Politically Unstable: The Education Department is failing our children

Video

Friday, December 12, 2025

OPINION:

When it comes to educating America’s children, the Department of Education is failing.

Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler is joined by the America First Policy Institute Chair of Education Opportunity Erika Donalds to discuss dismantling the Department of Education, promoting school choice so that parents can make the best decisions for their own children, and more.

[SADLER] Can you talk to us about the work that you’re doing at America First Policy Institute and how our Education Department is failing our children — I’ve got three young boys, two of them in public school, one is in private school — and the challenges that our children are facing in public schools?

[DONALDS] Our biggest goal is to ensure that every student in the United States of America gets a great education and has a pathway to achieve the American dream. Unfortunately, our public education monopoly has totally failed the American people despite massive investment at every level of government, local, state, and, of course, the federal level. So one of the things that we are focused on, as promised by the president, is to dismantle the Department of Education, return the power of education to the states, and ultimately, so the best decision makers in education, and that’s parents. So far, Linda McMahon has really hit the ground running this year since her swearing in, in not just dismantling the department, but really empowering states with more power and accountability as federal funds continue to flow to ensure the students remain getting the services that they need and deserve. Civil rights violations are acted upon. Workforce matters are attended to, but the Federal Department of Education can stop wasting trillions of dollars on bureaucracy.

[SADLER] We spend thousands of dollars per student on public education and we’re not really seeing the results. I think that COVID really hit home to a lot of parents when their schools were shut down. There was remote learning. Parents started discovering what their kids were being taught and were horrified at the lack of public education and we’re seeing it in the national test scores coming out of COVID, as students returned back into the classroom. They’re just not earning the test scores that they need. They’re not proficient in mathematics. They’re not proficient in reading. But they’re getting passed grade to grade, regardless, and a lot of them, we’re seeing colleges now have to Harvard, of all places, having to offer remedial math for their incoming freshman class because they don’t know, they don’t have the basic skills that equip you to be successful later in life.

[DONALDS] Yeah, the United States have been falling behind academically before COVID. And COVID, of course, didn’t help, but we haven’t recovered from that either. We’re seeing only one in three students in the United States of America are proficient in reading and math, which is not going to allow us to thrive as a nation, and certainly not allow us to compete on the global stage, despite spending three trillion dollars at the federal level for the last 40 years at the federal Department of Education. It has not improved outcomes. You mentioned, graduation rates are increasing and are higher than ever. And yet proficiency rates continue to drop, or remain flat. So what does that tell us about high school graduation? We’re giving students a diploma and often sending them off to college completely unprepared with the skills that they need to succeed.

[SADLER] What needs to be done? I am a big proponent of school choice. However, I live in the state of Virginia, I’m paying private tuition for my youngest to go to a Christian school. I yanked him out when the schools closed during COVID. He was only in first grade and he’s about to graduate from that. And then I’ll be entering the public system. But there’s not a lot of resources available and it depends on what state you’re in for families to have that option, especially if they don’t have the money. We’re all paying taxes, state taxes, which fund public education. But a lot of times we’re limited in the resources we have to look for alternative options, like homeschooling, like private education, like school choice to be able to determine what public school we want our children to go to. A lot of times, we’re bound by whatever zip code we live in.

[DONALDS] That’s my passion. As a former school board member, someone who’s worked on state policy around the country, ultimately, I believe that education freedom, school choice, and a free market in an education ecosystem is going to solve a lot of the education ills that we see in this country. But to your point, there are states like Florida and Arizona, soon to be Texas and others that have education scholarship accounts that really give every single family the option to choose the education that’s best for their kids, but that’s not nationwide yet. We did just pass, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, the federal tax credit scholarship program. We’re waiting on Treasury to make the rules associated with that. And that will go into effect on January 1, 2027, where every single state — we’ll pursue blue states as well — can opt into this program that allows for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit and those dollars to be accumulated and used for private education, homeschool expenses, curriculum, online schooling, tutoring, and other special services. And we think that’s a huge opportunity to diversify the states that are allowing for some private school choice, some financial help for families that really need out of the public system.