The new Republican Party platform was adopted at the Republican National Convention last month in Milwaukee, their first platform in eight years.
Every four years at their convention, Republicans adopt a new party platform, but at the 2020 convention in Charlotte, the Republican National Committee (RNC) “unanimously voted to forego the Convention Committee on Platform, in appreciation of the fact that it did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement.” Instead, it resolved that “2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention.”
The 2024 Republican platform has 10 chapters. Chapter 7, which contains nine paragraphs and a preamble, covers education: “Cultivate great K-12 schools leading to great jobs and great lives for young people.” The ninth paragraph contains a proposal that on the surface seems quite radical for Republicans:
9. Return Education to the States
The United States spends more money per pupil on Education than any other Country in the World, and yet we are at the bottom of every educational list in terms of results. We are going to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it back to the States, where it belongs, and let the States run our educational system as it should be run. Our Great Teachers, who are so important to the future wellbeing of our Country, will be cherished and protected by the Republican Party so that they can do the job of educating our students that they so dearly want to do. It is our goal to bring Education in the United States to the highest level, one that it has never attained before!
Close the federal Department of Education? Ronald Reagan proposed abolishing the Department of Education while campaigning for president in 1980. The Republican Party platforms of 1980 and 1996 likewise called for the department’s elimination, yet, the federal education budget increased under President Reagan (with a GOP-controlled Senate) and exploded under President George W. Bush (with GOP control of the Congress for over four years). The Republican Party platform during the age of Trump (2016 and 2020) did not call for the department’s elimination.
Because the Constitution nowhere gives authority to the federal government to have a Department of Education, however, the department should be eliminated. And because we have a federal system of government, as James Madison explained in Federalist No. 45, the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite—any government provision of, regulation of, oversight of, or spending on education must only take place at the state level if it is to take place at all.
But Republicans can’t make up their mind on education. Before they get to their ninth paragraph in which they call for the elimination of the Department of Education, Republicans propose to do the following in their preamble and first eight paragraphs:
- offer a plan to cultivate great K-12 schools.
- support schools that focus on excellence and parental rights.
- support ending teacher tenure, adopt merit pay, and allow various publicly supported educational models.
- emphasize education to prepare students for great jobs and careers.
- support project-based learning and schools that offer meaningful work experience.
- expose politicized education models and fund proven career training programs.
- support overhauling standards on school discipline.
- support universal school choice in every state in America.
- advocate for immediate suspension of violent students.
- support hardening schools to help keep violence away from our places of learning.
- restore parental rights in education.
- enforce our civil rights laws to stop schools from discriminating on the basis of race.
- ensure children are taught fundamentals like reading, history, science, and math, not leftwing propaganda.
- defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children.
- champion the First Amendment right to pray and read the Bible in school.
- reinstate the 1776 Commission to support patriotic education.
- promote fair and patriotic civics education.
- support schools that teach America’s founding principles and Western Civilization.
And even in the ninth paragraph in which they call for the closing of the Department of Education, Republicans propose to cherish and protect teachers and “bring Education in the United States to the highest level, one that it has never attained before!”
So, which is it? Implement all these proposals, or close the Department of Education and let the states handle anything to do with education? Republicans can’t have it both ways.
Knowing the Republicans as I do, and looking at their track record when they had total control of the federal government, the chance that they would actually abolish the Department of Education is zero. We are talking about a huge federal department with 3,100 bureaucrats in the nation’s capital and 1,100 bureaucrats in 10 regional offices around the country. According to its website, Department of Education:
- operates programs that touch on every area and level of education.
- serves nearly 18,200 school districts and over 50 million students attending roughly 98,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools.
- provides grant, loan, and work-study assistance to more than 12 million postsecondary students.
Republicans also failed to keep their promises on many other issues. When the Republicans had total control of the federal government, for example, they failed to repeal Obamacare and didn’t even try to eliminate small federal agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). Why would anyone think that they would possibly eliminate the Department of Education?
It is not only the Department of Education that should be eliminated but also bilingual-education mandates, math and science initiatives, Title IX mandates, school accreditation, antidiscrimination policies, standardized-testing requirements, school breakfast and lunch programs, federal standards, desegregation orders, special-education mandates, Pell Grants, student loans, and research grants to colleges and universities.
When the Republicans start talking about eliminating these things and completely separating school from state, at least on the federal level, then, and only then, can we begin to take them seriously.
