Topic: Education
“Abolishing the Gender Policy Council would eliminate central promotion of abortion (“health services”); comprehensive sexuality education (“education”); and the new woke gender ideology, which has as a principal tenet “gender affirming care” and “sex-change” surgeries on minors.”
Vought seems to believe, about many things, that removing the words from documentation about a thing, banning talking about a thing, or banning research into a thing, will magically make the thing go away. This naive denialism is laughable at best, but he’s outright lying here – nobody, especially from the government, is promoting sex-change surgery for children.
Full contextual analysis of Section 1.2: Executive Office of the President of the United States here.
Share this quote from Project 2025:
“Improve military recruiters’ access to secondary schools and require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)—the military entrance examination—by all students in schools that receive federal funding.”
This would effectively force all public school students to take the military entrance exam, and make it easier for recruiters to influence them.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.1: Department of Defense here.
“Deny loan access to those who are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, and deny loan access to students at schools that provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens.”
Under existing U.S. law, federal student loans are generally only available to U.S. citizens and eligible non-citizens, which typically includes lawful permanent residents (green card holders) and certain other categories of non-citizens, such as refugees and those granted asylum. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federal student loans.
Almost half of all states allow undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities. These policies are often based on the student meeting certain criteria, such as attending and graduating from a high school in the state. But again, they’re not qualifying these students for federal student loans, just offering them in-state tuition rates. Those students must find some other way of paying for college.
Denying access to federal student loans to students at schools with these policies is unnecessarily punitive to ordinary students of those schools who are U.S. citizens.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.2: Department of Homeland Security here.
“In addition, the next conservative Administration should rescind President Biden’s 2022 Gender Policy and refocus it on Women, Children, and Families and revise the agency’s regulation on “Integrating Gender Equality and Female Empowerment in USAID’s Program Cycle.” It should remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, in agency publications and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants that include the following terms: “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc. It should also remove references to “abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual and reproductive rights” and controversial sexual education materials.”
Apparently, he’s taking a page from Russ Vought’s book where he appears to believe that if you don’t say the words that talk about a thing, then that thing ceases to exist. I touch on that in Section 1.2, but suffice it to say, this is not a policy position grounded in reality. Moreover, the term “reproductive health” is radical to him? That’s not the position of a normal person. Henceforth, I will be referring to this phenomenon as the “Bruno Strategy,” because?
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.6: Agency for International Development here.
“For the sake of American children, Congress should shutter [the Department of Education] and return control of education to the states.”
That’s a radical change. Let’s examine what the results of that would likely be:
Republicans arguing to shut down the DoE isn’t a new thing. Republicans have been against it since the Reagan administration. Newt Gingrich argued for it in 1994. As did Bob Dole in 1996. So how worried should we be that this might actually happen? Hard to say.
Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next, dismisses talk of shuttering the Department as “hollow chatter.” [Source]
They’re also unclear on what they mean by “abolish the department.” I’ll explain.
- Does it mean completely eliminating all federal education programs and staff? (Difficult to do.)
- Does it mean just handing the programs to other agencies or cabinet departments?
- Does it mean turning all of these programs into block programs for the states? If so, how much federal direction and oversight would there be, and who would be charged with providing it?
- Does it mean cutting funding for Special Education, Title I, or Pell Grants along with it? (A complete elimination means yes.)
“Let’s shut down the head of the snake, the Department of Education,” Vivek Ramaswamy said. “Take that $80 billion, put it in the hands of parents across this country.” [Source]
If you think American parents will see a dime of that money, I have a bridge to sell you. If the money went anywhere at all, it would be to the individual states. That’s assuming they’re not going to force states to shoulder the costs themselves, like they proposed with disaster relief.
From linked article 21:
“On student loans, Butcher says the elimination could lead to the federal government getting “out of the business of awarding student loans, and then for what remains it would be moved to the Department of the Treasury.”
So, there is some evidence that they’re speaking of a total elimination, not a shuttering that preserves some programs. So what would a second Trump administration promise for K-12?
- Title I, the $18 billion federal fund that supports low-income students, would disappear in a decade.
- Federal special education funds would flow to school districts as block grants with no strings attached, or even to savings accounts for parents to use on private school or other education expenses.
- The U.S. Department of Education would be eliminated.
- The federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws in schools would be scaled back.
I’m sure there will be more details in the upcoming Department of Education section, so I’ll wait to get into absolute specifics of what they recommend.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“Short of this, the Secretary of Education should insist that the department serve parents and American ideals, not advocates whose message is that children can choose their own sex, that America is “systemically racist,” that math itself is racist, and that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ideal of a colorblind society should be rejected in favor of reinstating a color-conscious society.”
There are so many mischaracterizations, oversimplifications, and inflammatory language inherent to this statement that it’s difficult to know where to begin.
First, schools don’t “push the idea that children can choose their own sex.” The statement conflates sex (biological attributes) with gender (social and personal identity.) Schools support the idea that gender identity can sometimes differ from biological sex, and that children should be supported in expressing that if they so choose. It’s not “pushed.” One wonders how they intend to enforce such ideas. Teachers firmly saying “nuh-uh!” to non-gender-conforming children? What would the alternative be? Going back to hitting children’s knuckles with a cane[Source]24, as we used to do with left-handed children, when we thought there was something “wrong” with that? Where’s the line? Are we going to corporally punish tomboys, or boys who grow their hair long? Who determines what a boy is supposed to look like, and what a girl is supposed to look like? How far can one deviate before the way they look is an issue for the government? This is a ridiculous amount of government control over what amounts to nothing more than transphobia.
I touched on systemic racism and the “colorblind” ideal in previous sections. Absolutely nobody sane is claiming that “math itself is racist”, this is an insane statement. Efforts to reform math education focus on ensuring equitable access to high-quality math instruction for all students, which includes recognizing that students from underprivileged backgrounds may face barriers that are unrelated to their mathematical abilities.
As for Dr. King, they’re completely mischaracterizing his vision of a society where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin as a “colorblind ideal.” Dr. King strongly advocated for the dismantling of racist systems, addressing racial injustices, and acknowledged that color-conscious approaches were necessary to address inequality – basically the exact opposite of everything Project 2025 stands for. They’re bastardizing his legacy. King was 100% a radical in his time, as much as white people would like to believe that his “I have a dream” speech was the extent of his politics. Things MLK also said?
“However difficult it is to hear, however shocking it is to hear, we’ve got to face the fact that America is a racist country.”
“Large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility & the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
“America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.”
“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”
“The trouble is that we live in a failed system. Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we’re going to have to change the system.”
I believe that proper respect for Dr. King does not exist in the absence of a commitment to change these things; to right these injustices. And that means supporting lawmakers who have made a commitment to right injustice, not perpetrate it.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“Congress should eliminate CEP.”
CEP is the federal program that allows schools in low-income areas to provide free meals to all students, without requiring individual applications for it. It was introduced in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Eliminating CEP would increase the administrative workload for school districts (because they would have to go back to the system of processing individual applications from families to determine who qualifies for free or reduced lunches.) This would also result in kids having reduced access to nutritious food, leading to an increase in food insecurity among low-income students. Some families who would qualify for free or reduced meals might not even apply due to stigma, confusion, or lack of awareness.
More potential outcomes of this in the full contextual analysis of Section 3.1: Department of Agriculture here.
“Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”
This is literally the first sentence of this section.
The rest of Burke’s stated mission advocates for what’s called “school choice”, where parents have the option to direct their childrens’ share of education funding through an education savings account – funded largely by state and local taxpayers – to a school of their choice.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education – including an analysis of what it would mean to eliminate the DoE – here.
“To the extent that federal taxpayer dollars are used to fund education programs, those funds should be block-granted to states without strings, eliminating the need for many federal and state bureaucrats.”
“Without strings.” That answers the question of whether or not they plan to provide any oversight into what states are actually doing with the money, or how they’re treating children, or whether they’re providing a quality education. There would be LITERALLY NO ENFORCEABLE STANDARDS for what constitutes a “quality education.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education here.
“Although student loans and grants should ultimately be restored to the private sector (or, at the very least, the federal government should revisit its role as a guarantor, rather than direct lender) federal postsecondary education investments should bolster economic growth, and recipient institutions should nourish academic freedom and embrace intellectual diversity.”
This answers the question about what they want to do with student loans. As discussed in the analysis, moving them to the private sector is a money loser for whomever gets stuck with them. I don’t know how you’d force or encourage the private sector to take on these loans.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3.2: Department of Education here.