Erika Donalds put plain sense on display when she told the nation that the bloated federal education machine is siphoning cash away from classrooms and into Washington bureaucracy. Conservatives who have watched decades of federal meddling choke local innovation cheered when President Trump signed an executive order to begin returning education authority — and money — to the states and families.
What the left calls “chaos” the right calls accountability: Secretary Linda McMahon has already moved decisively to shrink an agency that long acted more like a social-engineering center than a partner for teachers and principals. The initial reductions in force and plans to transfer certain functions out from under Education Department control show this administration means business in cutting red tape and ending the one-size-fits-all mandates that hamstring classrooms.
Erika Donalds has been consistent — she argues that dismantling unnecessary federal layers will put real dollars back where they belong: in schools, in teachers’ paychecks, and in programs that actually help kids learn. That is not a radical promise, it’s common-sense budgeting: when bureaucrats and consultants stop taking bites out of education funding, districts will have more flexibility to spend on instruction, safety, and proven interventions.
Patriotic parents and taxpayers should celebrate the idea of returning discretion to local leaders who wake up every morning with skin in the game for their communities. Washington’s hundred-page rulebooks and grant application labyrinths don’t teach children to read or do math; they only create lucrative jobs for lobbyists and well-paid federal functionaries while our kids fall behind. The truth is simple — more local control and fewer mandates lead to better results and more responsible use of taxpayer dollars.
Of course, the left’s conventional institutions warn doom and gloom, claiming program shifts will harm vulnerable students and add complexity to services that currently flow from the Department of Education. These objections are predictable and self-interested; critics from advocacy groups and think tanks argue that moving programs will create new bureaucratic headaches rather than freeing districts. Parents and state leaders, not an entrenched federal class, should be the ones to decide how best to serve students with special needs and low-income families.
Let’s be honest: the real obstacles to better schools are not brave reformers but teacher-union politics, federal mandates that reward compliance over outcomes, and a culture that defends the status quo. Conservatives calling for school choice, vocational training, and accountability aren’t trying to defund education — we want every dollar to pay for teachers and classrooms, not for another decade of Washington-supplied ideology and paperwork.
If Congress has the courage, it should finish the job — reassert state control, strip the federal monster of its unnecessary functions, and ensure the money follows the child instead of fattening a distant bureaucracy. Americans who love their country and their kids must push back against those who profit from federal overreach and demand that every tax dollar be spent on learning, not on the next shiny program dreamed up in D.C.
