Project 2025 Attacks Public Education

Your breakdown on the Project 2025 fascist attacks on public education in America

Imagine a future where the Department of Education is eliminated, any discussion of racism is criminalized, public tax dollars fund private Christian instruction, and discrimination against LGBTQ Americans is legalized. That, in a nutshell, is what Project 2025 intends to do with education in America.

This article covers Project 2025’s attacks on public education in America. In the Project 2025 fascist dystopia, every school is a religious institution teaching Christian nationalist theocracy, and secular education has no place. As a human rights lawyer, I am reading the entire 900 page Project 2025 fascist manifesto so you don’t have to, and giving you the tools to debunk its claims. And as we dive into Project 2025’s attacks on education, I cannot overestimate the threat to our children.

So, Let’s Address This.

A supporter holds a Project 2025 fan in the group’s tent at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 14, 2023. (Photo cred: Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press)

P25 Mentions Education At Least 400 Times

The phrases “education” and “public schools” are referenced at least 400 times in the Project 2025 (“P25”) manifesto. The P25 Forward sets the tone for how degradingly it treats public education as it argues for universal school choice, defunding any institution who oppose the P25 mandate, and leans firmly into the “CRT” boogey man:

[u]niversal school choice [is] a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity…

Playing Victim

P25 plays victim in claiming that parents no longer have any power over what their children learn, and therefore the next President should defund any public education institution who “denies parental rights.” Except, none of this is true. Parents currently have and have always had total control over public school curriculum through locally elected school board members, on the state level through state legislators, and federally through U.S. Congress.

Likewise, critical race theory (“CRT”) is not taught in public elementary, middle, or high school. P25 posits CRT as a boogey man to advance their fascist agenda.

Finally, it’s laughable when right wing pundits object to the idea that “skin color determines identity.” The same group that claims “I don’t see color” loudly objects to claims that “Black Lives Matter” and rebuts it with “Blue Lives Matter.” The group that claims “color doesn’t matter” is still condemning Usha Vance, the Indian American wife of VP Candidate JD Vance, because of her skin color. And beyond racist rhetoric, the group that claims “color doesn’t matter,” would have us ignore that Black women suffer a 300% higher maternal mortality rate than white mothers, that Black and Indigenous children suffer a 300% higher infant mortality rate than white babies, that police arrest Black and Latino Americans at 6-10x the rate of white Americans despite similar crime rates, and that Black American wealth is still a fraction of the wealth of white Americans even 60 years after the Civil Rights Acts were passed.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the first step P25 plans to take to enact its fascist decimation of public education is to dismantle the Department of Education.

P25 Plans To Eliminate The Dept of Education

On Page 285 Project 2025 authors make their intent clear—fully shut down the Department of Education:

The Department of Education…is a convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel. This department is an example of federal intrusion into a traditionally state and local realm. For the sake of American children, Congress should shutter it and return control of education to the states.

In doing so, P25 seeks to undermine the number one reason Congress created The Department of Education in 1979, namely, “to strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.” In a post Jim-Crow America, visionary leaders like Jimmy Carter saw that for too many young people, their zip code determined their education level and access. The Federal Department of Education sought to change that. Sadly, despite nearly half a century since the creation of the DOE, zip codes still largely determine a child’s education level and access.

By eliminating Federal minimum standards, as P25 seeks to do, this will only get worse—particularly for children from Black, Latino, or low income backgrounds. With this premise of dismantling the DOE, the fascist P25 initiative goes on a rampage to decimate education in America as we now it.

P25 Decimates Education As We Know It

Title I: On Page 326, P25 calls to shift Title I funding for low income students to states entirely, and phase it out over a 10 year period. This would, of course, further devastate Black, Latino, and low income communities, especially considering majority white schools already receive $23B more in annual funding than majority Black or Latino schools. A recent report by EdBuild found the difference in funding is:

$23 billion. According to EdBuild, that's how much more funding predominantly white school districts receive compared with districts that serve mostly students of color. For every student enrolled, the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district.

The P25 goal to eliminate Title I funding for low income schools will further exacerbate the racial and economic divide. That taxpayer funding, P25 argues, should go to parents to use on private (Christian) schools as they wish. The very idea of using taxpayer dollars for private religious instruction undermines the fabric of religion/state separation upon which this country has existed for nearly 250 years.

Higher Education: On Page 354, P25 calls for the elimination of ParentPlus loans and Federal Pell Grants, arguing there are “plenty of private options available.” The P25 push to further privatize education is a naked attempt to drive a wedge between the haves and have nots.

Head Start: On page 485, P25 calls for the elimination of Head Start, which annually serves nearly 1 million low income children. Free school lunch? Forget about it.

Legalizing Discrimination: On page 584, P25 calls for the outright elimination of laws and regulations that ban discrimination of LGBTQ students and Americans. This is particularly destructive given the history of anti-LGBTQ violence in America.

Privatizing Loans: Throughout the document, P25 calls for transferring all student loans and grants from federal to private entities, and then posits eliminating any attempts to cancel student loans for any reason whatsoever. And while P25 calls for a return of fraudulently taken PPP loans, it makes no similar demand to under PPP loan cancellation. Apparently P25 holds that the “pay back what you took out” rule only applies to struggling students under a mountain of exploitative predatory debt, not to major corporations and politicians who had billions in loans cancelled.

In Conclusion

P25 fears a public education system that calls for meaningful racial justice and accountability, one that holds a mirror up to the injustices of white supremacy, and one that demands equal access to education for children of all races and socio-economic classes. This horrifies the fascists behind P25 because, as the old saying goes, “When you’ve had privilege your whole life, equality feels like oppression.”

In fact, so fearful are P25 fascists of racial justice, that P25 not only bans teaching about DEI, it demands prosecution of universities and employers who enact DEI practices. Throughout the manifesto, P25 calls for a ban on any instruction that teaches about race or racism in the United States. In short, an education system under a Project 2025 administration would mean a gutting of public education, a transfer o wealth to predominantly white, predominately wealth families for private school vouchers, an advancement of Christian nationalist theocratic education, a ban on teachings of racial justice, a green light for even violent anti-LGBTQ discrimination, and an exacerbation of existing racial segregation and underfunding of majority Black and Latino institutions.

Therefore, it is absolutely critical we remain vigilant and engaged to ensure P25 does not become policy. It is not an exaggeration to say it is literally a matter of life and death for millions of people in America. You have my commitment to continue to publicize and expose P25’s fascist policies, and arm you with the tools and knowledge to rebuke them. And I am grateful for your support to continue to advance this cause of human rights, accountability, and justice.

This is the fourth in a series of posts I am writing after researching Project 2025. Subscribe to receive these regular updates, and if you’re in a position to support my work at $5/mo or $50/year, I am more than grateful.

Previous Project 2025 Articles:

• Project 2025 Invites Fascism To America

• P25 attacks Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• Project 2025 Attacks Abortion and Reproductive Health Access

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