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It really is happening – the end of the U.S. Department of Education – and a notorious teachers' union boss seems to know what that means for a reduction in political power.
Soon after he entered the White House, President Ronald Reagan called for Congress to shutter the newly created U.S. Department of Education, which had been President Jimmy Carter's dream come true: government-run education exploited by activist unions.
Reagan would be happy. Trump is focused on saving public education in America, which is no small task.
Be informed, not misled.
Reagan told the country in a radio address from Camp David on March 12, 1983, “A better education doesn’t mean a bigger Department of Education. In fact, that department should be abolished.”
Reagan was urging Congress to shutter the new agency, which had a $14 billion budget at the time because doing so required congressional action to shut the doors. That same congressional action is still needed to zero out a federal department, but the Trump administration is taking another route around the Republican-led House and Senate.
Forty-two years later, almost to the day, Reagan’s vision of a smaller federal government and less bureaucracy is getting closer than ever. An announcement from the Department of Education, published March 11, reads:
As part of the Department of Education’s final mission, the Department today initiated a reduction in force (RIF) impacting nearly 50% of the Department’s workforce. Impacted Department staff will be placed on administrative leave beginning Friday, March 21st.
With a budget of $268 billion last year, the payroll at the U.S. Department of Education stood at 4,133 employees on Jan. 20, when President Trump was sworn in. It will drop to 2,183 through the RIF and about 600 workers who have already agreed to a buyout or early retirement.
'I'm so angry about this."
“I’m so angry about this,” Weingarten said, slamming her hand on the desk.
Weingarten, whose union salary is more than half a million dollars annually, claimed only the children of billionaires can afford private school. So, she said, a shuttered Department of Education would harm 90% of America’s children who attend public school.
That's simply not true.
She and her union are the big losers.
“So many people are so mad about it,” Weingarten angrily claimed, “because they’re just taking opportunity away from kids that don’t have it.”
Her rage is not about the "kids."
Only the people who personally profit from this current Department of Education are "mad."
In an appearance on American Family Radio, school-choice advocate Corey DeAngelis said the union boss is not concerned about a child’s education.
“It’s because she knows her power is slipping away from her fingertips,” DeAngelis, who keeps an eye on the teachers unions, said.
Terry Schilling, who leads American Principles Project, shares a similar opinion of Weingarten. She is a political activist who is using hysteria to scare parents, he says, because she is getting a “wake-up call” about the future of teachers' unions.
“Randy Weingarten,” Schilling says, “is understanding that they are about to lose a major source of their power and ability to force their agenda on the will of all of America’s families and children.”
Critics of public education point to test scores, such as the NAEP, to a continuous drop in basic reading literacy and math skills among students, especially minority children in urban schools. Test scores in Chicago Public Schools, for example, showed that only 21% of fourth graders were proficient in math and 23% in reading in 2024. Those rates were 21% and 27% for eighth graders.
Takeaway
In a related story, American Family News published this article:
"Communist holidays and pet insurance."
The related story is from last year and a 50-minute speech Weingarten delivered to the National Press Club where the words “reading” and “test scores” were never uttered. She did, however, call public schools a “manifestation of our civil values and ideals.”
This is true in the sense that public education has indeed become the manifestation of far-left cultural Marxism.
Those “civil values and ideals” mean 90% of U.S. children may have been exposed to People’s World, the communist news website. Its story from 2024 praised Weingarten and the AFT for shifting all future teachers’ contracts to expire on May 1 or May Day.
Since the 1890s, that date has been considered sacred by Socialists, Communists, and Marxists to celebrate workers and unions.
According to the AFT website, joining their union offers numerous perks, including dieting plans, a home mortgage program, discounts on hotel rooms, air travel and car rentals, and even pet insurance.
Can we live without Weingarten and her union? Absolutely. Can she live without the now expanded, taxpayer-funded DOE budget of $268 billion? Absolutely not.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.
