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UNC Prof Michael Cohen on Trump calling for Dept of Education elimination
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Find the soundtrack of the season with channels like iHeartChristmas and North Pole Radio. The Roku Channel is available on all Roku devices, web, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Samsung TV and the Roku mobile app on iOS and Android devices. So stream what you love and turn up the cheer with iHeartRadio on the Roku Channel. Happy streaming! And one other thing I'll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and sending all education and education work and needs. Back to the states, we want them to run the education of our children. We spend more money per pupil by three times than any other nation, and yet we're absolutely at the bottom. We're one of the worst. We're going to end education coming out of Washington, D.C. We're going to close it up all those buildings all over the place and you have people that in many cases hate our children. We're going to send it all back to the states. President-elect Donald Trump, making that proclamation earlier on X to do away with the Department of Education. What would it look like and is it feasible and smart to do so? Joining us now on the KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline to talk more about it is Michael Cohen, an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Northern Colorado. President Professor Cohen, thank you so much for your time this morning. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Hey, this is not the first time we've heard of a leader calling for the end of the Department of Education. In fact, Reagan was one who called for it as well when he took office in the 80s. So why has this been a push that we've seen in an effort to begin with? I think that there's two competing impulses here. I think that sometimes you have some Republican presidents who want to reduce the federal footprint, which sounds like Trump, and then you have some Republican presidents who in the past have said like George W. Bush, let's use the federal government to hold schools accountable for student performance, and those are really competing impulses. I think it's interesting that with Trump, those competing impulses are both part of his incoming administration. On the one hand, he says, let's reduce the federal footprint, fully send administration of education back to the states, while on the other hand, he says, let's cut funding to schools that teach certain curricula, including critical race theory or that don't teach a patriotic version of history, and that's being more like the curriculum and police, right? And so it's hard to know exactly what he's going to do when he gets into office, because these are contradictions. Would decentralizing education, sending it back to the states, make standards for each state uneven professor? Well, at this point, they are uneven. I think a lot of people maybe don't realize that it is decentralized. The Department of Education doesn't set the learning standards for students. We saw with the Common Core, which was a voluntary set of state standards, there was a lot of pushback from many states, and a lot of them have dropped it since then. So they don't set the learning standards. It does look different already, depending on what state you're in when it comes to what students are learning in the classrooms. Professor, maybe we should take a couple of steps back and just talk about a little bit of what the Department of Education does do. Yeah. So they manage a number of programs. I think one of the things I want to, I think it's important to note is that they protect student civil rights. They monitor school discipline, you know, they provide regulations for Title IX. They step in when there's issues of harassment and bullying. They also manage and administer Title I, which provides more funding to schools with high percentages of students living in poverty. They, under the Every Student Succeeds Act, they require states to hold schools accountable for certain levels of performance and states need to step in and support those schools when they don't meet those levels of performance. For higher education, they manage, you know, billions of dollars in federal loans and grants for tuition. And, you know, I think cutting the Department of Education doesn't mean that all these things disappear because that would also require cutting the funding. It could just mean that the funding comes from other departments, other agencies in the federal government. And you know, what I've heard talk of is that they would provide such funding like funding for Title I. Oh, and I should have mentioned for special education students, they would provide that funding but with no strings attached and let states decide how they want to spend it. What does the Department of Education professor do well but what do they do poorly? If you had to look inside of it, where do they go wrong, where are their inefficiencies with the department? Well, you know, I think anybody on either side of the aisle would have to imagine that, you know, 5,000 people in a federal agency, you know, could be a bloated bureaucracy and they could get involved too much. So, you know, what I think they do well is protect civil rights. I think that's something that we do need at the federal level. But when it comes to state, you know, when it comes to accountability for student performance, I don't think that that's something that the department does very well. You know, we've had this since no child left behind and I think that that's why we have the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, which said, you know what, let's push some of this control back to the states and I think it makes more sense to manage accountability for performance at the local level. So yeah, I think, you know, protecting students' rights, whether they be students with disabilities and poverty students, students of color, you know, for, you know, for a variety of reasons, the federal government is a really good check on what schools are doing for such students. So, Professor Cohen, the million dollar question that may not be possible to answer right now, but is it realistic? What could it look like if the Department of Ed was wiped out because you kind of mentioned, it sounds like the services when it completely disappeared, it would be different because funding is also a portion of it. Right. Yeah, I think it's realistic, you know, for a couple of reasons, even though a lot of Republican presidents have failed to abolish the department, you know, that in itself could be a reason why Trump would try to do it. It would be like a win for him, right? And this is the sort of thing that I think, you know, he likes to do, yet at the same time, education is local, it's a local affair, and he would have to convince even Republican members of Congress who have to talk to local superintendents and their constituents who may also be conservatives are going to have to feel okay about, you know, supporting the President's goal of cutting the department and putting some of these programs at risk. I just, I don't think that it's going to be a big priority given the things that Trump has talked a lot more about, like, you know, the border and immigration and other such things that seem to be front and center for him, but it remains to be seen. I mean, this is somebody who could actually accomplish this goal that Republicans have been trying to do since 1979. In wrapping up with you, though, and I don't want to ascribe this, but I get the sense, Professor, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the ideas here is one about cutting costs, but part of this is philosophical and policies and what being is being taught in schools. Do you see an appeasement to that side that says, I don't like what's being taught, so let's punish the Department of Education as well as saving money? Are those two things in conflict or incongruence with why he's signaling this to maybe a certain portion of the electorate? Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. If you listen to the language about, you know, cutting the Department of Education, a lot of it really is about some of the culture war issues, students, you know, transgender student rights, use of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, critical race theory, that kind of thing, and this, you know, cutting the Department of Education would be Trump's way of saying, you know, we've done something about all these things, you know, that we don't want our schools to have this kind of influence on our kids. So, I think that that's part of it, and, you know, one thing that I've considered that I haven't really heard anybody talk about is, hey, this is something that Trump might do is he might cut the Department of Education, which would look really good to his base, but at the same time, the funding may remain and just be administered by other departments. So, you know, in a way it would be like, you know, both wins, he doesn't have to cut funding and upset a lot of local people, but at the same time, he could say, hey, we finally got rid of the Department of Education because of what they're doing with DEI and CRT and so on. Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Northern Colorado. It's Michael Cohen. Thank you so much for your time this morning. But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with the bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one member FDIC. If you put aside $0.25 every week for a year, what could you get at the end, a few cups of coffee maybe, a candle, or you could get a year of the best reporting from all over the world. Go to washingtonpost.com/bf24 right now. You'll get a Washington Post subscription for $0.25 a week for your first year. This is a Black Friday sale, so it won't last long. It's beginning to sound a lot like the holidays. The Roku Channel, your home for free and premium TV, is giving you access to holiday music and genre-based stations from iHeart all for free. Find the soundtrack of the season with channels like iHeartChristmas and North Pole Radio. The Roku Channel is available on all Roku devices, web, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Samsung TV, and the Roku mobile app on iOS and Android devices. So stream what you love and turn up the cheer with iHeartRadio on the Roku Channel. Happy streaming!