Why kill the US Department of Education?

It’s not about money. It’s about “woke” and “DEI” and "free markets."

Why Republicans want to kill it.

For the long form, read this week’s explainer by Associated Press.

• The Ed Department provides money for community public schools. In PA, that would mean the loss of $1.6 billion this year or a state and local tax hike of that amount to avoid harming our children’s education. Or we could capture about $1 billion by not funding the waste, fraud and abuse in PA’s academically disastrous and unaccountable cyber charter schools.

  Primarily, the federal funds support the education of low-income children and children with disabilities (DEI). Project 2025 calls for shifting those programs to the Department of Health and Human Services, then abandoning the programs altogether in favor of all-purpose block grants that can be easily slashed without political backlash.

• The department enforces civil rights laws as they pertain to children in schools. That means protecting children from all forms of discrimination. Republicans call this “woke.”

• The department evaluates and authorizes accrediting agencies for colleges and universities. Without accreditation, schools cannot receive federal funds. Democratic Presidents Obama and Biden cancelled the accreditation agency that allowed fly-by-night schools to rip off unsuspecting students. Republicans now are determined to replace an academic screen for accreditation, which they claim is “Marxist” and “radical-left,” with an ideological screen that defends “the American tradition.” Valuable as this may be for Republicans, reinstating free-market fraud hardly requires an entire department to accomplish.

• The department administers the $1.4 trillion portfolio of student loans. Republicans opposed President Biden’s efforts to forgive student loans, even by enforcing laws that already allowed for forgiveness but were not being effectively applied. What Republicans plan to do remains a mystery.

“Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Dylan Thomas was not writing politically, but the sentiment applies to our current circumstance. Please use 5calls.org to let Perry, McCormick and Fetterman know that we expect children to be fully educated, not indoctrinated, and that children with disabilities and in poverty still require the protection and support of all Americans

To engage locally…

No doubt Moms for Liberty and other Republican propaganda groups will continue trying to take over local school boards, focusing on culture wars and brainwashing children. It becomes our job to defeat them, which we can do if the spirit of resistance now spreading among Americans can be focused when and where it’s needed.

Here in Carlisle, we are ahead of the game. We beat back Moms for Liberty in 2023, and we are engaged in an aggressive campaign to keep our school board focused on doing what’s right, not what’s right-wing.

Citizens for Carlisle Schools has a slate of four candidates that includes two Republicans and two Democrats. Their credentials are impressive, and their commitment to improving our public community schools is exactly as it should be.

Please visit their website at the link above, get to know the candidates, and donate to the cause as you are able.

If the United States is going to survive in the long run, nothing is more important to restoring respect for truth and each other than our community public schools.

Thanks.