By AFGE.org
Project 2025, conservatives’ extreme plan for a Republican administration, promises to reshape the U.S. and dismantle many aspects of our lives, and that includes the progress we’ve made as a nation on civil rights.
The ultra-radical agenda was spearheaded by the far-right Heritage Foundation, whose president Kevin Roberts was fully open about what they’re trying to do, telling Steve Bannon “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
And so, it comes as no surprise that Project 2025 proposes to eliminate the Department of Education, which they see it as an extension of our nation’s efforts to expand civil rights and repair the damage done to Black Americans, women, ethnic and religious minorities, and LBTGQIA+ individuals.
“It’s about reversing the progress America has made since enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” said AFGE Public Policy Director Jacque Simon.
A section in the over 900-page document openly discusses the beef they have with a landmark piece of legislation that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
“For most of our history, the federal government played a minor role in education,” states the blueprint. “Then, over a 14-month period beginning in 1964, Congress planted the seeds for what would become the U.S. Department of Education (ED or the department). In July of that year, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, after Congress reached a consensus that the mistreatment of black Americans was no longer tolerable and merited a federal response. In the case of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) and the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), Congress sought to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged students by providing additional compensatory funding for low-income children and lower-income college students.”
Another section reads, “Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”
“In other words, children in public schools should not learn about challenges to gender norms or about America’s history of slavery, racism, and discrimination lest they feel bad about their demographic group’s role in this history,” Simon added.
Here are some of the steps they want to take to crush the progress made by the civil rights movement and push us back to Jim Crow era racism through the elimination of the Department of Education:
- Oversight of education and federal funding would be handed over to the states, echoing the “states’ rights” disputes over the expansion of slavery that led to the Civil War and again in disputes over desegregation, and more recently in disputes over reproductive rights since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.
- Once federal funding is sent to the states, states would be permitted to spend on private schools, including religious schools that discriminate and those that provide little or no accommodation for students with disabilities.
- They would revoke the student discipline rules that seek to prevent discrimination. The so-called “restorative justice” approach to student discipline looks at data comparing the treatment of Black and White students for the same offense or data comparing incidence of discipline by race to determine whether school discipline policies have discriminatory effects on racial minorities. Project 2025 would end collection of that data.
- They would gut regulations prohibiting sex-based discrimination in schools and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
- They reject “critical race theory” – structural racism and how racial inequality is facilitated. Project 2025 would do away with curriculums and programs that involve critical race theory much as “assignments in which students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist,” because such assignments might tear communities apart or threaten America’s commitment to “colorblindness.”
For some federal employees such as attorneys and specialists working in the offices that would be closed, they might be able to transfer to other agencies based of their expertise but would likely be classified under Schedule F.
Sheria Smith, president of AFGE national Local 252 representing Department of Education employees nationwide, said eliminating the Department of Education is bad news for the American people.
“If the plans outlined in this project are implemented, it will mark the end of our local, which would be detrimental to the citizens our agency serves,” she said. “I am an attorney in the Office for Civil Rights, which enables citizens to lodge free complaints against schools that are violating their civil rights in a manner that does not involve litigation, courts, or private attorneys.”
“Project 2025 proposes to move my office to the Department of Justice, which would make it more costly and complicated for citizens to lodge civil rights complaints against schools because it would involve litigation, courts, and would generally require students or their families to retain their own attorneys to get relief,” she added.
AFGE Local 252 