Education's role in this moment
First, an update: it’s been a few weeks since I last wrote, and that is for a few reasons. Among other things, while I’m between jobs and no one is paying me to react quickly to the news, I’m choosing not to. During this time, I am broadly experimenting with what it means not to have my work life be driven by anxiety. How can I show up and do work that is meaningful to me and is worthy of my time and energy but doesn’t constantly stress me out and deplete me? These are questions I’m contemplating.
One way I’m experimenting is by writing when I feel I have something to say rather than posting on a defined schedule or reacting to every piece of bad news. Thank you for being on this journey with me; I appreciate it, and I hope you get something out of my work, even if it’s just a bit of permission to be very kind to yourself during this period. What we’re living through is extremely difficult and exhausting, and being expected to carry on with your day to day like nothing’s changed is—in a word—the definition of insanity. Take care of yourselves, friends, by declining to hustle when you don’t have to.
Much has been said in recent months about the need for civic education given the election outcome. That millions of Americans have no idea what they truly voted for and now we’re all paying the price. There are many reasons for this, including that a majority of American adults read at a 6th-grade reading level or less. Separating fact from opinion is a 7th-grade reading level skill. This article cites a study which found that working-class Americans who read at least one book in the past year are far more likely to vote for Democrats than those who did not. That is one explanation for where we now find ourselves. But how did we get to this point?
Educators, who make up a majority of my audience, will be unsurprised by these literacy statistics. To many others I know, especially to many highly educated white-collar policy professionals in places like in Washington, DC, they are shocking. The U.S. has massive race- and income-based education gaps which Republicans have intentionally widened at every turn since the Reagan administration. And in 2024, they may have finally achieved enough power to attempt their true objectives: ending public education altogether, and controlling what information is taught and limiting it to a white nationalist, Christian worldview in an effort to consolidate their power and neutralize future threats to it.
Many people are surprised to learn that private school vouchers were invented by the conservative economist Milton Friedman months after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. They were conceived specifically as a way for white parents to avoid funding, or sending their children to, integrated schools. And despite any talking points to the contrary, that has always been their practical function in states where they exist. All forms of school privatization have been shown to increase racial and economic segregation. Which, it turns out, is what Republicans have always wanted.
Court-ordered busing to support school integration under Brown reached its height in the mid-1980s. And it was working. Integration is the only policy that has ever worked at scale and over time to reduce the so-called “achievement gap” between Black and white students, which is actually an opportunity gap. It turns out that when all students are exposed to the resources that upper- and middle-class white kids get, everyone benefits.
To be clear, integration as it was practiced in the U.S. from the 1960s through the 80s and 90s was far from equitable and was riddled with problems. It was imposed by top-down orders from white courts and politicians without consulting impacted communities, forced Black children to spend hours a day in transit to attend schools outside their communities, displaced thousands of Black educators, and was traumatizing to many Black students and families. One need only look at the Little Rock Nine or Ruby Bridges and consider that many of those students are still living to see how recent those battles were, and at what young ages Black children were expected to confront widespread, vitriolic hate from white adults.
And yet—even for all those flaws, according to the book Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works, which examines school districts across the U.S. that continued integration past court-ordered deadlines—integration, even in the flawed form in which it was practiced for such a limited time, was effective at improving the educational attainment, lifelong earnings, and lifespan of students of color, without negatively impacting white students.
The Republican Party, which has carried the flag of white grievance since the 1960s, found these facts, in a word, terrifying. They couldn’t allow it, because further decades of school integration would allow Black and brown students—and ultimately adults—to catch up to whites. The white supremacist myth would die. So they made up lies about public schools’ performance as an excuse to defund them. They punished high-poverty schools for having lower standardized test scores—when the single top predictor of scoring on those tests is parental income. They installed judges who would not only end court-ordered busing, but declare it, and ultimately any form of affirmative action, illegal. All to maintain the lie that white people have superior intelligence, and that their corresponding more powerful position in society is therefore earned or based on merit.
The Trump administration has recently been saying the quiet part loud by outright banning references to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and erasing references to women and leaders of color from agency buildings and websites. By attempting to eliminate the Department of Education, they are removing the federal backstop on racial equity in public schools, the federal entity that tracks education statistics, and the source of funding for special education. Because on a truly even playing field, rich white men like Donald Trump lose.
To anyone saying we need to improve civic education, of course we do. But the statement betrays a misunderstanding of how we got here—through 40-plus years of calculated cuts to public education funding, lies about public schools and the purported benefits of privatization, and vilification of college and intellectuals.
Trump is now poised to enact the endgame of this agenda: quite simply, the GOP doesn’t want anyone who’s not a rich white male to be educated at all. They benefit if poor folks, girls and women, disabled people, and people of color have little to no education and can barely read—they pose less of a threat to rich white men in power that way. At the same time as they are defunding public education, banning the teaching of science and critical thinking, Republicans are attempting in many states to roll back or eliminate child labor laws and the minimum wage. Again, this is not an accident. They want poor kids back in the mines, factories, and farms, their families dependent on their wages to afford food—and not in school. The better to control the population and solidify their power.
I don’t have a neat solution. I can only say this is not a drill, nor is it hyperbole. Many states have enacted versions of these policies already. Project 2025 has been underway in red states for years. The best way to fight this agenda is by not allowing school privatization to take hold, or if it exists in your state, not to let it spread. Fight every effort to defund public schools or dictate their curricula tooth and nail. Make it hard on them. Make every fight hurt and cost them as much as possible. Fight for child labor laws and a higher minimum wage. Because make no mistake: education is as much of a silver bullet as exists in our society, and the GOP’s goal is the absolute destruction of people’s ability to fight back.