On March 20th, President Donald Trump finally signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Since assuming office, he has been talking about this day. The more he spoke about it, the more outraged the education establishment and mainstream media became. The National Association of Educators (NAE) has condemned Trump’s actions as “catastrophic” and accused him of using “divisive, culture-war rhetoric when he highlighted the indoctrination happening in K-12 schools.”
A prominent piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education lamented that “higher education is trapped in Trump’s chaos,” hurling accusations of his imposing a “far-right agenda” nationally. This writer even advised university presidents that they could simply rename their DEI programs to preserve them.
“Trump’s chaos”? I beg to differ. The chaos began well before his most recent actions and long before he took office. The state of American education has been in decline for decades, and we are in what some refer to as “an education depression.”
The Program for International Student Assessment reveals that we lag far behind other nations in math and science scores – trailing China and Canada! However, instead of working to improve reading, writing, and arithmetic, schools are indoctrinating students with a steady dose of gender, racial, and sexual ideologies from high school down to preschool!
Chaos on Campus
Gallup’s annual surveys show that public confidence in our colleges and universities continues to plummet, with families questioning the value of higher education. It’s not just about cost: issues range from student coddling to extreme politicization and the suppression of free speech, from an erosion of academic rigor to a rise in cancel culture and a growing disdain for merit.
Our institutions of higher learning have sacrificed intellectual growth and academic excellence on the altar of ideological activism. The ideals of real education have been pushed to the curb with the cooperation of the Department of Education, the college accrediting agencies, and our national teachers’ unions.
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A Failing Grade for the Department of Education
According to the U.S. Department of Education website, its mission is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” The data suggests that it has failed in multiple ways. Has it succeeded? It hasn’t closed the achievement gap, nor have student outcomes been improved under its watch – especially in light of the amount of money funneled into it since its creation.
So, the President’s desire to dismantle the department should be seen as a sensible choice, not merely for the cost savings of bureaucratic downsizing (although it’s clear that federal budgets are full of wasteful spending). Yes, sending control back to the States and decentralizing responsibility is a laudable goal. Still, I believe the overarching aim here – and what we should all keep in mind – is repairing a broken system.
When President Carter created the DOE, he promised that it would eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, cut red tape, provide better services for schools, and save tax dollars. But that's exactly what did not happen. Over $3 trillion has been spent since the department’s creation in 1979; in 45 years, it has yet to accomplish its stated mission. We have spent more money than any other nation per pupil, yet our national rankings have only dropped. Any organization failing to meet its. Objectives at such great expense year after year have collapsed or been overhauled well before now.
A National Reset
An executive order alone cannot eliminate the Department of Education — an act of Congress is required (which, the President said, is now in the works). Nor would the elimination of the DOE erase all of its yet-to-be-enforced federal education laws. Today, the President promised that Pell Grants, Title I funding, and resources for children with disabilities and special needs would be preserved (but shifted to other departments and agencies). The department’s priorities can be reordered through executive action, its footprint reduced, and some of its responsibilities transferred elsewhere.
In all this, President Trump has made it clear that he wants to see fundamental education reforms.
For K-12 education, he seeks to restore excellence and return to teaching the basics— reading, writing, math, history, and civics (an understanding of and love for our country). Parents should also be empowered to make greater choices for their children’s education. This administration has already made progress in eliminating federal funding for the promotion of radical gender ideology, discriminatory “equity” programs, and racist DEI agendas.
For higher education, he hopes to restore merit and high academic standards -- to have equality of opportunity (not outcomes) not based on skin color, to rid our campuses of DEI and its ideological baggage, to protect free speech while curbing violent and intimidating forms of student activism, to remove burdensome or weaponized accreditation practices, to promote and teach Western civilization and the American tradition, and to cut wasteful spending.
We need a national reset in American education. Rather than preserving a failing status quo, it’s time for real change. And I, for one, am grateful for a President who recognizes the crisis and takes bold steps toward course correction. The process has now begun.
It is no surprise that many of the “elite” with a vested interest in the existing system are enraged by these actions. However, contrary to their claims, it is not Trump’s chaos but their own that has led us to where we are today.
Dr. Donald Sweeting (@DSweeting) serves as chancellor of Colorado Christian University, which was included in the Wall Street Journal’s College Pulse Ranking for a second consecutive year and named one of the fastest-growing universities in the country for the ninth year in a row.
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