Project 2025 Attacks Public Education
A supporter holds a Project 2025 fan in the group’s tent at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 14, 2023. (Photo cred: Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press)
Your breakdown on the Project 2025 fascist attacks on public education in America
by Qasim Rashid
Imagine a future where the Department of Education is eliminated, any discussion of racism is criminalized, public tax dollars fund private Christian instruction, and discrimination against LGBTQ Americans is legalized. That, in a nutshell, is what Project 2025 intends to do with education in America.
This article covers Project 2025’s attacks on public education in America. In the Project 2025 fascist dystopia, every school is a religious institution teaching Christian nationalist theocracy, and secular education has no place. As a human rights lawyer, I am reading the entire 900 page Project 2025 fascist manifesto so you don’t have to, and giving you the tools to debunk its claims. And as we dive into Project 2025’s attacks on education, I cannot overestimate the threat to our children.
P25 Mentions Education At Least 400 Times
The phrases “education” and “public schools” are referenced at least 400 times in the Project 2025 (“P25”) manifesto. The P25 Forward sets the tone for how degradingly it treats public education as it argues for universal school choice, defunding any institution who oppose the P25 mandate, and leans firmly into the “CRT” boogey man:
[u]niversal school choice [is] a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity…
Playing Victim
P25 plays victim in claiming that parents no longer have any power over what their children learn, and therefore the next President should defund any public education institution who “denies parental rights.” Except, none of this is true. Parents currently have and have always had total control over public school curriculum through locally elected school board members, on the state level through state legislators, and federally through U.S. Congress.
Likewise, critical race theory (“CRT”) is not taught in public elementary, middle, or high school. P25 posits CRT as a boogey man to advance their fascist agenda.
Finally, it’s laughable when right wing pundits object to the idea that “skin color determines identity.” The same group that claims “I don’t see color” loudly objects to claims that “Black Lives Matter” and rebuts it with “Blue Lives Matter.” The group that claims “color doesn’t matter” is still condemning Usha Vance, the Indian American wife of VP Candidate JD Vance, because of her skin color. And beyond racist rhetoric, the group that claims “color doesn’t matter,” would have us ignore that Black women suffer a 300% higher maternal mortality rate than white mothers, that Black and Indigenous children suffer a 300% higher infant mortality rate than white babies, that police arrest Black and Latino Americans at 6-10x the rate of white Americans despite similar crime rates, and that Black American wealth is still a fraction of the wealth of white Americans even 60 years after the Civil Rights Acts were passed.
It is no surprise, therefore, that the first step P25 plans to take to enact its fascist decimation of public education is to dismantle the Department of Education.
P25 Plans To Eliminate The Dept of Education
On Page 285 Project 2025 authors make their intent clear—fully shut down the Department of Education:
The Department of Education…is a convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel. This department is an example of federal intrusion into a traditionally state and local realm. For the sake of American children, Congress should shutter it and return control of education to the states.
In doing so, P25 seeks to undermine the number one reason Congress created The Department of Education in 1979, namely, “to strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.” In a post Jim-Crow America, visionary leaders like Jimmy Carter saw that for too many young people, their zip code determined their education level and access. The Federal Department of Education sought to change that. Sadly, despite nearly half a century since the creation of the DOE, zip codes still largely determine a child’s education level and access.
By eliminating Federal minimum standards, as P25 seeks to do, this will only get worse—particularly for children from Black, Latino, or low income backgrounds. With this premise of dismantling the DOE, the fascist P25 initiative goes on a rampage to decimate education in America as we now it.
P25 Decimates Education As We Know It
Title I: On Page 326, P25 calls to shift Title I funding for low income students to states entirely, and phase it out over a 10 year period. This would, of course, further devastate Black, Latino, and low income communities, especially considering majority white schools already receive $23B more in annual funding than majority Black or Latino schools. A recent report by EdBuild found the difference in funding is:
$23 billion. According to EdBuild, that's how much more funding predominantly white school districts receive compared with districts that serve mostly students of color. For every student enrolled, the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district.