Dismantling the Department of Education will have devastating impacts
Gov. Bill Lee yesterday celebrated Donald Trump’s “executive order” to dismantle and effectively end the U.S. Department of Education.
Unsurprisingly, the same Governor who relentlessly pushed to destroy public education in Tennessee through a costly and ineffective school voucher scheme also supports this latest very bad idea.
In short: This will be bad. All of it. The end of the Department of Education. The end of public school. The advent of “free market, choose your own adventure” education.
The end result: an exacerbation of income-based inequality. Or, the dream scenario of Project 2025.
While President Trump and his unelected advisor Elon Musk work diligently to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, some pastors in Tennessee on speaking out. The Southern Christian Coalition says the Musk-Trump dismantling will harm Tennessee students and schools.
Pastor Joy Warren, a Cumberland Presbyterian Minister in Murfreesboro, said:
“I know it’s getting exhausting to keep up with all the ways that President Trump and his administration are trying to harm our communities. But I know without a doubt we absolutely must continue speaking up for those under attack in our communities, including children! The firing of half of the Department of Education is just another way to take resources from our children in order to give tax breaks to his billionaire friends.”
With nearly 300,000 food-insecure students and more than $50 million in school lunch debt, Tennessee can hardly afford to lose even a penny of federal funding for school meals. Thanks to Musk’s DOGE agenda, though, the Volunteer State will be out $20 million.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has slashed two programs that provided more than $1bn for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farms and ranchers.
A chart of awards for the two local food programs funded by the USDA tells the story of how much states stand to lose as a result of the cuts.
Tennessee was awarded more than $20 million for these efforts in FY 2025.
Rev. Laura Becker, pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church, refers to the effect of the bill as “harmful discrimination.”
“Not only am I a parent, a pastor, and a Tennessean, I’m a constituent of Bo Watson – the Senate sponsor of SB 0836 that allows school districts to refuse public school education to students based on their immigration status. I believe that every child is made in the image of God, and this kind of harmful discrimination against beloved children of God is offensive to me as a parent and as a pastor.”
Move seeks to set up Supreme Court challenge over educating migrant children
A bill in the Tennessee legislature would allow school districts and charter schools to refuse to educate children who can’t prove their legal status. The move seeks to challenge a Supreme Court decision that requires that public schools provide education to all children, regardless of legal status.
Currently, as a result of a Supreme Court decision (Plyler v. Doe), public school districts must educate all students, regardless of immigration status. The legislation aims to challenge that ruling and would allow schools to limit the provision of a free public education to only those children who could demonstrate citizenship or permanent legal status.
Cumberland Presbyterian pastor Rev. Joy Warren said of the bill:
“As a Christian pastor I believe that every child is made in the image of God and deserves the opportunity to attend a high quality public school in order to help them reach their full potential. So seeing this legislation that attacks our fundamental American rights and liberties that would take away the opportunity of immigrant children to attend public school is an attack on my values, both as an American and as a Christian. These politicians are scapegoating immigrants, including immigrant children, to divide and distract the American public.”
Instead, Lee’s administration will create its own program – spending the same amount of state money to feed a lot less kids.
“Instead of serving 700,000 Tennessee children through Summer EBT, TDHS’s program will reach a max of 25,000 children. Despite spending nearly as much as it would take to serve the entire state, the Tennessee program will reach less than 4% of the children that received Summer EBT in 2024.”
Lee found money for a $1.1 billion voucher coupon program to help wealthy families save money on the private schools their kids are already attending – but he can’t find the money to feed hungry kids across all 95 counties this summer.
They love to rail against but also appreciate the federal dollars flowing to their states
Even as President Trump moves forward with plans to weaken and, ultimately, dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, Republicans appear conflicted.
NPR notes that at a recent hearing, the conversation turned to explaining the key functions of the DoE:
The Department of Education has two main jobs, in addition to managing the federal student loan system: It protects students’ civil rights and sends money to schools that need it most. But, just as the department doesn’t control classrooms, it doesn’t control budgets either.
Schools tend to receive about 10% of their total budget from the federal government. The rest comes from state and local sources. Yes, that 10% makes a huge difference – schools don’t just have tons of money lying around. And, yes, if the Department shuts down, how that money is spent or allocated could change – or, there could be less overall allocation if left to the states or integrated into state funding formulas.
So, Republican lawmakers face a conundrum – join their party’s leader in bashing and trashing the Department OR stand up for the DoE and the funds and protections it brings to schools in their states.
The Trump Administration may end up killing the gold standard of standardized testing – the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Peter Greene reports on the DOGE destruction at the Department of Education, including cutting off the arms that collect and analyze data:
“The U.S. Department of Education has decided not to fund the NAEP 2024-2025 Long-Term Trend Age 17 assessment,” Marcie Hickman, project director of the NAEP Support and Service Center, said in an email to state officials. “All field operations and activities will end today, February 19, 2025.”
What has actually been canceled at this point is the test for 17-year-olds that was supposed to happen in the near future. Nobody seems to really know whether this cancellation will also affect all other future NAEP testing, but since Musk has gutted financing for the Institute of Education Sciences, the data wing of the education department, it sure doesn’t look good.
Will the era of big testing finally come to an end? It’s not clear – because, well, nothing about what’s happening at the federal level is particularly clear right now.
The Privatizer-in-Chief seeks reduced accountability for charter school operators
Charter schools are the gateway drug to full-scale school privatization by way of vouchers.
Charters are so nice and easy, even some misguided Democrats have been known to support them. By contrast, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is one of a very few prominent Democrats to support school vouchers.
The federal Charter School Program has been shelling out grants to launch and expand charter schools since 1994. Analysis of the program by the Network for Public Education shows that one out of every four taxpayer dollars handed out by CSP has been wasted on fraud and/or failure. That means of the roughly 4 Billion-with-a-B dollars handed out by the feds, roughly 1 Billion-with-a-B dollars have gone to charters that closed swiftly, or never even opened in the first place.
Seems like something DOGE would be worried about.
But, um, no.
Instead:
Instead, yesterday the Department of Education issued an edict saying that the “unnecessary conditions and overly bureaucratic requests for information” would be stopped and that CPS would start handing out money more easily.
Cottle also wants to point out another factor. Florida used to run a huge budget surplus, but now it’s running a deficit. Cottle and others are trying to raise an alarm about math instruction and the need to improve math instruction, particularly by recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers. But the “still-growing budget for school choice vouchers is surely competing for money with ideas for initiatives to improve student learning, and the voucher budget is winning.”
In Tennessee, we should be alarmed:
Over the course of the next five years, as state funding is gobbled up by a privatization scheme and local taxes increase even as services offered remain the same or decrease, we can look back on this moment as the nail in the coffin of Tennessee public education.
Gov. Bill Lee won – and a generation of Tennessee students will lose as a result.
