There are serious problems with the educational system in this country.
Plummeting math scores is one example; being described as “the worst-educated workforce in the industrialized world” is another. The Department of Education has consistently failed in its mission to address this most desperate of crises, and radical reform to the department is crucial.
But what we are witnessing now is not reform; it is demolition. It is not the cutting of a “bloated” government, nor the striving for a “greater efficiency” — and it is certainly not ushering in a new era of government “accountability.”
With the stage set, the script written and the curtains drawn, we are now poised for a re-enactment of the scenes that unfolded just weeks ago in the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Offices will close, contracts will be terminated and 2,200 public servants will be left jobless.
The highest office in the land will quip that “many of them don’t work at all.” Congressional Republicans will applaud, Congressional Democrats will decry and the most powerful special government employee in this nation’s history will call opposition senators “traitors” on X.
The Trump administration will argue that these cuts empower local school districts, but will nonetheless fail to read the first line in its own website explaining how a miniscule 8% of local school funding comes from the federal government.
We will watch as they warp the English language by rebranding destruction as reform and recasting obfuscation as accountability. They will bombard us with outlandish social media posts and then redirect our focus onto The Next Big Thing.
And yet the damage that will be done will remain all the same.
The Federal Student Aid division, by far the largest within the department, will see 25% of its employees terminated. These are the workers who oversee Pell Grants, federal direct loans, federal work-study programs and who process millions of free applications for federal student aid requests, otherwise known as FAFSA. They are the ones who work to improve financial literacy, provide tips on managing student debt and guide us through the complexities of repayment plans.
The Office of Civil Rights, or OCR, established in the aftermath of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, will see its employee headcount drop from 557 to around 314. Its 12 regional offices will be gutted — and they will completely shutter Boston’s office.
This is the division which, following a complaint in Los Angeles that Occidental College was not properly combating antisemitism on campus, mediated a settlement between the parties. It was OCR who in 2014 investigated the University of Michigan over its handling of sexual harassment complaints and compelled the university to make substantial changes to its procedures.
In August 2024, over a dozen Northeastern students and alumni filed a complaint against the university, alleging discrimination against Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students. It was OCR who received this complaint.
An already severely backlogged complaint pipeline will stretch ever longer. Sexual harassment claims may go uninvestigated. Ramp installations for students in wheelchairs will stall. Anti-discrimination cases levied against universities will go unheeded, and bathroom accessibility for transgender students will remain in limbo.
Do not confuse the Trump administration’s distortive verbiage for reality. Adapt the framework that the purpose of a system, and of any action, is what it is actually doing — not what we are being told it does.
As with most everything else we have seen from this administration, the closer we look at the gutting of the Department of Education, the more we see its outright callousness and sheer incompetence.
Look closely. Read deeply. Talk to your friends and family. Speak up during class. Write for The Huntington News. Reach out to people you don’t normally interact with and try keeping them informed. Call your congressmen and show up at town halls. Our faculty is worried and our administrators are petrified — let them know what you think.
Jack Masliah is a fourth-year political science and philosophy major. He can be reached at [email protected]
