Despite pledging to trim or even eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, the GOP-controlled Congress passed and President Trump signed the largest ever budget for the unconstitutional agency. While the increase is smaller than last year’s, the Education Department has never received a larger appropriation in its nearly 40 year history.
Under the Fiscal Year 2019 Appropriations Bill passed by Republican lawmakers, the Education Department will receive some $71.5 billion—and that does not count the many billions more in “mandatory” spending. The 2019 budget is more than half a billion dollars larger than last year’s appropriation, which held the record before this one was signed.
One of the largest increases in spending — almost $250 million more than last year — will go to the so-called “Head Start” program to take over even more parenting duties from parents. Not only is the scheme unconstitutional, but it has been a miserable failure even in terms of its own stated goals.
Also receiving a massive boost is Title I Funding for school districts, which will grow by $100 million. Charter schools will get another $50 million, while “21st Century Community Learning Centers” will receive an extra $10 million. The “Office for Civil Rights,” which under Obama played a key role in pushing schools to let boys go in the girls’ bathrooms, will get close to $10 million more than last year, too.
While Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had proposed minor cuts to the department, Big Government-loving “Republicans” in Congress insisted on boosting the budget instead. For whatever reason, Trump was unwilling to use his veto to help fulfill his promises to voters made on the campaign trail. Last year, though, Congress and the president boosted the Education Department’s budget by more than $2.5 billion.
Critics expressed outrage about the betrayal. “This budget is what reducing the federal footprint in education is supposed to look like?” wondered Shane Vander Hart, a popular education blogger with Truth in American Education. “I don’t know about you, but I’m disgusted.” Countless Trump supporters and advocates of real, locally controlled education also expressed dismay.
On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to reduce or even eliminate the federal boot print over education. He also vowed to eliminate the dumbed down Common Core standards foisted on America by his predecessor and a cabal of left-wing billionaires. Unfortunately, under his administration, the opposite has happened.
Common Core is now more firmly entrenched than ever. The department has more money to waste on hijacking and dumbing down education than ever. And the agency, under DeVos’ leadership, continues to pursue globalist indoctrination at the expense of real education, with the secretary most recently joining with her counterparts from 20 powerful governments and dictatorships to support further globalizing U.S. education under the United Nations.
Anyone who still believes positive “school reform” is possible is not paying attention. It’s time for sensible parents to abandon the sinking ship of government education and head for the lifeboats.
