by Dear Mr. Schermele:
I have worked in education for four decades as a teacher educators, teacher, journalist, author, and speaker.
I read your article, Education Dept. cuts are here. What happens now to student loans, FAFSA and IEPs?, (3/13 with great interest. I am grateful to see any coverage of education policy, but your article includes one factual error and then succumbs to some logical fallacies about the resulting DOGE cuts to the Department of Education.
Factual Error:
You wrote, “The agency also creates regulations for colleges to hold them accountable for teaching material that prepares graduates for well-paying jobs.” I am confident that while “well-paying jobs” is a popular cliché and perhaps shorthand for legitimate institutions, the Department of Education in no way equates higher education with the earning potential of graduates. If so, many of your journalist colleagues may not have earned degrees. If you are referring to policing diploma mills, that is a different matter.
Commission:
Your article rightly indicates that the federal Department of Education does not dictate curriculum or what happens in classrooms, That is literally true, but false in practice. For example, the attacks and threats associated with “teaching DEI,” leaves schools and districts obeying in advance, redecorating classrooms, disciplining teachers, quashing student dissent, parents demanding book bans, and yes — altering curriculum. For example, an Idaho teacher was ordered to remove a sign from her classroom that reads, “Everyone is Welcome Here!” (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sarah-inama-idaho-everyone-is-welcome-here_n_67d1fc57e4b0668b4e9d5b93)
There is also a naïveté, expressed in the article implying that federal dollars are sentient and know exactly where to go and when, even if half of the Department of Education has been terminated. Those funds will not flow freely and in a timely fashion, creating even more chaos and disruption to public education downstream from Washington D.C.
Omission:
The chaos caused by the Trump Administration at the Department of Education this week will have immediate and lasting consequences for states and local school districts. Failing to include zero comments from state or local officials in inexcusable. Schools will immediately begin laying off teachers, particularly those providing special services, because of the uncertainty caused by the Trump administration. As I stated above, classroom praxis and curricula will be impacted. Special needs students will not receive the services they are guaranteed by law and school districts from coast-to-coast will be declared insolvent, if for no other reason their moral obligation to provide special education services, without timely or certain funding from the federal government.
There will likely be more school segregation, more discrimination, and greater calls for privatization of public education.
I hope you will take these criticisms under advisement and strive to better inform your readers. They rely on your hard work more now than ever before.
Sincerely,
Gary S. Stager, Ph.D.
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.