Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump has the authority to undo the Department of Education (DOE).
This, naturally, triggered meltdowns from the usual suspects, including Senator Elizabeth Warren. I find it especially galling that Warren would talk about ‘access to public education’ when it was her party – and its pals in the teachers’ unions – who pushed to keep children out of public schools for months during COVID.
Including special education students who are protected by very specific federal legislation concerning their right to an education.
Comedian (and I use that term loosely) Paula Poundstone decided the dismantling of the DOE is far more nefarious:
It used to be a crime to teach slaves to read. When they're trying to keep people down, they don't want them educated, hence, closing the Department of Education.
— Paula Poundstone (@paulapoundstone) July 14, 2025
This trivializes slavery, of course.
But mark your calendars, because I'm going to say something I'll likely never say again: Poundstone is correct.
Just not in the way she thinks she is.
I’ll start by noting the Left’s double standard on laws and government agencies. When it comes to a law/agency they don’t like, it’s “outdated” and a “relic of white supremacy,” regardless of the purpose it serves. When they do like an agency, even if it was established five seconds ago, it’s magically a necessary and long-established part of America and we cannot possibly live without it.
The DOE was created under Jimmy Carter (which should tell you all you need to know about it) and opened under Ronald Reagan (one of his biggest mistakes), and since that time, here's a recap of what's happened to American education:
Since the inception of the Department of Education, spending on education has gone up while test scores, literacy rates, and mathematical competency have declined. In Wisconsin, only 31% of public school students are reading on grade level. In Illinois, there are 30 schools where zero students are proficient in reading. The same thing is happening in Baltimore, where at least 13 high schools have zero students tested proficient in literacy (but don't worry, Maryland officials will make sure those students have access to condoms in elementary schools).
Instead of teaching our students to read, write, and add, the Department of Education was spending billions on DEI grants for things like a 'restorative justice' program in Philadelphia public schools (where only 30% of students are reading on grade level and 14% are proficient in math), and 'Trauma-Informed, Antiracist Social Emotional Learning' in St. Louis schools (where 14% of students are reading at grade level and only 11% are proficient in math). In Santa Monica schools, fifth-grade students were asked to explore their 'white privilege' and the district proved to be an outlier: the majority of students were proficient in reading and math (we're sure the Leftists will get around to changing that shortly).
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the public school district boasts the lowest reading and math scores for Black students in the country, and the poverty rate for the city is 24% with a Black population of 38.6%. But the districts made a 'Pride Week of Action' a priority before sending kids home for the summer.
In Baltimore, Maryland, 13 schools had zero students proficient in math. That city has a 20.1% poverty rate and a Black population of 60%.
In 2020, nearly a quarter of those without high school diplomas lived in poverty. I doubt that's improved in the last half decade. If we're handing diplomas to students who can't read or do basic math, having a piece of paper that says they graduated is utterly meaningless. The cycle of poverty will likely continue.
It is the Democratic Party, and their ruinously woke educational policies, that are keeping children from learning how to read and do math. Because they have a vested interest in keeping their voting base uneducated and impoverished, because it gives them continued political power and a dependent class of voters.
The Department of Education made American education worse, and dismantling it can only improve the state of American education.
