Posted on Monday, March 17, 2025
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by Emily McMichael
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2 Comments
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Elected Democrats and teachers’ unions have devolved into near-hysteria over the Trump administration’s plans to slash and eventually shutter the Department of Education, claiming that the cuts will lead to worse education outcomes for students.
But as President Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon have made clear, the department has been failing at its primary mission for years despite receiving ever-larger sums of taxpayer dollars. Granting states and localities more control over education will finally free schools from the oppressive control of Washington bureaucrats and empower teachers and parents.
The political battle over the Department of Education intensified last week when McMahon announced that the agency was firing more than 1,300 workers. That leaves the department with about 2,100 employees, down from more than 4,100 when Trump took office in January.
The move elicited predictable outrage on the left, with several Democrat state attorneys general suing and calling the move “reckless and illegal.” Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers denounced the cuts as “an attack on opportunity that will gut the agency and its ability to support students, throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country.”
But as McMahon made clear in a statement, the department will continue to administer programs required under federal law, “including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking.”
In an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, McMahon also said that the cuts were “the first step of eliminating… bureaucratic bloat.” As McMahon has repeatedly stated, her ultimate mission is to “put herself out of a job” by returning full control over education policy to the states. Trump has indicated that he plans to shutter most of what remains of the agency via executive order at some point.
As McMahon explained, Trump is “taking the bureaucracy out of education so that more money flows to the states,” which will empower states and individual districts to tailor approaches to education that work best for their students. “I think we’ll see our scores go up with our students when we can educate them with parental input as well,” McMahon said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has also defended the cuts, saying that they are “a promise made and a promise kept,” referring to Trump’s campaign promise to shutter the department. As Leavitt noted, American students are seeing worse outcomes despite record federal spending on education, with the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card,” showing that a large majority of students are performing below their grade level in reading and math.
This poor academic performance indicates that “the tens of millions of dollars that the Department of Education is spending every single year is not working,” Leavitt added.
Indeed, the department’s budget has exploded since the agency was first created in 1979. In 1980, its budget, adjusted for inflation, was $56.9 billion. That figure remained relatively flat throughout the next few decades, rising to just $61 billion by 2000. By 2016, it had ballooned to $100.3 billion. By 2022 it had skyrocketed to $692.3 billion, largely as a result of pandemic-era spending. Even after the pandemic subsided, the agency’s budget remained well above pre-pandemic averages, reaching $268.3 billion in 2024.
But as Leavitt also alluded to, this dramatic increase in funding has not corresponded with an increase in student performance. As AMAC Newsline reported earlier this year, NAEP findings not only show declining student performance but also “an alarming trend of growing disparities between high-performers and low-performers.” This trend speaks to the urgent need to allow states and localities more flexibility to meet the needs of their students rather than being forced to comply with top-down mandates from Washington, D.C.
As Trump repeatedly emphasized on the campaign trail, one major reason why more funding for the Department of Education has not yielded better outcomes for students is because much of that money has gone into the pockets of left-wing activists.
In February, for instance, the department said that it had discovered $600 million in grants “to institutions and nonprofits that were using taxpayer funds to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies” like Critical Race Theory and radical gender theory. The Biden Department of Education also cited the controversial 1619 Project as an “inspiration” while promoting works like Ibram X Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist.
McMahon has stated her hope that “American education can be the greatest in the world.” But as is most often the case, the more the federal government gets involved in something, the less efficient and effective it becomes.
The country has tried pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into education at the federal level, only to see students fall further and further behind. Perhaps it’s time to try something different.
Emily McMichael is a graduate of Liberty University with a degree in English and Writing. She previously worked as a student journalist for The College Fix, covering breaking news in higher education. In her spare time, Emily enjoys creative writing and academic research.
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