#Department of Education

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[owl-noire]

Free Educational Resources for Teachers and Students

With Trump's talk of eliminating the US Department of Education, I want to compile a list of free and accessible materials for students, educators, and continuous learners.

Project Gutenburg has a library of over 70,000 free eBooks and audiobooks, with particular emphasis on those in the Public Domain.

The California Department of Education has compiled a list of Free Educational Resources that were originally meant for distance learning during Covid. I think these are primarily for grades K-12.

Library Finder is a free website that can point you in the direction of your closest local library. Libraries are an amazing resource for literacy programs, community outreach, computer access, and much more.

The University of San Diego has compiled a list of Top 24 Educational Resources for Teachers. Most of these are free, free with ads, or free with an account.

National Geographic has a list of Education Resources on their website. I highly encourage everyone to explore the website on their own time.

PBS has a bunch of different educational resources on their website that you can browse easily by subject and grade level.

Please add more resources if you come across them. This is by no means a comprehensive list.

Education is a right, not a privilege.

[tvmusiclife]

Getting rid of the Department of Education but creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for Elon Musk,

Picking a Fox News anchor as the Secretary of Defense,

Florida's congressional s*x tr*fficer as Attorney General,

[thashining]

Fortunately, fed student loan borrowers have certain protections per the contractual obligations by Dept. of Ed!

@bookersquared

[simply-ivanka]

Trump Gears Up for Change on Wokeness With Education Overhaul

The president-elect has laid out big changes for America’s classrooms, including expanding school choice—and shutting down the Department of Ed

By Matt Barnum and Douglas Belkin -- Wall Street Journal

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to remake education in the U.S., pledging to exert more control over funding and classroom lessons, to curb what he views as left-leaning tendencies at universities and even to dismantle the Department of Education.

If his White House delivers on those promises, more families could get money to send kids to private school. Schools would face pressure to limit accommodations for transgender students and to end some initiatives aimed at addressing racial disparities.

The goals are at once ambitious and controversial.

“There are a lot of very smart people who are very excited to get into positions where we can actually start making change happen,” said Tiffany Justice, a Trump ally and the co-founder of the conservative parents group Moms for Liberty.

Eliminating the Department of Education

Trump has promised to close the Education Department and has criticized U.S. school spending. 

In his first term, he proposed merging the education and labor departments, but Congress didn’t proceed. It isn’t clear whether lawmakers would go for the idea in a second term, nor how the department’s functions—such as protecting students’ civil rights, providing funding for students with disabilities and distributing student loans—would be handled if it were closed. 

Some Republicans have been reluctant to eliminate the department or cut federal funding that flows to schools in their constituencies. An Associated Press poll last year found that nearly two-thirds of Americans said the federal government spends too little on education.

“I don’t think you’ll see enormous cuts because that’s super unpopular,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank.

Trump will have to fill the education secretary role for now. Cabinet positions often go to prominent politicians and political allies.

Presidents sometimes look to state education chiefs. High-profile leaders in Republican states include Oklahoma’s Ryan Walters, who has fought culture-war battles in schools; Louisiana’s Cade Brumley, who has supported private-school choice and tougher school disciplinary measures; and Florida’s Manny Diaz Jr., who has overseen many conservative policy changes.

In an interview, Walters said he is focused on implementing Trump’s agenda in Oklahoma. Through a spokesperson, Brumley said “my focus is on continuing the historic educational progress we are making in Louisiana.” Diaz, through a spokesperson, said if asked to serve, “Of course you listen.” Justice of Moms for Liberty said that she would be open to the position, though hasn’t spoken to the Trump team about it.

A Trump transition spokeswoman didn’t comment on specific candidates.

Waging war on ‘woke’

Trump has said he would use the power of the purse to limit left-wing ideology in schools and universities.

Although a president can’t immediately cut off money to any school, he could use various laws to pressure schools to address antisemitism on campus, disband programs that focus on nonwhite student groups or reduce accommodations for transgender students.

Trump has said that he believes that Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education, should prevent transgender girls from playing on female sports teams. This would be a stark reversal from the Biden administration, which has interpreted Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.

During the campaign, Trump attacked Kamala Harris for being too supportive of transgender rights, an issue that resonated with some voters.

Trump has also indicated that he would use civil-rights law to challenge critical race theory, a term used by conservatives to describe some efforts to teach about racism and racial disparities. This could include targeting university diversity, equity and inclusion offices, legal analysts have said.

“On issues that I worry about…this is at the top,” said Rachel Perera, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank.

Another tool Trump has at his disposal is the accreditation system, which gives universities access to federal money. He has called it a “secret weapon.”

Colleges and universities need to meet standards set by independent accreditors to be eligible for federal funds.

Trump could weaken the influence of accreditors—which he considers too left-leaning—by reassigning some of their responsibilities to the Education Department, said Judith Eaton, past president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Alternatively, the administration could replace current accreditors with ones more closely aligned with Trump’s vision, she added.

Members of Trump’s inner circle “regard the higher-ed cartel as fundamentally out of order,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

‘Universal school choice’

Trump wants “universal school choice for every American family,” according to his platform. That likely means providing a public subsidy for private-school tuition or other educational expenses outside the public school system.

Trump has indicated he would support the Educational Choice for Children Act, already proposed in Congress. The law would provide $10 billion in federal tax credits to go toward private-school tuition, home schooling or other educational costs.

Backers say the bill would provide money for up to two million children, and help parents direct and customize their children’s education. School-choice critics say that these programs drain resources from public schools.

Prior efforts by Republican presidents to subsidize private schools—including those supported by Ronald Reagan, and Trump in his first term—have failed to garner congressional support. And while many Republican-controlled state legislatures have adopted such programs in recent years, voters in Colorado, Kentucky and Nebraska rejected school-choice ballot measures on Nov. 5.

Some Republicans “are not fully on board yet,” said Jim Blew, who served as an education official during Trump’s first term. “I think they will be in the new administration.”

[transmasculinizing]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[salvadorbonaparte]

I hate being a PhD student in the USA

[girlactionfigure]

[dosesofcommonsense]

The impacts of a broken educational system.

End the Federal Department of Education

[thebonesofhoudini]

I hope people see what's going on with this.

Republicans want to destroy the Department of Education in order to:

1) Create and maintain a populace of dumb people that continue to vote Republicans and accept blatant lies and misinformation/disinformation as truth.

2) Resegregate American Schools

3) Destroy Pell Grants and Minority Scholarships of any kind (because the DoE deals with all of that, even student loans).

3) Destroy HBCUs

4) Remove any class from curriculums they consider "too woke" (say goodbye to Women's studies, African American studies, and anything that hurts the fragile feelings of White People who don't want to hear their truth about this country.)

5) Force religion into classrooms where no one wants them (more Christian Nationalist bullshit).

Imma keep on saying it. MAGA REPUBLICANS are fucking fascists and don't deserve any respect.

They don't want another Barack Obama or Kamala Harris even thinking about entering politics or even being created.

Where are these Republicans with good ideas to improve America? To make schools better? To help people out? To make roads, bridges, and crumbling infrastructure better? It's all hate, resentment, bitterness, anger, hostility, and destruction with no good ideas to better the future.

[damianwaynerocks]

my school district was so bad. like so bad. severely underfunded and the education itself was abysmal at best. and i know this. like i had to study extra hard in university to keep up with basic concepts that everybody else already knew. i graduated in the top percentile of my university but i still don’t know basic knowledge. i thought everyone from my school was in agreement that our school sucked.

and yet i just saw a guy i graduated high school with on facebook saying that defunding the department of education is okay because “my school was underfunded and i’m fine.” and im like tommy. tommy. you didnt know where russia was on a map until 12th grade. one time in 9th grade two kids were convinced that the usa is in south america. i still dont know what a prime number is. what do you mean we don’t need more funding.

[thashining]

Education

[nando161mando]

Trump announces he will end the Department of Education

[diablo1776]