If Trump Dismantles the Dept. of Education, Who Will Pay the Biggest Price?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, it was a proposal in President Trump’s first term, but now he’s taking steps to make it a reality. Will a new executive order spell the end of the Department of Education? Well, as a member of the House Education Committee and a former public-school teacher herself, Democratic Congresswoman Jahana Hayes is doing everything she can to protect the millions of students who rely on the department’s programs. She was recently among a group of lawmakers who were denied entry into the DOE by armed security guards. And now, she’s joining Michel Martin to sound the alarm on the consequences of Trump’s plans.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane Congresswoman Jahana Hayes, thank you so much for joining us once again.

REP. JAHANA HAYES (D-CT): Thank you so much for having me.

MARTIN: We’ve talked with you a number of times on this program, beginning when you were a National Teacher of the Year. You were a teacher for 15 years, so it’s logical that we would come to you when the whole — I guess, the future of the Department of Education seems to be in play. So, the first thing I wanted to ask you is, what do you understand about the Trump administration’s goal for the Department of Education?

HAYES: I think the challenge and the reason no one has an answer to that question is because they are circumventing all procedure not coming before Congress, not laying out a plan, not helping the American people to understand what the future of public education looks like for them. And that is a problem. I mean, outside of the fact that Congress is a co-equal branch and we have oversight responsibilities, the fact that one person can unilaterally just reform or change or reimagine the future of public education in this country with no input from Congress, from experts in the field, is dangerous.

MARTIN: First, Candidate Trump, now President Trump, again, has said he wants to close the Department of Education. That’s actually not a new position for a Republican president to take. Republicans have — many of them have criticized the Department of Education since its founding. What do you understand about their chief objection to the department, other than the fact that, you know, it was founded under President Jimmy Carter at the request of the teachers’ unions?

HAYES: I don’t really understand their objection, but it’s very clear to me that they don’t have a full appreciation for what the department does. Many of the concerns that I’ve heard about curriculum or instruction, or even the choice of instructional materials are not things that are handled primarily by the Department of Education. What the department does handle is civil rights complaints, discrimination, making sure teacher preparation is done properly, special education, the 7 million children who receive services through IDEA and have an IEP in place. The department oversees things like that. So, many of the objections that I hear coming from my colleagues are things that are handled at the state and local level by boards of education. I think what they also fail to give an answer for is, IDEA, which I just talked about, which is the program that covers students with disabilities or special needs, that’s a legal requirement. So, even absent the department or pulling back the funding, states and local communities will still be obligated to provide those services. And what they’re not sharing with people is how will these things be paid for, who will oversee implementation of them who will make sure that these things are done properly? There really is no plan. I think that is part of the challenge. And for the pennies that we’re talking about, because these are pennies when we’re talking about the Department of Education, this is a department that has not had full investments since it was created and the test scores reflect that. But the answer is not to take a hammer to it and tear everything down, it’s to say, what do we need to do to make sure that students have access to every opportunity that they should have? And what this department should be doing, this administration should be doing is looking at all of the other factors that impede learning, things like kids coming to school hungry, not having safe and secure housing, gun violence, all of the things that make kids absent or truant from school, health care, all of those things, if you really want to have an honest conversation about making sure our kids have every opportunity for education, we would be talking about those things and not stripping resources from the communities that need them the most.

MARTIN: I know you and a number of other congresspersons actually went to the Department of Education building in Washington and tried to gain access to, presumably to talk to people about what’s going on there. You were refused entry. But what do you understand just from what your sources of the department are telling you about what steps the Trump administration has taken so far in pursuit of its stated desire to shut it down?

HAYES: Well, my understanding is that the actions that they’re taking are illegal. The Department of Education, although Jimmy Carter was the one who proposed it, was created by an act of Congress. So, it can only be dismantled by an act of Congress. I think it’s very important to note that not only was I and members of Congress denied access to the public access entrance of the Department of Education building, but the Department of Homeland Security had officers there waiting for us and not allowing us to enter. So, this is really an attack on the co-equal branches of government, on our oversight responsibilities. But beyond that, the president has the right to say, I’m not happy with this department and I want it to change, but there’s a process by which that happens. And you come to Congress, you have oversight hearings, you lay out the facts, you present the data and the information to the American people, and then you present a plan for changes. This — I mean, we’ve seen it at other agencies across the board where they’re firing people unilaterally and then having to call them back, where they’re shutting down arms of departments and then realizing that these are the people that handle our most important or specific areas. I say, I argue that our children are just that important, that they’re just that specific, that we don’t get a do over, we don’t get to shut down programs that they need right now and then revisit them in a few months when we find out what’s in its place or what hasn’t been replaced is not working. And this department, this agency, President Trump and Elon Musk, who appears to be making all the decisions, really don’t have an understanding for the communities and the children that are going to be impacted by these harsh decisions, and it feels like they just don’t care.

MARTIN: You know, what’s interesting is that we know, for example, from reporting, a number of news outlets have reported that people from the Office of Civil Rights, for example, have been fired. We know, for example, that people in the Office of Civil Rights specifically have been told not to take on new cases, not to acknowledge any of the cases that are pending, a number of which have to do with complaints of discrimination around access for students with disabilities. Does that comport with what you’ve been told about what’s going on at the department?

HAYES: Yes, absolutely. This department is being very selective about what they prioritize. I mean, right here in Connecticut, one of our premier institutions for training teachers, Sacred Heart University, lost almost $3.5 million grant, which would have trained 80 special education teachers that would have gone into Title 1 school districts where they are so sorely needed. That doesn’t seem to be a priority of this administration. And that funding was rescinded because of what they call DEI initiatives. Well, diversity, equity, and inclusion does include students with special needs. It does include students from different religious backgrounds. And any effective teacher needs to have every tool available to them in their toolkit to go into a community and a school like that and be able to teach. This department is being incredibly selective. One of the first executive orders by this president was on trans athletes in K-12 education. They’re focusing on these things that affect such a small part of the population. There’s less than 3 percent of students in the entire United States who identify as trans in our K-12 public education system, but this has been a priority.

MARTIN: I was asking you about workers in the department being fired summarily, many of them saying that they don’t know why.

HAYES: I’ve gotten e-mail and text from people that I know at the department that they were dismissed without cause, they don’t know why, terminated effective immediately. That’s not how you make implement reforms in an organization. You first have to learn what it is people do and make a decision on if that job is important, not just fire everybody. We’re going to lose so much institutional knowledge and talent from the Department of Education because people are just being fired unilaterally. And I’m hearing about this from people in every part of that agency. One of the things that I’ve seen is that in order to usurp the power of Congress, it’s just like a rolling blackout, where funding is rescinded, where people are being fired, where arms of the department are being shut down. So, it’s not just the lights are going off like they did at USA ID, but it’s a rolling blackout where one by one, people are let go, funding is rescinded. There’s a pause on different things. And before we know it we’re going to blink and say, what happened to the Department of Education, and I think that’s why myself and so many other members of Congress have been so vocal right now, so that the American public knows what’s happening and is paying attention.

MARTIN: Congressman, you know, the Trump administration says that the department hasn’t proven its case if you compare student achievement in the United States with, say, our peer competitors around the world, you know, reading proficiency is not at the highest level, math proficiency is not at the highest level. And we obviously know that the COVID crisis made an impact, but some of these numbers were falling before that.

HAYES: Right.

MARTIN: And so, when you look at that, many people say, well, you know, if the department isn’t getting the job done, maybe it’s try time to try something else. What do you say that?

HAYES: So, we’ve just seen our NAEP scores and the department collects this information. But every state has their own Department of Education. So, the way they’re teaching these standards is going to vary from state to state. I would argue that in a lot of our states that perform really low, many of our red states, they haven’t made the investments in public education that some of our partners around the world have. And then, even in different countries where we’re talking about the quality of education is much higher, they have things like universal health care, universal child care, you know, birth to three initiatives. Families have paid family leave so that when their children are sick, they can be home with them. So, a lot of the barriers that you face as a public education teacher we need — we can’t just talk about the outcome without looking at all of the barriers to success that students come to school with. So, I would welcome a conversation about how we improve the future of public education, but it has to include all of those things, because absent those things, we’re not comparing apples to apples.

MARTIN: And what about the argument that giving the states more autonomy would at least make parents feel more invested in their local schools? I mean, you can’t deny the fact that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with public schools. That’s one of the reasons there’s been a charter school movement, for example. There’s been this push to kind of use public resources to support more privatized sort of educational structures. What do you say to that?

HAYES: Parents need to understand exactly what the department does, because when you talk about local autonomy, local school districts are the ones who run our schools, local boards of education, state boards of education. So, the problem is also a local problem. In our high poverty areas that rely on tax dollars to run their schools. I’m in the State of Connecticut where we have huge equity gaps. I have exclusive boarding schools in my district, some of the highest performing public schools and also some of the lowest performing public schools. But if we base it on a system by which we’re only pulling from local tax dollars, and you have a community that’s already depressed, then their school system is not going to be as good as maybe the suburban one a couple miles down the road. My argument is that 49 million children rely on public education. About 1 million children take advantage of private charter school vouchers. We don’t have 49 million private charter school slots, and education should not be a for profit endeavor. So, we want to look at our structure of education, how we’re making those investments, but to just say parents are dissatisfied, we have to take it a step further to say, and what are you dissatisfied with? Because most of the autonomy over that decision making is done at the local level. The Department of Education doesn’t go in and tell a local school how to operate. It doesn’t tell them what they have to do. It makes sure that federal civil rights law is followed. And that there are certain things that are adhered to, but most of those decisions are already made at the local level.

MARTIN: I guess the real question is, do the Democrats have an argument around this that both is getting through and that makes sense to the American people?

HAYES: I think it’s going to be about more than just the Democrats. It’s going to be about everyone stepping in and parents speaking up and teachers and local community leaders. It’s going to take all of the people who care about this topic, really amplifying their voices, talking to people in their community, paying attention to not only what members of Congress are saying, but how people are voting on these issues. The Democratic Party alone or elected leaders are not going to be the ones who are going to be able to fix this by themselves. It’s going to take everyone who literally has a kid in these schools, cares about the future of public education, wants to know how their tax dollars are being spent, wants to — some accountability for an unelected billionaire making all of these unilateral choices right now that are going to dramatically and negatively impact the lives of people in communities. I mean, all of this was laid out in Project 2025, and we see literally, page by page, everything coming into reality, but this is not something that, you know, 435 members of Congress are going to amplify on their own. It’s going to be where the American people learn that, wait a minute, this is the teacher at my school or this is the after-school or the before school program that my child attends. This is the summer program in my community that is funded through the federal government. It’s going to take for all of those people, and they’re everywhere, in rural communities, in urban communities, suburban communities to say, wait a minute, I didn’t vote for all of this.

MARTIN: OK. But to that end, though, you mentioned Project 2025, which was a project by sort of an outside, you know, interest group that during the campaign, then-Candidate Trump disavowed it, but he has now, you know, appointed or selected one of the authors of Project 2025, for example, Russell Vought, to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget. It’s a very influential position. Their argument is that people did vote for it. They knew exactly what the game plan was. It was laid out in this document. It was not a secret. That’s what people voted for. So, they are, in fact, proceeding with a mandate that they say they have. What do you say to that?

HAYES: Well, I think it goes back to your previous question. A lot of people I don’t think truly understood, OK, wait, this is going to affect me. I think people were all for the idea of getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse in government, but when you start to boil it down and say, wait a minute, this is my Medicare, this is my Social Security, this is the school in my community. And one of my frustrations with this work is I remember when I first got elected, people said, if you’re explaining, you’re losing. And we have to meet people where they are. Not everybody understands these departments in and out. Not everybody understands. I just had to tell people within the Democratic caucus that the Department of Education does not oversee Head Start. They didn’t realize that. I said, no, that’s the Department of Health and Human Services. So, we really have to explain to the American people, this is what that means. This is — you know, it looks like a line item in the budget, but this is what it looks like in your community. And I think that the American people are smart enough to know that there’s a difference between rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse and cutting programs that are essential to their schools and their communities. And I think we just have to take the case to the American people and explain to them in specificity, you know, down to the school and the program that will be affected so that people truly understand there’s a difference between voting for cuts to the federal debt or cuts to the federal workforce or the federal budget, and what they get in their community. But again, all of that is happening at the same time my Republican colleagues are proposing additional tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals. So, I mean, this argument is flawed because it’s not to help the American people, it’s to shift money from the people who need it most to wealthy billionaires and elites.

MARTIN: Congresswoman Jahana Hayes, thank you so much for talking with us once again.

HAYES: Thank you. And thank you for having me.