President Trump has done the seemingly impossible and closed the Department of Education
Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK/DCSTOCKPHOTOGRAPHY
Iwas working in Congress 23 years ago when a bill came forward to close the Department of Education. Many saw it as symbolic, not as a realistic proposal. The bill moved nowhere, life moved on.
Now President Trump has done the seemingly impossible and closed the Department of Education. This is a bureaucratic, political, and educational earthquake. Let’s look at the fault lines to understand why:
Candidates make promises all the time on the campaign trail. Most of them go unfulfilled. Trump campaigned on closing the Department of Education but few, including yours truly, thought he would do it.
Why would we? The Department of Education was started in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, and has been a target of Republican criticism ever since. Conservatives have long argued that education should be in the hands of states, and more importantly, in the control of parents. They feel that the federal government has too much input into what is fundamentally a local issue.
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