Trump, Schools and Learning
Terry H. Schwadron
Feb. 6, 2025
In the same week that Donald Trump was threatening to close or clear out the U.S. Education Department, we learned that reading scores across the country continue to slip.
Meanwhile, Trump was identifying his main two problems facing U.S. schools through a series of executive orders as too much spending and too much culture war “wokeness.”
Despite Trump’s repeated efforts to shove governmental responsibility to local officials, Trump served up an executive order to push “anti-woke” goals to rid the nation’s classrooms from recognizing transgender identity, teachings about structural racism, and instead to promote “patriotic” messages about the country’s founding and development. It’s not clear what any of that means in practical terms, of course, but it’s what Trump has pushed.
A second executive order tells federal agencies to explore ways to expand access to private school vouchers. And interim leadership in the Education Department notified K-12 schools and colleges that it was renewing policies from Trump’s first term to limit school liability in sexual misconduct cases and afforded stronger rights to students accused of sexual harassment and assault. Yesterday, he added a ban on trans in young women’s sports.
For Trump and Elon Musk, the solution is to eliminate the Education Department, an action that requires congressional approval. So instead, they were moving to issue his plan for dramatic cuts to programs and staff at the Education Department, halting programs not specifically protected by law, moving others to departments also dismissing employees.
There was nothing in the orders about any emergency falloff in learning or acknowledgement that the country needs special visas, for example, to import trained engineers for Big Tech companies.
Federal Support as Weapon
All the orders threatening loss of federal money to local schools to force compliance. So, expect that the kind of tumult we have witnessed in Florida and Oklahoma, where governors and state legislators decided to get huffy with local school districts about what can be taught or even be on display in a K-12 classroom, may soon be visiting a school near you.
It’s a Trump political campaign, of course, based on the so-called populist ideas that pit some parents against teachers, that result in banned books and debates over bathroom use, that vilify teachers and “radical leftists” for promoting teachings that stress the lingering effects of our slavery traditions over our belief in equality or otherwise ruin a patriotic view of America.
The orders come at a particularly peculiar time. Release of the most recent results of National Assessment of Education Progress tests from 2024 show continuing decline of reading scores and little improvement in math that split right along socio-economic lunes. We could argue about whether this is a leftover of Covid interruptions or part of a much longer decline in school achievement, but the signs are there for reinvestment and substance in our public education rather than what we see happening in these executive orders.
You might even think there is a connection between test results and the dilution of public-school education in poorer school districts. Apparently, that’s not a question that Trump wants to ask. He sees more political points to be made, not education to be cultivated.
Post-Covid Starting Point
We know from studies, surveys and measurements that schools are facing a wide variety of financial, social and cultural waves. Absenteeism and dropout rates, even suicides are on the rise. Public school money is being diverted to charter schools and private or parochial education. Politicized parent groups are being goaded into confronting school boards about the content of individual books on school library shelves, and there often is growing antipathy about teacher unions.
According to The New York Times, over five years, the number of children using taxpayer dollars for private education or home-schooling costs has doubled, to one million and more than 20 states have restricted how race, gender and American history can be discussed in schools. States and school boards have banned thousands of books.
MAGA supporters have targeted school districts and teachers overpaying for migrant education, dealing with school closures and outrage over trans sports team policies rather than over growing class sizes or burgeoning lags with education results from other countries. Teachers complain about interference and poor classroom behavior; school administers are overly concerned about cellphone policies and finding money for normal maintenance.
Trump has been focused on removing the U.S. Department of Education as an unneeded level of oversight but has glommed on to it to promote this new culture war front as if it is the nation’s top priority. Weirdly, Trump, who wants to halt most aspects of immigration, has joined with Big Tech allies to kindle the need for specialized H-1 visas to allow import of skilled engineers and computer scientists that Silicon Valley finds lacking among America’s own graduates.
Plus, Trump is committed to states’ rights in the running of everything from abortion now to disaster aid coordination. But suddenly, faced with a chance to swat at gender identity, race and critical thinking, his orders are to stick the full force of the federal government into the nose of elementary school curricula and who’s using the high school gym to dress for a game.
Will It Work?
Of course, states and localities pay 90 percent of the bill for schools, and schools officially are run by local boards of education with sole power to set curricula and set teaching policies. There are significant legal questions about what exactly the feds can tell local school districts to do or to not do. Title I money is assigned by Congress by formula, presumably beyond Trump’s control.
But then there is the power of the Trump political voice and his hand on certain discretionary money. Having Trump dead-set on wringing change can have indirect effect. And MAGA allies in the various states are bringing more lawsuits before the courts to effect changes, they see as positive, including a pending Supreme Court argument about Oklahoma’s decision to send public school money to a parochial charter school.
Local school superintendents, including Alberto Carvalho in Los Angeles, say they will not change policies about allowing transgender students to play on sports teams or limit bathrooms access. School teachers in Florida say they teach what they need to teach despite state rules and even financial incentives, and in Oklahoma, some teachers have refused to add Bible teachings as instructed by that state’s head of education. Some school officials have just overinterpreted laws to a point of showing them to be ridiculous.
Courts have decided cases for individual districts or teachers.
Next year will be another round of the national report card tests for fourth- and eighth graders in public schools, private and parochial schools and charters. Amid all the concern about culture wars and government cuts to education, one wonders whether there will be any time left to worry about what those results will have to say.
Trump and Elon Musk may well prove successful in eliminating the Department of Education. That’s not the question. Rather, are young Americans learning or achieving as a result?
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