The Problem with Project 2025

Recently, Rick Hess, an opinion contributor at EducationWeek, interviewed Lindsey Burke, lead author on the education section in Project 2025, the controversial agenda issued earlier this year by the Heritage Foundation. According to Hess,

“Given the attention is has drawn, the questions it’s raised, and the fact that it seems likely to be an object of interest through the election (and potentially beyond), I thought I’d reach out to Burke to get her take on what she wrote, the reaction to Project 2025, and what it all means. Burke is the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy and a member of the board of visitors for George Mason University. Here’s [some of] what she had to say.”

“RH: As you see it, how does Project 2025 seek to reshape education?”

“LB: At its core, Project 2025 seeks to reshape education by reshaping accountability. As my colleague Jason Bedrick has pointed out, accountability means being ‘directly answerable to the people most affected by [service providers’] performance.’ Tell me: Who is accountable to parents when the federal Head Start program fails, as it has for 60 years, to improve children’s education outcomes, as show by the only nationally representative, randomized control trial of the program? Who is held accountable for the Bureau of Indian Education Schools’ leaving Native American children two grade levels behind the national average – something the federal government has known about and failed to rectify for years, even if it’s made some halting progress? Who is held accountable for the fact that American taxpayers have had to increasingly subsidize higher education as colleges continue to raise prices while producing graduates who know more about microaggressions than macroeconomics? No one is.”

“That’s the hallmark of distant federal programs that are far removed form localities. Providers are simply not held accountable to the people they’re supposed to serve. The reforms we outline would recalibrate accountability so that it is directed horizontally to parents and taxpayers rather than vertically to Washington.”

“RH: You call for several controversial policies, such as block-granting and then eventually eliminating Title I, abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, and morphing Impact Aid into a school choice program. How do you make the case for these controversial proposals to skeptics?”

“LB: Let me take the abolition of the Department of Education first. Abolishing the department doesn’t mean getting rid of important civil rights protections in law or protections for children with special needs; both of these safeguards predate the department’s creation. It means the removal of myriad ineffective programs and inflationary spending. It’s important to remember that the agency has only been around since 1980 and that federal programs only account for about 10 percent of K-12 education revenue. I often think about a line from that great Hoekstra report ‘Education at a Crossroads,’ in which the authors implored: ‘If it cannot be demonstrated that a particular federal program is more effectively spending funds than state and local communities would otherwise spend them, Congress should return the money to the states and the people, without any burdensome strings attached.’”

“That was written in 1998. And it cannot be demonstrated that the feds are doing a better job than states or local school leaders would do. Local communities know local conditions and students far better than distant federal bureaucrats do. Our recommendation is to cut ineffective programs and spending and block-grant money back to the states for those programs that would be retained. Title I would be block-granted, and revenue-raising responsibility for the program would be restored to states over a 10-year period. Impact Aid funding would be better targeted to children from active-duty military families in the form of education savings accounts.”

“RH: Some critics would argue that these measures will decrease accountability, since money would be given to states with no strings attached. How do you respond to such concerns?”

“LB: The closer we can situate dollars and decisionmaking to families, the stronger accountability will be. For example, filtering Title I funding through a complex labyrinth of funding formulas that have no real connection to poverty and can’t be accessed by families in any meaningful way has not improved outcomes of opportunities for low-income kids. Susan Pendergrass documented this in 2018, writing that ‘Title I dollars are spent on non-low-income children, and many low-income children receive nothing through the program.’ Funding meant to reach children gets diluted by administrative costs on the way back to the classroom – a criticism applicable to almost every federal education program. Better to let states and school districts fully direct that funding in a way that meets the needs of their local families.”

“That principle applies to more than just Title I. States such as Florida and Arizona have made phenomenal progress over the past two decades improving student academic outcomes – especially for low-income and minority children – by adopting common-sense reforms like focusing on reading and providing parents with schooling options. They made this progress despite federal intervention in education, not because of it. And again I would ask: Who has been held accountable for Washington’s track record of failure since 1965, Republican and Democratic administrations alike?”

…

“RH: What do you think critics have gotten wrong about Project 2025?”

“LB: Critics have completely ignored the fact that the left also recommends policies that Democratic administrations should pursue every four years. Just one example is the Center for American Progress, a far-left group that has prepared policy recommendations for liberal presidents including Obama in 2008. In fact, that same organization is now influencing policy in the Biden-Harris administration, as reported by Fox News just a couple weeks ago. As a 501(c)3, we’re candidate-agnostic and hope any administration would be interested in the policies we outline in this menu.”

I haven’t been the biggest champion of the U.S. Department of Education over the years. It’s formation in 1979 to fill the need for a federal government agency that would be responsible for overseeing and coordinating the nation’s education system needs to be questioned based on our public educational record over the past 40 years or so.

And Burke is right, when it comes to supporting public education financially, the federal government pales in comparison to state and local taxing entities.

But depending on the states and local school boards to run our K-12 system, even though Project 2025 would want you to think that parents are the ones who will have the real power, is suspect.

One of the reasons the federal government became involved with public education at the end of the 1970’s was because of civil rights concerns – specifically toward black, brown, and poor families. True, places like Florida and Arizona have shown progress inside the public education systems, but states and local boards in Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia have not. And, as a country, we haven’t taken care of black, brown, and poor young learners, whether you look at the feds or states or the locals.

No, we all need to be suspicious of Project 2025 (and we haven’t even discussed the rest of the 900-page document) and its ideas about public education. The feds probably need to play some type of role moving forward, even if its making sure states and local boards in low-performing states focus on learning improvement for those kids who are disadvantaged the most.

Til tomorrow. SVB