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By Michael Bielawski
With the federal Department of Education’s ongoing disbandment, Vermont’s Washington delegates, national political think tanks, and others are weighing in on what that means for your local schools.
“Donald Trump is pulling the rug out from underneath a critical element of our education system,” Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt, wrote in a presser on Thursday. “Make no mistake, this new Executive Order will hurt students in communities of every size, educators and staff, and rural America.”
On the conservative side, the think tank The Heritage Foundation has long been advocating to disband the Department.
“From the moment it was created, the Department of Education was a mistake,” they also wrote on Thursday. “It was founded on the false premise that unelected bureaucrats in Washington know better than parents and local communities when it comes to educating children.”
What does this mean for Vermont?
The Vermont Department of Education has a page dedicated to updating on changes in federal policy and how they will impact Vermont schools. It states, “The Agency’s general advice to educators in the face of these executive orders and guidance documents is to proceed with their planned professional development and instructional activities in accordance with SU/SD instructional priorities, needs assessment activities, and State Board of Education Rules, and to consult with your SU/SD legal counsel if they have concerns about any specific activity or action.”
The same post notes that one executive order is expected to be complied with. It states, “The President’s Executive Order of January 29, 2025, Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling, ordered the secretaries of several federal agencies including the Department of Education to, within 90 days of the date of the order, ‘advise the President in formulating future policy’ to implement the order.”
Critical services cut?
Welch in his presser continued that this accounts for reckless slashing of services.
“President Trump has already cut Department workforce in half,” he wrote. “Shrinking the Department of Education further will only slow the critical services it provides to our kids, and slash opportunities to our next generation of students.”
The Trump Administration meanwhile is disputing the notion that any critical services are at risk.
“US Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Sunday insisted there won’t be cuts to programs involving special education and student loans even if they end up administered by other departments,” the NY Post reported on Sunday.
Spending went up
According to a different commentary from the Foundation again published that day, they break down some specific critiques.
“Ever-increasing federal spending on education has supported an ongoing staff surge, with school districts hiring armies of non-teaching administrative staff,” they wrote.
According to a new graph produced by the National Center for Education Statistics, spending on administrative services for education nationwide has essentially doubled between 2000 and 2021 (not including additional growth from the past four years).
The Foundation’s report continues that since the Department’s adoption in 1979, overall spending per student when accounting for inflation has more than doubled, without positive results.
“Yet over the same period, high school students’ scores on math and reading haven’t budged,” they wrote.
Welch concludes that he will put this move through the scrutiny of courts.
“President Trump and Elon Musk have one mission: to break the federal government beyond repair,” he wrote. “The dismantling of the Department of Education defies the powers of the Executive, and is yet another damaging element of the president’s illegal rampage, which will meet fierce opposition in our communities, in Congress, and in the courts.”
For an idea of the resources at stake, for the 2021-22 school year, the federal government provided about 11.6% which comes to 1 in 9 dollars of public school funding for the Green Mountain State, according to USFact.org.
What did the Department actually do?
According to a new study by Harvard University from early February titled “Unpacking the U.S. Department of Education: What Does It Actually Do?” the Department was responsible for financial aid distribution and protecting civil rights.
It says the Department “plays a key role in distributing federal funds, enforcing civil rights laws, and conducting educational research.”
The Department has had a tumultuous history with calls for its disbanding right from the start. They quote their education expert Professor Martin West saying it has “really been a constant feature of its history from the moment it was created.”
The Foundation meanwhile claims that all it has actually done is expand unnecessary and costly bureaucracy.
“Since the 1950s, the number of school personnel per student has skyrocketed by a staggering 381 percent. The number of non-teaching staff has increased by a staggering 709%,” they wrote. “As of 2010, teachers comprised only 50% of total school staff, down from 70.2% in 1950.”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle.
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Categories: Education, National News
red line on the graph is your reaso. And no line seems to represent the poor student performance………Good. Close it. Let the states start over and rebuild educational quality Dennis Morrisseau
Guess what? Instead of money going to the federal bureaucracy, it will stay right here! Imagine that we can spend the money as we need to in this state and every other state will have the same advantage. No salaries to be paid for shuffling money from the big pot in DC and then back to the states. Lets keep government pared down and local.
Our Vermont Democrat and Progressive legislators will not spend the money on educating students. They will continue to waste funds on indoctrinating students. We need a state constitutional amendment to remove the regulation of education from the legislature. We need local control of schools.
…ORRRRRR parent control of the funds…buying the educational services they want.
The DOE was never authorized by the sovereign people, We The People. Judging by the results, we didn’t need that department anyway. The states can fail on their own.
I fully support disbanding the DOE.
Considering the size and scope of the USA deficit – currently $-36.22 trillion? Can anyone explain how a country as large as the USA is able to operate so incredibly deep in the hole? Reportedly, our debt to GDP is 124%? Is our deficit the reason there is a fire sale offering free citizenship and our real estate to foreign investors ? Are all the layoffs and budget cuts due to the fact the USA can’t cover the interest on the debt – either shrink the workforce, cut the fraud or we’re all going down on this ship infested with pirates?
It seems to be so – all the bickering and ballyhoo over crumbs is distraction by design. A global financial crisis, wars and rumors of wars, rampant uncivil discourse, and leaders scrambling and lying through their teeth to avoid comeuppance. Best be prepared for the worst – it’s coming and my elders always said – the Great Depression will happen again that’s why they saved everything and borrowed very little from a bank. Depopulation, wealth transfer, reset – we are here – again.
Re: Senator Welch: “Make no mistake, this new Executive Order will hurt students in communities of every size, educators and staff, and rural America.”
The only question is does the dissolvement of the Dept. of Education make students smarter or dumber? Since 1979 when it was formed by President Carter the education of students has declined.
Now it’s Peter’s turn to to cry! 😅😢😅
https://youtu.be/FvPO2gJU4aI?si=F974judgqZY4XVjP
Dissolving the DoE won’t fix it……all. But what we have is completely broken. Scrap it and let it go back to the states. We need to start over. The Vermont Legislature needs to stop FORCING parents to send their kids to these failing schools. If they can’t survive, maybe they shouldn’t??? Let the dollars follow the student, WHERE EVER that may go. Yes that means religious schools as well. Test scores are crap. And on a basic level students today are severely lacking in information and knowledge. The “device in every hand” experiment is a complete and utter failure. No one has been made more intelligent nor do learning outcomes improve. MANY people below the age of 25 can’t read or write cursive. So, what you say?? That means they cannot read the original declaration of independence without it being typed up for them. OR the birthday card from Grandma written in cursive. OR say you want to trace your roots? They cannot read an original birth or death certificate from an ancestor long past. We truly have dumbed down the human race.
The fat is being cut in Washington, but do people like Welch have the intelligence and courage to actually take this opportunity and make things better instead of whining and crying multiple times every single day?? I’m not hopeful.
Disbanding the DOE is a good start, but education will still continue to spiral downhill with skyrocketing costs until the VTNEA teachers’ union continues to exist and the democrat party in Vermont continues to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of said union. Ideally, ALL public-sector unions should be banned. Public sector unions were allowed to exist by presidential authority during JFK’s term, and they can be eliminated the same way. Surprised President Trump has not proposed this.
I read one statistic that only 4% of the DoE’s budget is passed to local schools. The claim was that most of the rest was being spent purely on administration (bureaucracy) within the DoE. If this is even partly true, and even if some of that wasted budget is cut from the federal budget, it means that Vermont can expect an increase in funding.
I urge people to pay attention to State and local initiatives: if the past serves as a guide, our schools will not spend the extra money to improve educational outcomes but instead fund their pet projects, like more administration, more support staff, and more socialist indoctrination programs.