Education Is a Right

[niyad]

Education Is a Right
PUBLISHED 3/19/2025 by Maya Wiley
The Trump administration’s war on public education is a war on our kids. Don’t let politicians strip our schools of resources and set U.S. students up to fail.



The U.S. Department of Education building and signage.The Department of Education announced last week it will reduce its staff by nearly 50 percent, leaving the department with 2,183 workers, a reduction from 4,133 when U.S. President Donald Trump took office for his second term. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)

Originally published on Maya Wiley’s Substack.

You don’t have to be an education expert to know that money that allows a school to hire teachers, increase teacher training, hire paraprofessionals to support students with disabilities, provide after-school programs and to support schools to learn and use what works to teach kids, are good things. We don’t believe kids should be bullied to suicide or their learning disabilities ignored. We believe racism is a bad thing, that attacking children is wrong and that schools should not be places for indoctrination. As Americans we deeply value education and consider it important for producing thinkers, productive people at work and in society. I never met a parent who thought their public school should have fewer resources.

So why is Donald Trump so enthusiastically disemboweling the U.S. Department of Education (DOE)? He already took a chainsaw to almost half of its staffing and has promised to close the DOE, as requested by Project 2025, despite its unpopularity. Sixty percent of American voters oppose President Trump’s plan to close it, with only 33 percent supporting it. The easy answer is that authoritarians do not care what we, the majority, believe or want. It is true, but it is also not that simple. Trump’s backing comes from a minority of radical ideologues who want a very different America—one that is significantly less diverse, less rich in rights, more indoctrinated to their extremist version of Christianity, steeped in a history of white-ethno-Christian nationalism. The authors want an unraveling of a system that has been partially, though not completely, transformed by the civil rights movement. The end game is clear: Charter schools, religious schools and private schools will benefit from a much greater share of public education dollars with less accountability. This will hurt all students, white and Black, English speakers and students who are not, the millions of children with learning disabilities and all families who don’t have the resources to buy their way out of the problems the Trumpian project will create for their kids and for our society.

The evidence that Project 2025 seeks to indoctrinate children is clear. They Project 2025 blueprint states, for example:

“Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. … The male-female dyad is essential to human nature and … every child has a right to a mother and father.”

—p. 451 and 461.

Gay and lesbian couples and single parents apparently undermine a “well-ordered nation.” The attacks on transgender students is rife in the document and a major focus of fearmongering for what amounts to a miniscule 3.3 percent of high school students, who are too often badly bullied. It calls “critical race theory” and “diversity, equity and inclusion” racist. That just means that to talk about race or acknowledge its impacts on society is itself racist against white people.

. . . .

We should not forget what began to improve education and what undermines gains. Thanks to the fight for better public schools mounted by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, and especially during the desegregation efforts of the 1960s through the 1980s outcomes improved. Research shows that attending integrated schools improved high school graduation rates for Black students by 15 percent and reduced their likelihood of living in poverty by 11 percent as adults. We achieved more fairness in per pupil spending, smaller class sizes and more support for better trained teachers and more rich curricula. It made spending for classrooms fairer and more money for teacher training and smaller class sizes. None of these gains came without costs. Black students suffered horrifying racism and mistreatment and Black teachers in the South who fought for desegregation were thrown out of their jobs in high numbers. The progress has also been real and meaningful.

. . .


Economic segregation increased, particularly in the last 15 years. Because of federal data that the Trump administration is dismantling, we learned that the gap in education funding between wealthy and poor schools grew by 44 percent between 2001 and 2012. In fact, the schools made up of the top 1 percent have increased funding significantly over other schools. No wonder parents are frustrated. Americans of all races express both aspiration for and pessimism about the future of our schools, and therefore our kids. But we have lessons and choices about what works. We can and must return to our strategies for getting more for our public-school students who are low-income, who are Black, who benefit from multi-lingual learning, who have disabilities and all of whom live in every zip code and come from every community. Show up with neighbors at school board meetings and demand answers and accountability. Go to your elected leaders’ town halls and make demands for public resources for public schools. Demand an end to curriculum policing and book bans and demand investing in teachers, in programs and in our future. Refuse division and demand solutions that work for all our kids. We did it once; we can do it again!

https://msmagazine.com/2025/03/19/education-cuts-trump-project-2025-public-schools/


Article 26 (Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

[SheltieLover]

1. Damn right it is! Much to the dismay of ruskie assets.

[niyad]

2. Right there in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But we cannnot

have a populace capable of critical thought.

[SheltieLover]

3. Gawd forbid!