While you might find reading the news depressing and bleak like me, a Judge recently provided a glimmer of hope that not all is lost in our government. In February 2025, as part of the current administrations attack on the Department of Education, a directive was issued by the administration to block $600 million in funding that was aimed towards training teachers. The reason for the block of teacher training funds? To curb “discrimination” and “divisive ideology” by the way of teaching disturbing things, such as “Building Cultural Competence” or by funding teachers’ salaries in small budget school districts.
Why do underserved and underbudget rural and urban schools need more teachers anyway? All that, to say, a federal judge in Baltimore ruled that the funding cuts were illegal. Sadly, we are not out of the proverbial woods just yet. The states and schools that would receive cuts to their budgets need to press the matter in federal court to receive their congressionally mandated funds.
These budget cuts stem from the fact our administration seeks to return control over educational policy to the state and local level; as well as to cut some federal bloats. Given that in Texas and Florida they’re teaching kids that slaves were brought to America as part of a job training program, I’m perfectly happy not letting kids in Washington learn that garbage. However, if the point of these cuts is to improve the quality of education children in America are receiving, how is removing $600m in grants going to improve anyone’s quality of education? The money was not destined to buy copies of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and put Molotov cocktails in children’s hands; it was destined to retain teachers and fund training for incumbent teachers.
Finally, it seems that these attacks on the federal education infrastructure seem particularly targeted when combined with the attacks on the Smithsonian regarding exhibits that don’t portray our history in this country as kindly as we might like to imagine. It stands to reason someone might find some of the unsavory parts of our history uncomfortable, but history isn’t comfortable. If moments in history make you uncomfortable, maybe analyze why that is. Maybe think about how the descendants of those people are feeling about sanitation of their painful history.