Soon after he entered the White House, President Ronald Reagan called for Congress to shutter the then-new U.S. Department of Education that had been started by President Jimmy Carter.
“A better education doesn’t mean a bigger Department of Education. In fact, that department should be abolished,” Reagan told the country in a radio address from Camp David on March 12, 1983.
Reagan was urging Congress to shutter the new agency, which had a $14 billion budget at the time, because doing so required congressional action to shut the doors. That same congressional action is still needed to zero out a federal department, but the Trump administration is taking another route around the Republican-led House and Senate.
Forty-two years later, almost to the day, Reagan’s vision of smaller federal government and less bureaucracy is getting closer than ever. An announcement from the Department of Education, published March 11, reads:
As part of the Department of Education’s final mission, the Department today initiated a reduction in force (RIF) impacting nearly 50% of the Department’s workforce. Impacted Department staff will be placed on administrative leave beginning Friday, March 21st.
With a budget of $268 billion last year, the payroll at the U.S. Department of Education stood at 4,133 employees on Jan. 20, when President Trump was sworn in. It will drop to 2,183 through the RIF and about 600 workers who have already agreed to a buyout or early retirement.
'Report Card' released in Jan.
This week’s announcement also includes a quote from Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education, who called the RIF “a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
The announcement said the DOE will “continue to deliver” on statutory programs that include formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking.
What public education will look like with a half-empty federal agency is unknown but the annual “Report Card” on test scores, released in January, said one-third of public school eighth graders scored below “basic” in reading.
The test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), is overseen by the Department of Education. It gauges year-to-year academic progress in math and reading with second graders and eight graders.
"Despite the billions of dollars that the federal government invests in K-12 education annually, and the approximately $190 billion in federal pandemic funds, our education system continues to fail students across the nation,” the Department of Education Secretary, then one week into President Trump’s second term, said of the test scores.
'I'm so angry about this'
Two days before the RIF announcement, American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten was nearly hysterical during an MSNBC appearance when asked what our future looks like without the U.S. Department of Education.
“I’m so angry about this,” Weingarten, slamming her hand on the desk, said at one point.
Weingarten, whose union salary is more than a half-million dollars annually, claimed only the children of billionaires can afford private school. So a shuttered Department of Education, she said, would harm 90% of America’s children who attend public school.
“So many people are so mad about it,” Weingarten angrily claimed, “because they’re just taking opportunity away from kids that don’t have it.”
In an appearance on American Family Radio, school-choice advocate Corey DeAngelis said the union boss is not concerned about a child’s education.
“It’s because she knows her power is slipping away from her fingertips,” DeAngelis, who keeps an eye on the teachers unions, said.
Terry Schilling, who leads American Principles Project, shares a similar opinion of Weingarten. She is a political activist who is using hysteria to scare parents, he says, because she is getting a “wake-up call” about the future of teachers unions.
“Randy Weingarten,” Schilling says, “is understanding that they are about to lose a major source of their power and ability to force their agenda on the will of all of America’s families and children.”
Pointing to test scores, such as the NAEP, critics of public education point to a continuous drop in basic reading literacy and math skills among students, especially minority children in urban schools. Test scores in Chicago Public Schools, for example, showed only 21% of fourth graders were proficient in math and 23% in reading in 2024. Those rates were 21% and 27% for eighth graders.
Those poor students and their parents are the beneficiaries of school-choice scholarships that are ferociously opposed by the teachers’ unions that would witness fewer students seated in a desk.
Communist holidays and pet insurance
A related AFN story from 2024 pointed out Weingarten delivered a 50-minute speech to the National Press Club where the words “reading” and “test scores” were never uttered. She did call public schools a “manifestation of our civil values and ideals.”
Those “civil values and ideals” mean 90% of U.S. children may have been exposed to People’s World, the communist news website. Its story from 2024 praised Weingarten and the AFT for shifting all future teachers’ contracts to expire on May 1, or May Day.
Dating back to the 1890s, that date is considered sacred by Socialists, Communists and Marxists to celebrate workers and unions.
According to the AFT website, joining their union has numerous perks that include dieting plans, a home mortgage program, discounts with hotel rooms, air travel and car rentals, and even pet insurance.
