The US DOE decided to go full DEI and so now they will soon be DOA.

And Why Richard Fowler, like many on the Left, need a History Lesson on Education.

By Greg Rabidoux, PH. D

Whenever anyone on the left starts waxing poetic about Government be afraid. Be very afraid. Or at least be very wary and check your wallet. Because it seems there is nothing so tragic to them as the death of big government.

In an opinion piece posted today (March 18, 2025) by liberal pundit Richard Fowler, a regular Fox News contributor, he waxes poetic about the incredible and diverse public-school teachers across our nation who wake up early because all they "want is just to make a difference." He then rings the school alarm bell of fear about how, in his view, millions of school kids will be hurt if and when the US Department of Education gets dismantled under the Trump Administration, and infers how racism, discrimination, and class warfare will reign supreme in our schools if anything bad happens to his friend, the Department of Education. And, if billions of dollars don't continue to flow to DEI teacher trainings or somehow this gets DOGE'd then, that too, will lead to catastrophe in all our schools. You mean like low student test scores and the inability to compete against better trained kids around the world?

Nope, we already have that, sorry.

He even tries to justify the bloated bureaucratic behemoth that is the US Education Department because, well, think of all the "hot school lunch meals" that will apparently, no longer be served to needy, hungry kids across the land if mean, cruel, and indifferent MAGA state and local administrators have their way.

But Mr. Fowler's view, like so much being spewed today from the far left, mistakenly conflates perception with reality and intent with outcomes.

In other words, they seem to argue, keep the US Education Department and its bloated $270 billion dollar budget around forever, not because it has helped our kids attain educational excellence and high world ranking (because sadly, it has not not) but keep it, because darn it, it has good intentions.

But good intentions alone never made anyone able to run faster, jump higher, or solve mathematical equations, know why apples fall downward from a tree not upward, and how to use basic logic and reasoning to discover new truths about our world and beyond.

The other "thing" Fowler and so-called education leaders like Randi Weingarten (American Federation of Teachers) don't seem to want to discuss are cold, hard numbers. As in just how poorly our kids do in their core school subjects despite having the highest dollar to pupil rating worldwide. In short, we spend the most and get the least.

And lately, as DOGE is discovering, we seem to have been spending an obscene amount of money on just about everything peripheral to learning outcomes and not directly on what truly matters.

Liberal intentions with education which really soared under the Carter Administration when the current Department of Education was created in 1980, have led to decades of some of the lowest scores of US kids from Pre-K thru the 12th grade in reading, math, and science worldwide. That is fact. Not perception. Whether it is the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) where our kids rank in the middle of the pack or lower, or worse when rated against other economically developed nations (OECD) where our kids fall to 30th out of 35 nations in math and within the lower percentile in science. The good news? Since we rank slightly higher in reading, I guess our kids can read all about just how bad they all are doing in science and math.

The bad news? If you added up the combined GDP of some nations ahead of us in student achievement like Latvia, Estonia, Malta, and Slovenia, it would still be just a fraction of the annual budget of our Education Department. Here's a new word of the day kids, shameful. Here's another, wasteful. Can I use both in a sentence? Here goes-The academic record of the US Department of Education's budget and its own history is shameful and wasteful when measured against real, not wished-for, or hoped for, success.

But don't take just my word for it, Ms. Weingarten whose priority is clearly getting more and more money for her members regardless of student outcomes, even said recently that "My members don't really care whether they have a bureaucracy at the DOE or not."

And why would they? So long as the spigot of funds keeps flowing from somewhere, anywhere, the source does not matter.

As Linda McMahon, the new Head of the US Education Department has made clear, we, as a nation, are not getting out of the business of educating our kids, we just will start treating it more like a business. And that means insisting we get results from our investment. And what whom, and where we invest makes a big difference. As Henry Barnard, an education reformer and the very first Commissioner of US Education feared way back in 1870, too much control from the Feds means "too much control over our local schools" and that leads to poor results. So, funding and food won't all of a sudden dry up as in Fowler's dystopian view but will be managed at the state and local level in keeping with the original vision of our Founders. Direct state to local funding, direct accountability. Less DEI and more math. More parental control and less drag shows. Who knows, it may just lead to better scores and better futures for our kids. What we do know is that continuing to feed the bloated beast in DC has not and never will be the answer.

As any scholar will tell you learning is mostly making sure you have the right priorities in place. Dismantling the Department of Education is a clear signal that maybe, just maybe, we finally will have our priorities in the right place. Because it's never been a question about our heart.

Greg Rabidoux is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. He has taught higher education either full or part-time for over 20 years.