Donald Trump’s spat with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has exposed a growing rift between two schools of thought in modern conservatism.
For decades, Reaganite policies have dominated the Republican party, advocating for the dissolution of federal government powers. A new ideological challenger rivals them, national conservatism, which wants to wield executive power to enforce its beliefs.
Policy towards the Department of Education (DoEd) has divided these groups especially. Instead of completely dissolving the DoEd, national conservatives want to purge the institution and use it to wage war against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).
One of these “absolutely ridiculous” ideas, according to conservative columnist Sohrab Ahmari, is the “libertarian fantasy” to eliminate the DoEd.
By the time you get to education—dismantle the Department of Ed! cut school lunches!—you can see why Trump, the supreme pragmatist, dismissed this thing. pic.twitter.com/deKFxgJoBY
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) July 8, 2024
“Republicans have been promising to end or abolish the Department of Education for my entire sentient life. It has not happened. Not even close,” Scott Yenor, a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute, told the Daily Caller. “Republicans definitely need a plan to bend the department toward patriotic, competency-based curriculum and use it to promote its preferred policy agenda of school choice and institutional reconquest.”
The Secretary of Education for a future Trump administration could be one of the most important decisions for the Republican party, as he would have influence over which conservative faction would be the future of American education. (RELATED: An Overlooked Trump Cabinet Pick Could Upend The Left’s Grip On Power)
Jonathan Butcher, a Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, supports dissolving the DoEd: “The problem is that [the federal government] should not be providing money to K-12 schools. Education in the United States at the K-12 level is a state priority and is a federal interest, which means that it should be led by the states.”
Butcher said that complaints against “DEI or gender” initiatives in schools shouldn’t even be brought to the DoEd. Instead, they should be handled by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
DEI is a civil rights issue, so it is not the proper jurisdiction of the DoEd, Butcher believes.
“The Department of Education is largely an agency that processes money, and they make sure that schools are adhering to ESEA, the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as well as the Higher Education Act,” Butcher added.
Federal education policy subsidizes higher education through grants and aid programs, but only accredited colleges approved by the DoEd are eligible to receive this federal financial support, according to the DoEd.
“The most fruitful thing that Republicans can do is open up federal funding streams for new challengers to incumbent institutions. Right now, higher education is held hostage by an accreditation cartel, so working to certify new accreditors that can support new institutions would be a great step,” Michael Q. McShane, fellow at the public policy think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), told the Daily Caller.
If things were to go the national conservatism way, the federal government could potentially withhold funding from schools that do not comply with Republican policies in the DoEd if the party were to take control, McShane said. (RELATED:Watchdog Says Biden’s Education Secretary Violated Law By Using Office To Attack Republicans)
Legislators in at least 30 states have introduced or passed legislation to restrict DEI policies in both government and education sectors, according to NBC News.
The Florida government, for example, has been successful in eliminating DEI from the New College of Florida through political appointments to the school board.
Mark Bauerlein, a member of the New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees. expressed his support for dissolving the DoEd. He told the Daily Caller, however, that “Closing a department is again, a gigantic, managerial bureaucratic endeavor.
“This is the real challenge. I mean, even say, close the Department of Education, right? Actually doing it. You’ve got contracts out there, the legal, financial bureaucratic personnel changes. It’s huge,” Bauerlein said.
“The practicalities of doing something, putting it into a platform. That’s one thing. Carrying it out, you’ve got strong vested interests in the education world. Organizations thrive on that federal money, and they are going to resist that with everything they’ve got,” Bauerlein added.
Conservatives have been conflicted on the DoEd for quite some time, beginning with President Ronald Reagan’s original 1980 campaign promise to strip the department of its executive position. Following the release of an education policy report “A Nation At Risk,” which warned of the declining quality of American education, the Reagan administration decided against the policy.
President George W. Bush broke from this Reaganite fantasy in 2002 by introducing the No Child Left Behind Act. The act made federal school funding conditional on states introducing new standardized tests to ensure baseline education quality in schools.
No Child Left Behind Speech
Many high profile Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, have called to abolish the DoEd. Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, advocated to “neuter” the DoEd during her presidential campaign earlier in 2024.
Left-wing activists have seemingly taken significant control of important institutions.
Conservative Mom Speaks To School Board About ‘Diversity’
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, for instance, expanded the DEI bureaucracy across the university. As Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean in 2020, she created a “visiting professorship in ethnicity, indigeneity and migration” to “recruit leading scholars of race and ethnicity to spend a year at Harvard engaged in teaching our undergraduates,” according to Harvard Magazine.
Additionally, she announced “a study of the hiring, professional development, and promotion practices that may contribute to the low representation of minority staff in managerial and executive roles.” The study’s purpose was to map out how “increase racial diversity of senior staff.”
Gay resigned as Harvard president after multiple plagiarism allegations and scrutiny over her failure to say whether calls for genocide violated the school’s code of conduct at a Dec. 5 congressional hearing on campus antisemitism.
Pentagon school teachers have promoted materials that train students in social justice activism and fostered DEI initiatives, documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show. Many universities across the country have also reportedly made students take DEI courses in order to graduate.
Math and ACT test scores have hit 20 and 30-year lows in 2022 and 2023, respectively. In schools in places like Baltimore and Chicago, students aren’t proficient in reading or math.
Republican plans for a future Trump administration will have to address these systemic issues and the DoEd’s role in them.
Though the Reaganite dream to dissolve the DoEd may seem popular among Republicans, it appears it could be outflanked by technocratic national conservative ideas.
