This week’s free writing assignment is to spend around an hour writing about a current policy or issue. Surely, everyone is aware of the recent policy over the Department of Education. The Department of Education is a federal agency that oversees national education policy, administers federal programs for schools, and provides funding and resources to support education from preschool through higher education. Trump is currently making an effort to dismantle the Department of Education. I have heard a lot of discussion about this, but there is some dialogue I’ve seen that caught my attention. I'm especially interested in understanding what both sides are thinking and how they converse about the issue.
The closing of the Department of Education would impact things like meal plans for low income families that come from federal funding, programs for students that need special or extra education, funding for educational systems and classes. This obviously is a small number of things that would be impacted by the closing of the Department of Education. The plan to end this department is a detrimental decision that shouldn’t happen and needs to be stopped. People have often said these things would be handled by other departments, but other departments handling these issues are one of the reasons for the creation of the department to begin with. Issues were not handled properly on a wide basis before they were put into a specific department.
This can also affect college students; financial aid would be cut off and this could affect the school’s finances altogether. This is again a very bad decision that cannot go through. Children, teens, and college students alike as well as their parents need people who are going to fight for them and their educational rights to be protected. For both American children and foreign exchange students who are here to further their education and learn from our culture and our people—it is supposed to be a land of freedom FOR ALL, meaning equal chances at success for everyone who needs and wants them.
Trump did say that he loves the uneducated, but purposefully making people uneducated by stripping them of their opportunities is sick. There is definitely a deeper and more sickening motive behind this action Trump has decided to make and I am very saddened that this is what the majority of people chose for our country.
My understanding of the proponents of the dismantling of the Department of Education is that they advocate the following propositions.
1) The Department of Labor could handle some important grants that are now handled by Department of Education, especially in Career and Vocational education.
2) The Department of Commerce could handle some other aspects of the Department of Education, and run the student loan programs.
3) The Department of Health and Human Services can handle special education and student grants to make education affordable and accessible to persons with disabilities.
4) Many functions of the Department of Education represent aspects of government that do not rightly belong to the federal government. The States can be in charge of their education policies, and if several states want to collaborate on education policies, they can form an inter-state compact or alliance to share expertise and create specialized grants to promote educational innovations and best practices. All of this is something that states should do on their own, without the federal government getting involved.
5) If the federal government gets out of things it has been doing that ought to be done by states, we can lower federal taxes and federal spending, and this will help us balance the federal budget. If states miss the services to education that had been performed by the federal government, the states can create programs to replace what they have lost as the federal government shrinks. State taxes can go up to fund more education in the states that want to replace the federal government programs, but other states may decide to go on with fewer programs and lower taxes.
As to the bigger question of whether it is better to leave education to states and local government, or have more of a federal role in national education policy, I'm uncommitted. I am wary of national education systems, especially highly centralized and universal systems such as the ones in two places where I have lived (France and Taiwan). Highly decentralized education systems have disadvantages. Crackpots on local school boards can subject students to crazy content, and states can pass ridiculous requirements or fail to adequately fund education. But highly decentralized systems also have advantages. In the realm of education, maybe it is better to leave things to the states.
If I were going to change the federal government, I'd rename the Department of Education to the Department of Science and combine it with CDC and NIH from Health and Human Services, and I would take significant portions of the Department of Energy and put those in the Department of Science. I'd also put the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Aeronautics and Space Administration all together as divisions under the Department of Science. I would present a plan to Congress for a four year reorganization and transition period. The Department of Science would have the dual mission of advancing knowledge (science) and disseminating good information and understanding (education).
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