By Julianne Malveaux
After he won the Nevada Republican caucuses in 2016, the current President crowed his victory. “We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA) reflected on this comment as he asked Republicans to join Democrats in preserving the Department of Education. The 47th President loves the poorly educated because he knows how to manipulate them, and because the less you know the more you can be persuaded by false rhetoric. The cuts in education, including cuts in educational services for the differently abled, both physically and intellectually, will likely have a long-term deleterious effect on the condition of education in our country. The President’s reason for cutting the Department of Education is poor test scores, but the first phase of cuts, separating at least 1300 workers from their jobs, will also likely reduce the amount of educational data that is available. So, we may not learn, from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), which academic areas we need to boost. We are not able to follow graduates over time to analyze career trends. Fewer employees collecting data may impact data accuracy.
Given this President’s anti-DEI stance, we may not measure achievement gaps appropriately. Many of my research colleagues are concerned that this anti-detail-oriented President and his motley crew of incompetents prefer aggregate numbers to disaggregated ones. That means they may continue to report an overall unemployment rate, but fail to report changes in Black, Latino, and Asian unemployment. Data collection costs money, and the President aims to cut budgets. That includes more than $600 million in grants, many of which go to benefit the “least and the left out”. Further, many are concerned that the Office of Civil Rights has reduced effectiveness because of staff cuts. The Office of Civil Rights lost at least 240 employees, including 180 staff attorneys. Regional offices have been closed, making it more difficult for people to file civil rights complaints.
People aren’t taking this action lying down. The National Education Association (NEA), the NAACP, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are all suing the Department of Education to prevent its closure. According to the NEA “If the Education Department is broken apart, the rights of students, particularly our most vulnerable – to an education that imparts academic lessons, civil rights protections, and prepares them for their future, will be undercut”. In addition, with fewer workers’ protections, and an indifference to safety net supports, people will be forced into low wage work instead of workforce development activities that will better prepare them for good jobs in the future.
This president loves the poorly educated because they are most easily exploited. We are headed into a dystopian nightmare unless Democrats are willing to take some action.This President and his allies, assisted by a woman who used to lead Worldwide Wrestling (great preparation to lead the Department of Education) will reorganize or eliminate many critical functions of the Department of Education. Our young people will be the ones to pay.
This year 3.9 million young people are slated to graduate from high school. About 62 percent of them will enroll in either two- or four-year colleges. What will the atmosphere on campuses this fall? Unless some of the lawsuits are successful, lower-income students, differently abled students, and those in need of extra services will be sidelined. DEI programs that offer counseling and solace to some students are likely to be dismantled. Tens of thousands of students, if not millions, will be disadvantaged by the way the Department of Education is being transformed into the Department of MisEducation. This is the era of the MisEducation of the Marginalized. Scrubbing our history books of reference to Black, Brown, and other patriots is just a first step to dismantling any notion of critical thinking. This current President and his minions are dedicated to ignorance, and indeed they love the “poorly educated”. What does this mean for our nation’s future?
Dr. Julianne Malveaux is a DC-based economist and author. Juliannemalveaux.com
