What You Need to Know about Trump’s Plan to Close the Department of Education

Trump’s education goals were laid out in Project 2025.
During the campaign, Trump pretended he knew nothing about Project 2025, but he
was lying. Of course. The organizer of Project 2025, Russell Vought, was
recently confirmed as Trump’s Budget Director (Office of Management and
Budget).
Trump and his Secretary of Education-designate Linda McMahon
think that the Department of Education is a hotbed of DEI and that it is
imposing “woke” policies on the nation’s schools.
As someone who served in the Department of Education in the
administration of President George H.W. Bush, I can state without qualification
that they are wrong.
The career civil servants at the Department of Education are
not educators, although there might be a few exceptions. They review and
process grants and contracts. They organize peer reviews. They supervise
authorized activities. They have multiple responsibilities, but writing
curriculum is not one of them.
The Department of Education does not tell schools what to
teach. It is illegal for any officer of the government to attempt to influence
the curriculum of the nation’s schools. It has been illegal to do so since
1970.
The law states:
“No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, employee, of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, [or] administration…of any educational institution…or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials.“
The law is P.L. 103-33, General Education Provisions Act, section 438.
The ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion are generally
and broadly accepted by the public. They were not hatched by the Department of
Education. They are baked into our American ideals of fairness and justice and
opportunity for all.
The fact is that our nation is diverse.
Banning the word doesn’t change the reality. We are a nation whose population
includes people of every race, religion, and ethnicity. We are a nation of men
and women, as well as people who are LGBT. Yes, we do have transgender men and
women, and not even Trump can erase them.
Equity is a necessity if we are serious about reducing the
vast economic and social gaps in our society. Here is one definition of equity, as
compared to equality, as offered by the Annie E. Casey Foundation:
Well-meaning people often use the terms “equity”
and “equality” interchangeably when discussing matters related to
race and social justice. While both terms have to do with “fairness,”
there are key differences as the application of one over the other may
lead to drastically different outcomes. Equality requires that everyone
receives the same resources and opportunities, regardless of circumstances
and despite any inherent advantages or disadvantages that apply to certain
groups. Equity, on the other hand, considers
the specific needs or circumstances of a person or group and provides
the types of resources needed to be successful.
Equality assumes that everybody is operating at the
same starting point and will face the same circumstances and challenges.
Equity recognizes the shortcomings of this “one-size-fits-all”
approach and understands that different levels of support must be provided
to achieve fairness in outcomes.
A highly circulated image (above, left) seeks to provide
a visual illustration of the differences between equality and equity.
The image depicts three people standing behind a fence, watching
a baseball game. The three individuals are all different heights,
with the tallest of the three being able to see over the fence without any
help. The other two are not tall enough to see over. Equality provides each
of these people with identical boxes to stand on to peer over the fence.
The tallest person, who didn’t need the box in the first place, now stands
even higher, continuing to enjoy a perfect view of the game. The second
person can now see over the fence, and the third person, even with the help
of the box, is still too short to see over.
The image also depicts what equity would look like in
this same scenario. In the equity version, the tallest person does not
receive a box and is still able to enjoy the game. The second person is
given one box to stand on, and the third person is given two boxes to stand
on. Now, all three can enjoy the same view of the game.
The most classic definition of equity in my lifetime was
contained in a speech that President Lyndon B. Johnson gave at Howard
University in 1965.
He said:
Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of
centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you
desire, and choose the leaders you please.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled
by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and
then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly
believe that you have been completely fair.
Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of
opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those
gates.
This is the next and the more profound stage of the
battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not
just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory
but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same
chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society,
to develop their abilities–physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their
individual happiness.
To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not
enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of
abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched
or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live
in–by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your
surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the
little infant, the child, and finally the man.
The speech was written by LBJ’s White House aide, Daniel
Patrick Moynihan. A brilliant Harvard professor, he later was Ambassador to the
UN and elected to the US Senate in New York.
As for “inclusion,” it’s a word that means nothing more or
less than all. We commonly speak of equal opportunity for all, not
for some. The Pledge of Allegiance refers to “liberty and justice for all,” not
for some. All means all. All means inclusion.
Pete Hegseth recently said, “Diversity is not our strength.”
What a stupid thing for the Secretary of Defense to say in light of the
diversity of our military. Does he want to oust everyone from the military
except white men?
When the U.S. team walks into the Olympic Stadium, it is the
most diverse team in the world. I feel proud when I see them.
The fact is, my friends, we are led by a team of idiots.
They are simpletons who want to turn the clock back many decades, at least to
the 1950s, when the country was run by straight white men. Many barriers have
fallen, allowing the rise of people who are not straight white men. (Trump
actually has an out gay man in his Cabinet, the Secretary of the Treasury, but
he is most certainly an outlier). Trump wants to restore the barriers that kept
women and nonwhites out of leadership roles.
We have to push back every day. Don’t let Trump’s seething
hatred and bigotry become normalized. Don’t let him wipe out 60 years of civil
rights legislation.