Trump: ‘The Department of Education is a Big Con Job’
“We’re ranked number 40. So if we’re ranked number 40 that means something’s really wrong, right?”
President Donald Trump lashed out at the Department of Education in the Oval Office, reiterating his desire to destroy the worthless agency.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to lead the Education Department, faces the Senate tomorrow for her confirmation hearing.
Trump said:
Look, the Department of Education is a big con job.
So they ranked the top 40 countries in the world. We’re ranked number 40th, but we’re ranked number one in one department: costs per pupil. So we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we’re ranked number 40. We’ve been between 38 and 40. The last time I looked at was 38, and then I looked two days ago. It came out, the new list, it came out at number 40.
So we’re ranked 40. Norway, Denmark, Sweden, I hate to say it, China, as big as it is, it’s ranked in the top five and that’s a primary competitor. We’re ranked number 40. So if we’re ranked number 40 that means something’s really wrong, right?
And I say send it back to Iowa. To Idaho. To Colorado. Send it back to places. And there are a lot of…Indiana, you have a great new governor. You have a great senator, that Jim Banks just got elected. You got great people, I’ll tell you what ndiana is going to be fantastic.
We probably have 35, maybe 37 states, that will do as well as Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden. They’ll be just as good. Then you have the ones that we all know about. It’ll be the same story, but you know what?
Even they will be good because you look at New York, you give it to Westchester County, you give it to Long Island, you give it to Nassau County, you give it to Suffolk County, same thing you go out to and you give it to upstate New York so you’d. Have four or five sections. You give it to Manhattan, Manhattan is a little bit tougher for some reason, I don’t know why it would be tougher, but it is. You give to California and you go to various areas outside of Los Angeles and you might have six or seven different subgroups.
But generally, like in if you go to Iowa, you give it to Iowa. You don’t have subgroups, you have Iowa. And other places that do a good job. If they do a good job, they’re going to do a great job in education.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: The Department of Education is a big con job… we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we're ranked 40th. That means something's really wrong, right? I say send it back to the states. pic.twitter.com/AE3TxODP0t
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 12, 2025
Trump cannot dissolve the Department of Education.
However, Trump and those he puts in the department can deplete and gut it to the point where it cannot function.
Wouldn’t that be delightful?
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Should we spend the most and get the least? Why do we?
The questions to ask those now screaming about sunlight and transparency. Musk and DOGE.
Jimmy Carter created the Dept of Education as a giveaway to the teachers unions. The Dept was never about educating children/teenagers, but about granting government funds to those unions, who would in turn give those funds to the Democrats for party building and electioneering.
Defunding it and hollowing it out, even short of ending it, helps to weaken the Dems. Remember, the Democrats ARE the party of government. Reducing government largesse, eliminating wasteful spending, etc…, reduces the Democrat party.
I worked at the NEA when Carter created the Dept of Education. Another openly stated reason for creating it was to provide cushy government jobs for NEA staff.
It’s interesting that we don’t hear ANY Dems complaining about the federal agency spending the most money per pupil, but produces the worst results.
Because that’s the unstated goal: Ds prefer to have a stupid, uneducated, ignorant populace. Such are easier to manipulate, control, brainwash, and snooker.
Slaves don’t need to read. In fact, teaching them is dangerous.
Because to do that would force them to admit that dropping millions of illegal alien children who can’t read, write or speak English forces the schools grades down. Schools are forced to pay for interpreters, teacher aides, tutors etc which are quite expensive.
.Education is stuffed to the gills with DEI, it became a haven for them
All part of the grift
I’ve long said the federal DoEdu does not provide the best educational opportunity for students. It provides perpetual job programs for adults. Abolish it.
And I’ve long said that with the unionization of teachers in the US circa 1970, the public education system in the US went from being a place parents sent their children to get an education to being a place where people with education degrees got lifetime employment, with tremendous benefits. summers off, and retirement at 50 paying more per month than their salary when they “worked.”.
You can take the budget for the Dept of education and split the money up to each of the 1.2 million K-12 teachers. They would each get something like 66000 dollars each in addition to their normal pay.
“And I say send it back to Iowa. To Idaho. To Colorado. Send it back to places… Even they will be good because you look at New York, you give it to Westchester County, you give it to Long Island, you give it to Nassau County, you give it to Suffolk County…”
I’m sorry, but this speech verges dangerously into Kamala territory.
What is he sending? What is he giving?
The President is talking about the funding. Direct grants to the States instead of filtered through the Department of Education. Letting the States determine the best way to educate their citizens children.
I believe that to mean authority and funding. Both could be done in the next budget if Congress would get off the dime.
Trump could dissolve the Dept of Education. All he needs is a Republican Party with the backbone to do it. Gutting the mission of it, sending all the money directly to the states and cutting off funding will work for now, though.
CORRUPTION is the reason the Department of Education is SO BAD!
Do a study as to why the top five countries lead in education and build from there. If it’s up to the States to form educational standards, then D States will return to normal (be the worst) and R States will shine. or from county to county this will hold true.
Every system develops internal goals which then take over the institution.
John Gall _Systemantics_ (the earlier the edition the better, late 70s) “Intrasystem goals come first.”
I recently took the bullet train from Bologna to Florence. Fantastic ride at high speeds, moderately expensive. This is Italy, right? ‘Nuff said.
The U.S. bullet train is stalled somewhere in California. A good metaphor for the conditions of our schools.
Have we reached the point where our governmental incompetence/corruption is shown up by the Italians?
We would be number one overnight if we sent all our teachers overseas and traded them for foreign ones.
The frustrating thing is that modern technology has created many more things a DOE could usefully do, and the DOE does none of them.
The DOE could provide a video streaming server which only contained educational content, so that schools could upload their required videos there and then could block YouTube from their internet and educational devices.
The DOE could provide a quiz mechanism which for fill-in-the-blank prompted the teachers for multiple answers and used regexes to identify misspellings as misspellings rather than the wrong answer.
The DOE could license quality curriculum nationwide so and let people download PDFs of the licensed curriculum anywhere in the country, including letting print-on-demand shops print those PDFs.
The DOE could provide huge banks of questions for randomly-generated quizzes and tests for said curriculum (pick 10 questions from the 5k options for basic questions, 5 from the 2k options for intermediate questions, and 2 from the 1k options for essay advanced questions), allowing kids to test in at their actual level when using said curriculum rather than lose half a year.
A DOE with a budget a tenth of what it currently has but run by a combination of retired GOOD classroom teachers and former homeschooling mothers and a sprinkling of computer geeks interested in a field or two would accomplish twenty times the good the DOE does and almost none of the harm.
Etc.
No, no, no, no, no. It would still be education by government bureaucracy, imposing whatever indoctrination it chose.
Education is the last bastion for those who can’t do. Ditto the building department.
It is amazing that since we created a Federal Department of Education the standards have gone way down, costs have gone way up and results have gone to hell.