Agenda 47: Closing Dept. Of Education

President Trump said it again!^ During his second rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, he said he would close down the US Department of Education and return oversight of public school education to the states, where it belongs.

“Nobody is going to stand for education that’s not proper. We’re moving education back to the states. You’re going to be running your own education. What is more important that education? We rank at the bottom of every list. They rank 40 major countries. We’re at the bottom. But we’re top of the list as the cost per pupil. We spend more per pupil, per student than any other country anywhere in the world. So we are number one in that. And we are number 38, 39, 40 every single time (in quality of outcome).

You have Denmark, you have Sweden, you have Norway, you have China, always the top five. Can you believe it? China is always top five. That’s amazing.

But, we’re going to move our education back to the states. So, places like Indiana, and Iowa, and Idaho, and states that you don’t even hear too much of because they are so good, so well run. They are going to run their own education. And you know what is going to come out of that? A Denmark, a Norway, a Sweden, maybe, I don’t even know. China. Can you imagine? China with 1.5 billion people, is a top five. We are close to 40. We are 40 sometimes.”

LITERACY: UP, UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN

Since its inception, the Department Of Education has presided over a REVERSAL of literacy skills among adult Americans from 99.4% in 1979, the year President Carter created the agency, down to 79% today.

As a young senator, Joe Biden voted “yes” to establish the Department of Education. The teachers’ unions have kept him in office so he does not care that, with each succeeding year from its inception, the quality of education has gone down, down, down. Based upon the results, it is apparent Democrats’ goal was to DESTROY the quality of education in America, NOT enhance it.

The current adult literacy rate in America is 79% according to the US Department of Education, the very agency who presided over this astounding decrease.  Shocking and disgusting and needless. 

Literacy in America steadily increased until the 1980s.  In 1870 80% of adults could read & write and by 1900 that figure had risen to 89.3%. Even though fewer than 75% of adults in 1940 had completed high school, 97.1% could read and write. The very year the Department of Education was established, 1979, 99.4% of American adults could read and write.  That was the highest the literacy rate ever got, and it has dropped continually ever since.

Not only has adult literacy rates dropped dramatically since federal bureaucrats and politicians bullied their way into education, but so have test scores for ALL skills, at all grade levels. Recently released data revealed reading, writing and math skills among 9-year-olds dramatically have declined significantly in recent years.   The decline was the worst for black children, producing an even wider gap between blacks and other races.

TAKING CONTROL AWAY FROM PARENTS & LOCAL COMMUNITIES

Since the Carter Administration established the federal Department of Education in 1979 educational levels have steadily declined.  As the new senator from Delaware, Joe Biden voted to centralize control of education in the DC Swamp. With his re-election approaching, Democrat Carter needed the support of the powerful teachers’ unions, and giving them this cabinet level agency ensured their members would fund his re-election and vote for him. [The US House and Senate were controlled by Democrats during Carter’s four years.]    

This writer asserts that the decline in the skills Americans need in life was and is intentional.  The less educated the populace, the easier we are to control, and bureaucrats are all about control.  Even if dummying down Americans was not the original goal of federal bureaucrats & politicians, they are now fully aware that their policies have produced generations less educated than preceding generations, yet have shown little desire to correct this horrible trend.

Parents were the first to sound the alarm over the decline in educational standards and have been pushing for school choice for decades, with some help from Republicans.  Democrats have furiously fought back, refusing to give up their power. 

The head of the federal agency that keeps track of education levels recently admitted that all skill levels, including reading, have continually declined since the 1970s. 

“In fact, the declines from this assessment show that students in 2022 are performing at a similar level to two decades ago,” said Carr, adding that the report shows even high-performing student scores declined for the first time in the past decade. “They also represent the first-ever decline in mathematics and one of the largest-ever declines in reading since the long-term trend assessment was first given in the 1970s." 

Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

^During his first interview after terrified Democrat jurors found him “guilty” in June at the infamous Manhattan’s kangaroo court, President Donald J. Trump promised he would close the US Department of Education. Trump met with Fox News’ Will Cain, Rachel Campus-Duffy and Pete Hegseth for a 80 minute interview. Click here to watch the entire interview.