The US Department of Education announced on March 11 that it will cut almost half of its workforce, gutting the department and advancing President Donald Trump’s goal of eliminating it altogether. This threatens to upend decades of progress and hard-won reforms that strive to protect our nation’s most vulnerable students from neglect and discrimination.
The administration’s intentions for the department would do nothing to make our public schools more effective. Rather, they would create a public education system that is less able to ensure America’s children receive the education they deserve under federal law.
Dismantling the Department of Education would thrust our entire country’s public school system into chaos, with the rights and well-being of millions of children at risk. History indicates that students with disabilities, Black, brown, and Indigenous students, students experiencing homelessness, immigrant children, and…