‘Americans have had enough… It is time to end the unconstitutional federal control of education and restore parental and local control’
COLUMBIA — At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, Former President Donald Trump revealed that he plans to shut down the Department of Education if he wins the upcoming 2024 election. “It’s time,” Trump said. “Close it up. When you look at the list of countries, we’re always at the bottom [for education]. We spend more money per pupil and we’re always at the bottom of a list of 40 countries. And we should close it up and let local areas, and frankly, states, handle education.”
Abolishing the Department of Education has been the mission of United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) since it’s inception. For those who are unsure of how to make a difference in their local schools — or even in American government — USPIE’s feature film, “Truth & Lies in American Education,” not only reveals the truth about what is happening in America’s schools, but also what steps need to take place for parents to regain their God-given control over their children’s well-being.
For USPIE Founder and President Sheri Few, the steps to make a change and abolish the Department of Education are clear.
“Considering the offensive policies issued from the U.S. Department of Education, the department should be totally defunded,” said Few. “The Department of Education exists so federal elites have the muscle to control children, and mandates Common Core, Marxist critical theories, the sexualization of children, anti-American propaganda, and threatens to withhold federal funding for noncompliance. National test scores scream at us that children desperately need reading, writing and math, not more federally mandated critical race theory nonsense and overt sexualization.
“The time is right to defund Department of Education. Former President Donald Trump has called for its shuttering, as has former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Should Congress commit to defunding the federal Department of Education, there are five easy steps to take:
1.Send all program management and funding to the states: State officials report that their current infrastructure oversees and manages similar state and federal programs. For example, states have their own preschool programs where they can incorporate funding for Head Start programs; free and reduced lunch funding can be incorporated into state-led food programs, and data collection, managed by states, can better guard student data privacy.
2.Repeal all laws permitting federal intervention in K-12 education, starting with ESSA: As programs are moved to the states, Congress should repeal the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2016 (ESSA). The federal government is obligated to prevent states from discrimination in education under the 14th Amendment. This obligation can be administered by the Department of Justice through the courts, where cases can be handled individually and ruled upon with the power of law. Other programs that can be moved to other federal departments include Postsecondary Education Scholarships for Veterans, which can go to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, which can move to the department that handles all D.C. policy programs.
3.Privatize college loan programs through savings and loan institutions: Students can be approved for specified funding based on the strength of their loan application, including future employment prospects, which makes loans relative to future earning power. Privatization will help students be more savvy consumers, and the private lending model will make colleges more responsible.
4.Eliminate all offices and divisions of DOE and related spending: The cost of overhead and bureaucracy to administer programs that have clearly not benefitted children is truly a waste. The department can be closed in one fiscal year with the elimination of DOE discretionary appropriations. The year this occurs, the federal government should send every American federal taxpayer a rebate or refund — after all, this was their money in the first place.
5.Reduce federal tax collection, shifting education revenue collection entirely back to the states: Since the federal portion of state K-12 education spending is about 15 percent 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.
“The reality is that Americans have had enough. Parents and taxpayers are fed up with federal control of education, which has led to indoctrinating instead of educating children. It is time to end the unconstitutional federal control of education and restore parental and local control,” concluded Few.
United States Parents Involved in Education (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 to escape federal and other national influences. It is the vision of USPIE to create a culture where parents, empowered with the authority to choose what and how their children learn, are the undisputed primary educators of their children, where local schools operate in support of families, and where education is unencumbered by federal mandates.
###
Parents Are Fighting and Winning
Against Critical Race Theory
By Lance Izumi and Wenyuan Wu
Because critical race theory is the most divisive doctrine ever to threaten America’s schools, it has spawned a great parent revolt, which has turned ordinary moms and dads into extraordinary heroes.
As opposed to classical Marxism, which divided people into oppressor and oppressed classes based on economic status, critical race theory uses race to separate people, with Whites being viewed as oppressors and non-Whites viewed as the oppressed.
All across the country there are examples of CRT being injected into classroom instruction.
One California student named Joshua tells of how he and his seventh-grade classmates were told to line up for a so-called “privilege walk” exercise.
The teacher would call out supposed privilege traits, such as “I am White,” “I am male,” and “I am Christian.” If a trait applied to a student then that student would have to take a step forward.
Joshua said it felt like a criminal lineup with students “singled out for privileges that they really can’t help or control.”
Because of such divisive instruction, parents are pushing back hard.
First, parents are demanding to see what is actually being taught to their children.
When Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas asked her daughter’s school about the CRT instruction used in the classroom, she was told to file a public records request.
Instead of being dissuaded from probing, she filed 160 public records requests. According to Solas, “this toxic ideology could destroy a little child’s soul,” which is why for her “it is a spiritual battle.”
Once they find out about CRT in school, parents have taken action.
Nevada mom Gabs Clark, a poor widowed African-American mother of five children, filed a federal lawsuit against her son’s school when the school denied him his diploma for refusing to do a CRT-inspired exercise in a required course.
Clark’s lawsuit alleged that the school violated her son’s First Amendment free speech rights and Fourteenth Amendment equal protection rights by forcing him to identify himself publicly according to his race, gender, and other characteristics. The school backed down and has settled the case.
Parents are also running for school boards and are winning.
Ryan Girdusky, the founder of the 1776 Project PAC, which assists pro-parent, anti-CRT school board candidates, has helped flip school boards from Florida to Colorado.
In Southern California, a new pro-parent majority in the city of Temecula immediately banned CRT instruction in district schools.
Immigrant parents are especially concerned about the impact of CRT.
Xi Van Fleet, an immigrant mom from Communist China, lived through Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which persecuted ordinary people based on oppressor-oppressed class divisions and resulted in millions killed.
“Everything that’s going on here happened in China during the Cultural Revolution,” which is why critical race theory “should have no place in our schools.”
Parents are therefore forming state and national anti-CRT organizations such as Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn in Education, and others.
CRT supporters thought they could secretly sneak their ideological indoctrination into the classroom, but parents have gone on alert and are taking the battle to the pro-CRT education establishment. And the good news is that they are winning.
Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute. Wenyuan Wu is executive director of the California for Equal Rights Foundation. They are co-authors, along with McKenzie Richards, of The Great Parent Revolt: How Parents and Grassroots Leaders are Fighting Critical Race Theory in America’s Schools.
