Government shutdown exposes Department of Education as unnecessary

As Washington DC grinds to a halt, the liberal media rushes to tell you the sky is falling. Randi Weigngarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and her union friends are screaming that schools will collapse without the Department of Education and that President Donald Trump is to blame for the closure. He said he was “holding the American people hostage.”

The only people holding Americans hostage are teachers’ unions. They took your children’s education hostage during the COVID period. They are holding hostage teachers who do not meet liberal standards. And worst of all, they see parents as roadblocks and hold them hostage when they back down.

The government has been shut down, federal employees at the Department of Education have been furloughed, more than half of DOE staff have been let go, and schools are still operating. Teachers teach. Students are learning. The world has not ended.

The truth that the media will never say out loud is this: This shutdown has lifted the lid on one of the biggest scams in America: the U.S. Department of Education.

SCHUMER’S CLOSURE LEFT OUR TROOPS AND THEIR FAMILIES HARM

For decades, teachers unions and the liberal allies they fund in D.C. have told the American people that education would collapse without federal bureaucracy. They said states couldn’t handle education funding, accountability or innovation without “guidance.”

They were wrong.

Schools have continued to operate during the shutdown because real funding (Title I, IDEA, and other major streams) flows through well-established formulas and scheduled appropriations that continue even when federal staff are not at their desks. States already manage these dollars.

The closure paused administrative actions and new rulemaking, not the actual flow of funds to schools. In other words, before this, the Ministry of Education “wasn’t making the system work” and the shutdown proved it.

TRUMP IS USING THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN TO DO SOMETHING NO PRESIDENT HAS DONE

The shutdown proved what many of us already knew: States not only have the ability to manage education, they already do. Education in this country is funded and administered primarily at the state and local levels. The federal government doesn’t add value, it adds bureaucracy.

Let’s be clear: There was never a reason for the U.S. Department of Education to exist. It was created in 1979 as a political favor, a deal between Jimmy Carter and teachers unions to secure their power. And it shows.

Teachers unions are not just one of many players in this story. They are the reason why the Ministry of National Education exists. The ministry provides them with power, money and political protection, and in return the unions defend the ministry’s existence at every opportunity. One feeds the other. That’s why they’re working so hard to convince Americans that the country will collapse without them, because without Washington they lose control.

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Teachers unions have been feeding off the Department of Education for decades to weaponize money and influence, pumping ideology into curriculum standards, teacher education programs, and accreditation pipelines that tell parents to sit up and shut up.

Now that the department’s lights are off, they panic. You’ll see the headlines: “Without the Ministry of Education, the world is on fire!” The only thing “burning” is the lies they have been selling to Americans for 40 years.

Here in the real world, children learn, teachers teach, and parents regain control. The system works just fine without federal intervention.

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This shutdown is a wake-up call. It did not disrupt American education. It turns out who has been offending all this time.

Unions may cry about this. The rest of us will continue to do our jobs.

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