Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
The Trump administration says it plans to end it education department Offers a solution to the country’s lagging academics – a solution that can free schools from the strictures of federal influence.
Yet some school and state officials see the plan as adding more bureaucracy, with no clear benefits for students who struggle in math or reading.
Rather than being housed in a single agency, much of the Department of Education’s work will now be spread across four other federal departments. for President donald trumpThis is a step towards closing down the department completely and giving more powers over school education to the states. Yet many states say it would complicate their role as intermediaries between local schools and the federal government.
This scheme increases bureaucracy five times, Washington The state’s education chief said it was “undoubtedly creating confusion and duplication” for teachers and families. His counterpart in California said the plan is “clearly less efficient” and invites disruption. Maryland’s superintendent expressed concern about “the challenges of coordinating efforts with multiple federal agencies.”
Wisconsin State Superintendent Jill Underly said, “The state was not engaged in this process, and this is not what we asked for – or our students need.” Underly urged the Trump administration to give states more flexibility and cut standardized testing requirements.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon Said schools would continue to receive federal funding without disruption. Ultimately, he said, schools will have more money and flexibility to serve students without the existence of the Department of Education.
Yet the department is not abolished – only Congress has the power to abolish it. Meanwhile, McMahon’s plan leaves the agency in federal limbo. labor department It would take over most of the funding and support for the country’s schools, but the Department for Education would retain some duties, including policy guidance and broader oversight of Labour’s education work.
Similar deals would provide programs to the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department and the Interior Department. The agreements were signed days before the government shutdown and announced on Tuesday.
Making agreements with other departments to share work is nothing new: The Education Department already had dozens of such agreements before Trump took office. And local school officials routinely work with other agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school meals. What is different this time is the scale of the programs launched – for example, most of the education department’s funding for schools.
Yet Virginia schools chief Emily Anne Gullickson said schools are accustomed to working with multiple federal agencies, and she welcomed the administration’s efforts to give states more control.
While some see a threat of chaos, others see a victory over bureaucracy
Reaction to the plan has been largely political, with Democrats saying the change would harm America’s most vulnerable students. Republicans in Congress called it a victory over bureaucracy.
Yet some conservatives opposed its destruction. U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said on social media that moving the program to agencies without policy expertise could harm youth. And Republican President George W. Former Bush Education Secretary Margaret Spellings called it a distraction from the national education crisis.
“Moving programs from one department to another does not truly eliminate federal bureaucracy, and it could make it harder for students, teachers and families to navigate the system and get the support they need,” Spellings said in a statement.
There is little debate about the need for change in America’s schooling. Its math and reading scores have declined in the wake of COVID-19. Before then, reading scores had remained stagnant for decades, and math scores weren’t much better.
McMahon said this is proof that the Education Department has failed and is not needed. At a White House briefing Thursday, he called his plan a “hard reset” that doesn’t stop federal support but ends “federal micromanagement.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union and one of McMahon’s most vehement opponents, questioned the logic of his plan.
“Why would you put together a new infrastructure, a new bureaucracy that no one knows anything about, and instead of making the old bureaucracy more efficient, take the old bureaucracy and destroy it?” Weingarten said at an event Wednesday.
Schools fear impact of lost expertise on education laws
The full impact of this change may not become clear for several months, but already it is causing concern among states and school districts that have come to rely on the Department of Education for its policy expertise. One of the agency’s roles is to act as a hotline for questions about complex funding formulas, special education laws and more.
The department has not said whether officials who served in that role will keep their jobs during the transition. Without that help, schools will have few options for clarifying what can and can’t be paid for with federal money, said David Law, superintendent of Minnetonka Public Schools in Minnesota.
“What can happen is that services are not provided because you don’t have any answers,” said Law, who is also president of AASA, a national association of school superintendents.
Some question whether other federal departments have the capacity to do the new work. The Labor Department would take over Title I, an $18 billion grant program that serves 26 million students in low-income areas. It’s going to a labor office that now handles grants that serve only 130,000 people a year, said Angela Hanks, who led the labor office under former President Joe Biden.
At best, Hanks said, it would “wreak chaos on school districts and ultimately our children.”
In Salem, Massachusetts, the 4,000-student school system is getting about $6 million in federal funding to help support services for students who are low-income, homeless or still mastering English, Superintendent Stephen Zrike said. They fear that moving those programs into the Department of Labor could lead to new “rules of engagement.”
“We don’t know what other conditions will be attached to the funding,” he said. “The level of uncertainty is huge.”
Other critics have said that the Department of Education was created to consolidate education programs spread across multiple agencies.
Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, urged McMahon to reconsider his plan. He cited the 1979 law that established the department, saying that dispossession had resulted in “fragmented, duplicative, and often inconsistent federal policies related to education.”
,
AP Education writers Moriah Balingit in Washington, Bianca Vazquez Tones in Boston and Maquia Seminara in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.
,
The Associated Press’s education coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropy, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas on AP.org.