Betsy DeVos Calls For Education Department To Be Shut Down

Betsy DeVos, who served as Secretary of Education during President Donald Trump’s first term, is calling for her former workplace to be shuttered.

Trump is reportedly preparing to sign an executive order that would gut the Education Department’s core functions, as well as call on Congress to work on eliminating it altogether. The department has already placed dozens of staffers on leave.

In an op-ed published Thursday by The Free Press, DeVos acknowledged that the idea may sound “a bit radical.”

“But having spent four years on the inside as secretary of education, struggling to get the department’s bureaucracy to make even the smallest changes to put the needs of students first, I can say conclusively that American students will be better off without,” she wrote.

She noted that the latest Nation’s Report Card, which came out last week, shows students even further behind in reading and math than they were in 2019.

About seven in 10 fourth-graders do not read at grade level, and six in 10 fourth-graders are behind in math, the data show.

Also, the gaps between the highest and lowest performing students are “as wide as they have ever been, and by many measures, even wider,” DeVos said. The lowest performing fourth- and eighth-graders’ scores sank in 2022 and even further last year.

DeVos also pointed out that the Education Department does not actually do much educating.

“Nothing could be more important to our success as a nation than having well-educated citizens,” she said. “But don’t be fooled by the name: the Department of Education has almost nothing to do with actually educating anyone.”

The department does not run any schools or set curricula, and in most states, it makes up a small percentage of K-12 public school funding.

“So what does it do? It shuffles money around; adds unnecessary requirements and political agendas via its grants; and then passes the buck when it comes time to assess if any of that adds value,” DeVos said.

“The only certain benefactor of the DOE’s existence is its patron saint: the teachers unions,” she added.

During the Biden administration, the department focused on canceling student loans, reinterpreted Title IX to favor trans-identifying males, and caused delays in aid for families when it tried to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form, DeVos said.

She recommended the department send education funding straight to states and schools as a block grant, let the Justice Department enforce civil rights law, and give the student loan program to financial institutions rather than education bureaucrats.

“While it is true that no federal agency has ever seen its doors closed, there must be a first for everything. On the merits, the Department of Education has earned such a historic distinction,” she said.