The legacy of Jimmy Carter
First let me say that my entire educational experience happened before Congress and Jimmy Carter created the Dept. of Education in 1979. I can’t think of anything I’ve seen or heard of that has made American education better since then: and I say that as someone who has spent hundreds of days teaching in public school.
Today–yes, today–President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order to shut down the Dept. of Education (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-set-sign-executive-order-shuttering-department-education-rcna197191). For the hysterical set, this does NOT mean “shutting down the schools.”
The new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, has already dismissed half the DOE workforce. (Alarmists take note: this is not “firing the teachers.”)
The president can’t wave a magic wand and make the DOE disappear. The plan seems to be “to make it nearly impossible for remaining employees to carry out their work.”
It’s going to lead up to a helluva war with the teachers’ unions.
But we used to be able to do without them, too.
You know some left-wing judges are going to pop up out of their gopher holes and slap TROs on whatever Trump does. And strictly speaking, Congress will have to do the complete shutdown, since it was Congress that codified Jimmy Carter’s executive order to create the DoE. But yes, there’s a way to starve an agency into irrelevance even before it gets shut down.
I can think of jobs I’ve had in which the employer provoked me to quit, rather than fire me and have to pay unemployment.