Despite the fact that U.S. public schools are failing at their most basic task of teaching reading, writing and math, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is adamantly opposed to President Trump’s quest to overhaul and shrink the gargantuan U.S. Dept. of Education.
Under Trump’s direction, the department is in the process of relinquishing many of its previous responsibilities due to bureaucratic inefficiency and poor student outcomes over the past 40 years of the agency’s existence.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon noted earlier this week that only Congress can officially eliminate the department. Nevertheless, her mandate from Trump is to limit the department’s authority in order to return “education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children.”
That could include reassigning the work of the Office for Civil Rights, the Office of Special Education, the Indian Education Program, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Office of Postsecondary Education to other agencies.
Ultimately Trump aims to decentralize U.S. education as much as possible, using executive orders if necessary.
On Nov. 20, Murkowski took to social media to defend the status quo for the Department of Education, stating that Congress created it to “ensure our nation has a coordinated, comprehensive approach to education that meets our children where they are and helps them achieve greatness.”
She defended the department’s “centralize subject-matter experts who help states, schools, colleges, and parents support student success,” and claimed Trump’s efforts at reform could have “lasting negative impacts on our young people.”
“I strongly oppose the administration’s effort to circumvent the law by dumping critical programs onto other agencies simply because there are not sufficient votes in Congress to eliminate the Department,” Murkowski stated, echoing the talking points of powerful left-leaning unions like the National Education Association.
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The fact, however, is that only 22% of U.S. high school seniors are proficient in math and just 35% in reading — the lowest in more than 20 years.
“This matches the devastating 8th grade results released earlier this year and continues a decade-long slide that began well before the pandemic,” a September report from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) found. “The decline for African American students, whose 12th grade reading levels dropped 11 points, almost twice the rate of their white counterparts is one data point that exemplifies the inequity in our systems.”
The latest NAEP scores confirm what parents and employers already know, the organization observed.
“Forty years ago, A Nation at Risk warned that if a foreign power had imposed such results, we would have considered it an act of war,” NAEP stated. “We must rebuild American education from the ground up. Start over. From scratch. And we must return power to parents, not bureaucracies, to drive their children’s education. The future of American innovation depends on it.”
7 Comments
Every family with a child should go all out and support this change to push a better education for each child in the State of Alaska. Parents\ and families go all put and support this huge change for the better. Parents matter, and their purpose of whole life units of our communities and states should be the speakers of our laws and development of education from pre-school through college. Better budgets for schools and cities and states for education and the development will grow and bloom with this change. Embrace this effort and purpose and go with it.
…she has never taken into a conversation a pride of America and the “we the people” attitude. Its always “a spoon of cod liver oil” remedy in Murkowski’s speeches whether in Senate or the State of Alaska. This whole effort is a choice by the people when Trump was elected. Murkowski is living in denial of the majority of the election and what the majority wants badly. No good has come from Murkowski’s philosophies or work for this state.
Any and everything President Donald Trump attempts to do the do-nothings, business-as-usuals like Lisa Murkowski fight him just because he’s Donald Trump. Lisa has a most sever case of TDS, her deranged animus toward President Trump has completely clouded her judgement. She’s still angry that she wasn’t able get him removed from office. It’ll be Donald Trump that assist in getting her out of office.
Ya Lisa we all can see how good of a job the educational system in Alaska is doing ! It’s reported to consistently rank in the bottom 5 in the US. In Fairbanks they are more interested in teaching pornographic crap instead of working on improving the quality of what they should be teaching. You don’t just hand more money to a FAILING INSTITION. So go work on your Bridge to Nowhere.
Like a petulant child throwing a perpetual tantrum. Aside from that she is bought and paid for by unions- and if there’s anything the unions don’t like, it is having their gravy boat rocked. The DOE has done nothing to make the educational system better, much less even keep up. It must go, and so must she.
She’s upset her NEA kick backs are going to disapear
What a disappointment to your constituents that you are not willing to let the department of education be restructured so it benefits outcomes much better than it does right now. America and Alaska can’t be afraid to try!