To paraphrase Ronald Reagan’s famous line from his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter, here they go again. To oppose President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, the Democrats and their media allies are trotting out the same playbook they used forty-three years ago to thwart Reagan.
In 1980, Reagan campaigned on dismantling the Department of Education, where I worked from 1982-83 in the Office of Legislation and Public Affairs. Our office would have spearheaded the congressional push to pass a law abolishing the department and was staffed with Reagan loyalists like me ready to take on the task. Almost immediately, the National Education Association and prominent Democrats began attacking the idea using emotional appeals designed to scare parents and fan opposition in Congress.
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Last week I had a strong sense of déjà vu when watching the CBS Evening News broadcast. Chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes’s segment featured a distraught parent fearful that her disabled daughter’s education would be disrupted by Trump’s plan. The seventh-grade girl, Hope Katz-Zogby, has Downs Syndrome. Under a law first passed in 1975, three years before the Department of Education was established by President Carter to fulfill a campaign promise to the NEA, Hope is entitled to an individualized education plan so that she can fulfill her full potential in public school.
The law was known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act or PL 94-142. Before the Education Department existed, it was administered by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. When Congress reauthorized the law in 1990, it was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
This law won’t be abolished if Trump succeeds in removing Education as a Cabinet department. Only an act of Congress can repeal it. Hope’s mother, Elizabeth Zogby, probably knows this, unlike many parents who watched that CBS broadcast. That’s because Mrs. Zogby is a sophisticated activist not only for the education of children with disabilities but also for the Democratic Party. She was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Nor is this Hope’s first time in the media limelight. Back in 2013, she and her mother were invited to attend a White House ceremony with President Barack Obama celebrating the Affordable Care Act. UPI distributed a photograph of Mrs. Zogby and then three-year-old Hope clapping enthusiastically at the event.
The same holds true for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly known as Title 1, signed into law by Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965 as part of his Great Society agenda. Title 1 helps fund education expenses in 60% of the country’s K-12 public schools where students from low-income families are concentrated. Because these schools are typically in poorer communities where funds from property taxes and state coffers are inadequate compared to those of more affluent school districts, the federal government contributes $18.5 billion annually to equalize school funding. Poorer states such as Mississippi and New Mexico receive far more Title 1 funds than wealthier states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
When Carter created the Education Department, he transferred existing federal programs such as PL 94-142 and Title 1 from HEW into the new Cabinet entity. Other educational programs were transferred from the Labor Department. But not all. The Defense Department and even the Agriculture Department retained responsibility for overseas schools for military dependents and a university-level extension program respectively, while Labor lost some vocational education programs but kept others.
Student loans are another federal program that isn’t going away. The Higher Education Act of 1965 created the guaranteed student loan program. Banks originated the loans, and the federal government guaranteed them in the event of default. The system worked fine until President Obama abolished it in 2010 and transferred responsibility for the issuance of the loans, still backed by Uncle Sam, to the Department of Education.
These facts won’t stop the Democratic propaganda machine from churning out alarmist hyperbole. National Education Association president Becky Pringle claims, “Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families” and “take away special education services for students with disabilities.” She is joined by a cabal of 21 Democratic attorneys general who have filed a similarly hysterical lawsuit seeking an injunction against the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the department.
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Parents shouldn’t fall for these Democratic scare tactics. All of these programs and many others can be administered by other departments. Disabled and educationally disadvantaged students will still get federal support, student loans and grants for higher education will continue, and states may get more aid for schools with fewer strings attached.
What will disappear is the concentration of federal education funding in one department and the temptation it creates to use the carrot of federal funds to try to dictate what is taught in local schools. It would take another column to elaborate on that danger and why it alone is sufficient reason to eliminate the Education Department.
John B. Roberts II is an author and former executive producer of the McLaughlin Group. He served in the Reagan White House and Education Department. His most recent book is Reagan’s Cowboys, and his website is www.jbrobertsauthor.com.