Students need to be concerned.
The agenda seeks to advance private school choice and parents’ rights policies that have already become popular in many Republican-led states. But it would also change the entire fabric of federal education policymaking and how federal education laws are enforced by eliminating the Education Department and devolving the federal education functions that remain to other agencies.
Aside from eliminating the Education Department, here are some of the project’s other proposals:
- Passing a federal parents’ bill of rights similar to those passed in a number of Republican-led states, which the Project 2025 agenda says would give parents stronger standing in court “when the federal government enforces any policy against parents in a way that undermines their right and responsibility to raise, educate, and care for their children";
- Transitioning Title I to a “no-strings-attached” block grant administered by state education departments—which could allow the funds to flow directly to parents in the form of education savings accounts to be used for private school and other educational expenses—before phasing it out over the next decade;
- Distributing special education funds under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to school districts as “no-strings-attached” block grants or directly into education savings accounts for parents to use on private school and other educational expenses;
- Scaling back the federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws like Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination, and Title VI, which prohibits race-based discrimination by moving enforcement of those laws to the Justice Department and requiring that the federal government litigate potential violations in court, rather than through the more common route of negotiating settlements with school districts to change their practices;
- Scrapping the Biden administration’s Title IX revision, which would explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;
- Allowing states to opt out of federal education programs and devoting their share of federal education funds “toward any lawful education purpose under state law.” The agenda asserts that federal education programs’ “regulatory burden far exceeds the federal government’s less than 10 percent financing share of K–12 education.”
Project 2025: What is it? Who is behind it? How is it connected to Trump?
By Gram Slattery - July 12, 2024
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - A set of conservative policy proposals known as Project 2025 has become a lightning rod for opponents of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as they seek to highlight what they say are the dangers of him retaking the White House.
Trump has recently tried to distance himself from Project 2025, even though many of his closest policy advisers are deeply involved. The campaign of Democratic President Joe Biden says the project is proof that Trump would adopt a series of authoritarian and hard-right policies if elected.