activities and increase accountability of programs to the President, the Congress and the public, according to the DOE website.

It’s hard to imagine how education on all levels would work without federal guidelines and funding. Trump has promised he’s going to get rid of the DOE, but it isn’t clear how he would go about doing that or when he plans to make that move. But, as he said in a recent speech, “promises made, promises kept.” So his fans and followers will be looking forward to the wall at the Mexico border to be finished, the war in Ukraine to end and prices to go down, as well federal education funds being cut.

He wants to phase out the DOE, but he also has a lot of ideas he want to implement in schools at all levels. He wants teachers “to embrace patriotic values and support the American Way of Life.” The contradiction lies in the fact that he wants to cut plans and activities, but at the same time he has an agenda that wants to implement merit pay for teachers and create a new university called the “American Academy” that will be free for students and funded by “taxing, fining and suing” private universities. Trump knows a lot about managing higher education institutions with the rise and fall of his Trump University, which was forced to close and payout $25 million in a settlement with students who sued the institution.

Despite having a lot of ideas for what education should be, Trump wants to give states the power to decide what’s best for its citizens as long as those plans align with his Agenda47.