Several recent headlines suggest that after decades of dysfunction and declining student achievement, America may be getting education right again.
First came news that the U.S. Department of Education was transferring its $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department. Then came the announcement of the department’s downsizing from its current location, which is now 70% vacant, to a smaller space nearby. Not only will this move save taxpayers about $4.8 million annually, it will also make it more difficult for a future administration to return to the old, oversized bureaucracy.
These two actions are the latest in a series of steps the Trump administration has taken to fulfill the president’s promise to close the Department of Education before he leaves office.
THE POWER OF THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT IN THE LAST TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WAS REMOVED TO DISMANTLE IT
The cartel of special interests that runs America’s public education system shrieked with outrage. The American people, not so much.
Student loan borrowers don’t care which agency services their loans, as long as borrowers can get their questions answered and the agency keeps surprises to a minimum. President Trump’s downsizing of the Department of Education over the past year has also not registered even a blip on the public’s radar.
Why would it? The department employs no teachers, runs no schools, and sets no national curriculum (thank goodness). It was founded by Jimmy Carter as a partisan sop for the teachers unions. In the fifty years since, the multitrillion-dollar education system that the department ostensibly oversees has become a national disgrace.
America’s public schools were already a cluster of abysmal test scores, grade inflation, and woke curricula before cartel elites used COVID-19 as an excuse to take an 18-month vacation.
MISSISSIPPI’S SCHOOL WONDER HARM FAILING CHICAGO LEADERS IN EDUCATION
So it should come as no surprise that now that President and Education Secretary Linda McMahon is winding down the ministry, no one outside the cartel cares. Hardly anyone outside the Beltway has even noticed, so irrelevant is its impact on the success of America’s students and schools.
Compare the nation’s gaping indifference to the federal department’s shutdown with parents’ galloping enthusiasm for new school choice programs being rolled out across the country. In the past four years alone, 18 states have passed universal parental choice laws, allowing families to use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private, religious or other alternative schools.
Recently, Texas’ new universal school choice program — set to launch in the fall — announced that it had already received more applications than there are spots to fill. The state has allocated $1 billion for the first tranche of Education Freedom Account grants, enough for about 90,000 students. In just a few weeks, more than 240,000 people have registered.
GEORGIA TEACHER FOUND BOARD LEADS SCHOOL CHOICE THAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE ‘HIGHLY UNDERFUNDED’
Other states are seeing the same overwhelming demand.
Arizona’s Universal Choice program has grown more than 700% since 2022 to more than 100,000 participating students. Between 2024 and 2025, West Virginia’s program more than doubled and Arkansas’ nearly tripled. Florida’s massive program serves more than 440,000 of the more than 1.3 million U.S. students now in school choice programs.
Thanks to the recent wave of universal reforms, private school attendance across the country increased by 25% last school year. What we see is not just a trend, but a revolution.
MCMAHON STORY ABOUT PARENT WITH SPECIAL NEEDS CONSIDERING THAT FUNDING WILL CONTINUE AS DEPARTMENT SHRINKS
These two stories—the inexorable eradication of the federal education bureaucracy and the national rush toward school choice—are really one story. The American people have seen enough. The progressive interest groups that have conquered and ruined our education system have lost the trust of parents. Families are finally turning the page and voting with their feet away from the classrooms captured by the cartel.
Three-quarters of Americans now support universal school choice. More than half (34) states have created at least some private scholarships. Last year, Trump signed the first nationwide school choice tax credit into law. More than twenty states have registered to participate.
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Meanwhile, some of the most improved traditional public schools in the United States are in Mississippi today, thanks to a miraculous turnaround that is almost entirely due to ignoring elite-favored pedagogical fads. Other states like Louisiana and Alabama are following suit, ditching the gibberish for more classic approaches like phonics and times tables. And lo and behold, children are learning again.
And this momentum will only increase over time. Seven of the states that have adopted universal school choice are among the ten fastest growing states, including each of the top five. Real choice and real education are the future of American education.
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The era of teacher unions is over. Parents are demanding their rights as primary educators of their children. And conservative policymakers at every level of government are finally freeing families from corruption and incompetence.
Republics are only as strong as their citizens are educated. And for the first time in two generations, the American school system is moving in the right direction.
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