U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) endorsed Donald J. Trump for president and we are thrilled with the outcome of the election! We believe President-elect Trump can permanently restore parental rights even beyond his administration by returning control of education completely to the states. He can also protect children from the harmful LGBTQ+ regulations coming from many administrative agencies in the federal government. For all this, we are hopeful, and we are prepared to support President-elect Trump with our policy ideas and our organized advocacy of chapters across the country with like-minded parents, grandparents and concerned citizens.
USPIE is a nonprofit, nationwide coalition that seeks to return education to its proper local roots and restore parental authority over their children’s education by helping parents and local communities escape federal and other national influences. It has been our mission since our inception in 2015 to close the U.S. Department of Education and end all federal education mandates because we understand that this is where the majority of nefarious pedagogies originate and are incentivized with federal dollars. A recent example is the perversion and decimation of Title IX forcing schools to allow boys to invade girls’ locker rooms and compete in girls’ sports with a threat to withhold federal funding for noncompliance.
Moreover, despite dramatic increases in federal intervention and funding in the government school system since the 1960s, educational achievement has not improved. The most widely used measure of school achievement is scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which shows no significant change. Efforts to improve educational outcomes for low-income children have also been expensive and unproductive. Even the federal college grant and loan programs have been ineffective for students. The evidence is inarguable, the federal government’s intervention in education has been a dismal failure.
Although this experiment with federal control of local public schools has gone on for half a century now, it has failed. We need to stop treating children like guinea pigs in some social engineering laboratory and start embracing children as human beings to be supported and inspired to achieve their own dreams and aspirations.
The U.S. Department of Education has existed because it is about control and not about children. Control through federal dollars is used to bribe and blackmail states. It has also been about pushing the public/private partnership agendas leading to Crony Capitalism proliferating in toxic testing and data collection of students.
That is why we’ve developed a blueprint describing how to close the U.S. Department of Education (USED) and return control to the states. We pray President-elect Trump will consider the plan we have developed. What follows are the steps outlined in more detail in the USPIE Blueprint to Close USED.
Elimination of federal intervention can be achieved in five steps:
1. Send all program management and funding to the states, including Pell Grants for college.
States already have the needed infrastructure to operate most federal grant programs. State officials report that most of their staff simply oversee and manage federal education programs. In addition to managing USED programs, states have their own preschool programs and should be able to incorporate the funding for Head Start. The funding for Free and Reduced Lunch could be incorporated into the many food programs managed by states.
2. Repeal all laws permitting federal intervention in K-12 education starting with ESSA.
As programs are being moved to states, the U.S. Congress should repeal the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2016 (ESSA). Some claim ESSA was written to decrease much of the prescriptive federal control asserted under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB), but it still authorizes the Secretary of Education the power to accept or reject state education plans.
3. Privatize college loan programs through savings and loan institutions.
Private lending would work like mortgage lending: students would be approved for specified funding based on the strength of their loan application, which would include future employment prospects. This will make loans realistic to future earning power. Students would learn to be more savvy consumers, and the private lending model would make colleges more responsible.
4. Eliminate all offices and divisions in the U.S. Department of Education and related spending.
The cost of overhead and bureaucracy to administer programs that have clearly not benefited children is truly a waste. In some regard it is an employment program providing jobs for thousands of bureaucrats, but this money could be put to much better use.
5. Reduce federal tax collection, shifting education revenue responsibilities entirely back to the states.
Since the federal portion of state K-12 education spending, though large in dollars, is about 10% in each state, restructuring tax collection to recover, or streamline, the funds needed is feasible. It is also necessary to finalize the extraction of the federal government from intrusion in K-12 education policy and regulation.
It is time to make education great again and USPIE stands ready to assist!
Sheri Few is the Founder and President of United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) whose mission is to end the U.S. Department of Education and all federal education mandates. USPIE has established 20 state chapters and is growing rapidly amid the national outcry from parents who want to regain control of their children’s education. Few is a nationally recognized leader on education policy and is often quoted in conservative media. Few has written extensively about critical race theory and served as Executive Producer for the documentary film titled “Truth & Lies in American Education.”