Nothing scary about this at all.
Update: apparently already backtracked: https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-preparing-executive-order-telling-education-secretary-dissolve/story?id=119499614
This might be the normal Trump tactic of floating horrible ideas, so don’t be surprised if it comes back later.
What exactly will be impacted? I honestly have no idea what they currently do outside extra funding for states to allow everything to function properly. Also what are the American people benefitting from this exactly? As far as were concerned it’s no change to us, so where is all this money going now, outside the pockets of some rich person? So gut everything and higher our taxes? I’m assuming state taxes will need to go higher to supplement more money for schooling which means even higher taxes again? I’m super thrilled my kids are the perfect age to see exactly the impact this will have on them soon… I wish I could leave so bad.
They run the FAFSA student aid application system and manage trillions of dollars of student loans (Pell grants, etc). They provide guidance and funding to state education systems.
Dismantling it will cause chaos in the student loan world. Who now owns the debt? (likely given to friends of Trump to get rich off of) Who approves new debt? (likely private loan firms who charge higher rates and don’t approve high risk loans) Who will manage the existing network of thousands of colleges to help get aid to students? (likely nobody)
Dismantling it also allows Republican states to further implement religious education and scrubbing from education curricula anything that isn’t about straight, white people doing good things.
When i read the article, it stated it will not touch grants as that is another department, but the person even says they are skeptical.
They do all the national testing and data collections for determining school rankings.
Which I think is the main thing they want to get rid of. They’ve said that all the school funding functions can be handed to other departments. But it’s all the states with religious curriculum requirements that frequently do poorly on the rankings. And us in New Mexico. But by eliminating the DOE that data collection and ranking will stop.
Basically the same exact tactic as “we eliminate new COVID cases by stopping to test for them”, and Hungary also did this after they wrecked the public education by prioritizing religion (due to boomers thinking it’ll teach children manners) and PE (due to a “lack of great sportsmen and football players”, did the opposite) over everything else, in addition of funding cuts and reintroducing old and unusable teaching methods to please the boomers who think “the school isn’t a playground”, so kids would suffer more.
I want to add to the other good answers that DoE is also responsible for enforcing special education in schools, along with all other protections against discrimination and support for low income families. This in particular helps red states more, usually, and is a big reason Congress hasn’t acted when Reagan took office and had a hate boner for the department.
I am guessing they will either give no federal funding to states or give it with no (good) strings attached. If they can figure out a way to punish blue states at the same time they will do that too. The DOE gives this money currently with strings attached, like requiring special Ed programs. They probably would come up with new horrifying strings attached, like removing climate science from curricula.
I’m sorry about your children. I have a niece who I am concerned for. She grew up in a world where this is all “normal”. I wish I could leave this shit hole too but it’s difficult even without kids.