ELI5 What is the bennefit of the Dept of Education shutting down and the power resting with the states? What is the downside?
Federal funding to the States would end leaving the States to foot the bill. Since most schools are funded from property taxes, those taxes would have to rise to meet the additional burden not covered by the federal government. This would disproportionately affect red states since the top fifteen states reliant on government funding for education are all red states.
Much of what schools do is already handled by states.
One thing I haven’t seen yet is that it will basically end accreditation of colleges & universities.
Today if you get an MBA, PHD, etc. pretty much everybody knows what that means whether you got that degree from Harvard University, Penn State, or the University of Alabama. The standards for such degrees are pretty well known.
While the Department of Education doesn’t directly perform accreditation it does manage the standards that third parties use for the process. Get rid of the standards and those accreditation bodies will eventually start doing their own thing. So eventually one body might only offer accreditation to schools that promote certain religious values and ignore other educational standards, while another only offers accreditation to schools that pay kickbacks, etc.
If those sorts of things start to happen then accreditation will become largely meaningless, and college/university degrees won’t mean as much as they currently do.
I think it helps going to the source material on this. Most of the administration's moves have been pretty aligned with Project 2025, and it's written in an accessible enough way:
Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated. When power is exercised, it should empower students and families, not government. In our pluralistic society, families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments that best fit their needs. Our postsecondary institutions should also reflect such diversity, with room for not only “traditional” liberal arts colleges and research universities but also faith-based institutions, career schools, military academies, and lifelong learning programs.
I don't think it's in the administration's interest to make this seem like a prepared plan and part of an ultimately elitist philosophy, but if they actually explained it they would probably say that education should be subject to competition like other markets should be, with limited federal funding to states for excess expenditure, with the intention that education improves according to local (Christian) culture and parental involvement. The Department of Education currently tries to maintain federal standards for (more equitable) schooling, which is too general and prescriptive in this approach.
Probably not an ELI5 answer exactly, and I'm definitely not intending it as a supporting argument for this policy (it's very elitist and inequitable), but just wanted to share that at least there is written material that outlines some of this.
Great response honestly.
The public education system in the US is garbage and has been since no child left behind and standardized testing was implemented. Rich people don’t send their kids to public schools because the education in the private and charter system is that much better where a large portion teach classical education and don’t feel pressured to teach to tests (that don’t tell you anything about someone’s knowledge). Rote knowledge/learning doesn’t work for the vast majority. Teaching critical thinking does.
I don’t know that putting the education of our children in the states hands (increasing state sovereignty) is the right call but I don’t know that it isn’t. What I do know is that doing it the knee-jerk reaction way that they are is outright idiotic and causing more harm quickly than it needs to.
Public schools are there to provide the bare minimum education for the lowest possible cost. They're not there to create genius.
Which is a shame, because there are plenty of very talented kids in those schools who could be genius.
We need to revolutionize our approach to education if we want to stay competitive as a nation, and that doesn't come from LESS funding or from having 50 different approaches.
Pushing it to the states would only make sense if the children of Alabama were tangibly different than the children of Texas. I would love to see someone explain how that's the case.
If the Department of Education goes away, rich states can still spend lots of money on schools, but poor states might not have enough. That means some kids get great teachers, new books, and nice schools, while others don’t. The government helps make sure all kids have a fair chance, no matter where they live. Without it, some schools might get worse, and some kids might not get the help they need to learn.
Propublica investigation of Alaska ignoring school funding requests for over 20 years
Unfortunately we can see what is to come with state funding education departments separately. Propublica found Alaska's state gov. ignoring hundreds of requests spanning more than 25 years for primarily rural schools (aka typically poor or Native American/a minority). It bad enough the school buildings are condemned...
Don't worry, it's not just the schools with primally indigenous/ Native Alaskan attendants that have maintenance requests ignored for far too long. The only areas the state addresses non immediate issues in are Anchorage, Fairbanks, Sitka, and Juneau, all other areas are often be ignored because they have at most a couple thousand people.
It's a move to segregate the schools once again both by race and wealth. The rich + white kids will have private schools paid for by everyone. The poor and/or non-white kids will have churches pretending to be schools. Anyone with any kind of disability won't have school at all.
There's no benefit for the common person, only downsides, and America as a whole is gonna get stupider. Rich people like it because it makes them richer, religious zealots like it because they get to push their indoctrination schools, and conservatives like it because conservatism goes up when education goes down. Rich people avoid most of it because they can afford private schooling and have legacy admission on their side
Eventually, i imagine it might lead other countries to not recognize degrees or other credentials earned in the US
I’m honestly surprised that isn’t already the case. The first year of college 101 courses in America are often just rehashes of high school. Because the American high schools are so inconsistent, that the university wants all of their incoming students to at least have the same baseline. I went to a decent high school so it was 100% repeated content for me. If given the option, I could have skipped the entire first year of classes. But I had a shocking number of classmates who apparently had never seen anything past basic quadratic equations before.
There is no benefit. The downside is republicans will infect religion into school, use tax funds for private schools, and public school will be privatized and will cost 3-4x more, free lunches won't be a thing. Families with hardships won't be able to afford to put their kids into a basic public school.
This is all part of the push to eliminate public education and replace it with private education funded by tax payer money but without all the oversight and regulation. Expect what has happened with charter schools but 10x.
Funding. Funding for people with special needs. Funding for schools in disadvantaged areas. Funding that pays for teachers and teachers aids who help teachers do their jobs.
As someone else said they are making public education shit so two things happen. First the folks who own private schools get richer, second poor people have yet another disadvantage and as second class citizens, will be more inclined to let the rich fuck them over so they can survive.
This is coming into the end game of things.
Keeping people stupid makes them easier to control as is evidenced by all the bullshit going on right now in America....
They say the reason was so they wouldn't have to pay 4400 employees salary, so, 4400 newly unemployed people is the benefit? I guess?
"I'm going to create so many jobs. Economy is doing the best it's ever had"
There's absolutely NO DOWNSIDE to Republican States Defunding EVERY SCHOOL except Bible Camp! That will make Republican State Workers VERY Hireable!
You know that we have boldface and italics for a reason, right? When you use caps for emphasis, it just makes you look like some unhinged dude shouting random words on a street corner.