| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everyone. | |
| First hour of today's Washington Journal focusing on dismantling the Education Department. | ||
| Do you agree with President Trump's move yesterday or disagree? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dial in now. | |
| Let's hear a little bit more from the President yesterday at the White House. | ||
| The department's useful functions and such as, and they're in charge of them, Pell Grants, Title I funding, resources for children with disabilities and special needs will be preserved, fully preserved. | ||
| They're all going to be. | ||
| So if you look at the Pell Grants, supposed to be a very good program, Title I funding and resources for children with special disabilities and special needs, they're going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them. | ||
| And that's very important to Linda, I know, and it's very important to all of us. | ||
| But beyond these core necessities, my administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. | ||
| We're going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. | ||
| It's doing us no good. | ||
| We want to return our students to the states where just some of the governors here are so happy about this. | ||
| They want education to come back to them, to come back to the states, and they're going to do a phenomenal job. | ||
| You know, if you look, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, I have to tell you, I give them a lot of credit. | ||
| China's top 10. | ||
| And so we can't now say that bigness is making it impossible to educate because China is very big. | ||
| But you have countries that do a very good job in education. | ||
| And I really believe, like some of the governors here today, from states that run very, very well, including a big state like Texas, but states that run very well are going to have education that will be as good as Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and those top Finland, those top countries that do so well with education. | ||
| I think they'll do every bit as well. | ||
| And what do you think about that, Governor? | ||
| Do you agree? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Ron, do you agree? | ||
| I think so. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Florida? | |
| Iowa. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I really believe that. | ||
| They'll be as good as any of them. | ||
| President Trump vowing to take all legal steps to shut down the Education Department. | ||
| Recent polls taken on this move by the President show that 60% oppose eliminating the Department of Education, while 33% support it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is according to a Quenna PIAC poll. | |
| Take a look at another poll. | ||
| When they were asked about eliminating the Department of Education by party, 98% of Democrats oppose it, 64% of independents, and 18% of Republicans. | ||
| 67 of Republicans support the idea of dismantling the Education Department. | ||
| 1% of Democrats support it, while 31% of Independents. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those poll numbers from Quenna PIAC, a recent poll done by that outfit. | |
| Take a look at congressional reaction. | ||
| This is from the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in a tweet saying, attempting to dismantle the Department of Education is one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This will hurt kids. | |
| The horrible decision by Donald Trump will be felt by teachers, parents, school leaders, and in the quality, he said, of education our children receive. | ||
| Then you have this from Michael Bennett, Democratic senator from Colorado. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Parents are worried enough about the state of America's public education system. | |
| Reading scores have hit a 20-year low, and chronic absenteeism is on the rise. | ||
| All of this is proof we need to work together to reimagine our public schools for the 21st century. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now take a look at Republicans' response. | |
| Bill Cassidy, who is the chair of the Senate committee that oversees the Education Department. | ||
| I agree with President Trump that the Department of Education has failed its mission. | ||
| Since the department can only be shut down with congressional approval, I will support the President's goals by submitting legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible. | ||
| And then you have this from Thomas Massey, who has opposed the president and Republicans in recent weeks. | ||
| Bravo, Congress should support President Trump's bold agenda by passing his bill, H.R. 899, to abolish the Department of Education. | ||
| We could also use rescissions in the budget reconciliation process, which only requires 51 votes in the Senate, to back him up. | ||
| If you support this idea of getting rid of the Federal Education Department, do you think Republicans should do this through reconciliation and with a simple majority? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's get to calls. | |
| Helen in Long Beach, California, Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you, Helen. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yes, hi, I'm a Republican, and I've been a special needs teacher for four decades and still am teaching. | ||
| My comment: good, time to go. | ||
| It's been a waste of resources. | ||
| It's been a waste of money. | ||
| It's been ridiculous mandates that we all have to pay lip service to. | ||
| Complete waste of money and time and precious resources. | ||
| So, Helen, when you say mandates, ridiculous mandates, explain for those who are not familiar with the education system some of those mandates. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have curriculum mandates for special needs students that came out, I think, maybe about with the Obama administration. | |
| And it was requiring a uniform curriculum for all students with disabilities, moderate to severe. | ||
| And we got stuck with some ridiculous curriculum. | ||
| And because they're older students, some of my students are high school students, but they're still developmentally delayed. | ||
| And, you know, I'm going to put it bluntly, they're developmentally about three or four years old. | ||
| We're mandating, teach chemistry. | ||
| You've got to teach geometry. | ||
| You've got to teach physics. | ||
| And so we get these little crappy packets that come from a company that's been contracted with by the district. | ||
| And they tell us, well, you need to modify it. | ||
| You need to be creative. | ||
| In so many words, fix it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| That's doing it. | ||
| As you know, the curriculum comes from the local level. | ||
| But when it comes to special education, you're saying this came from the federal government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This came from the federal government. | |
| They're all supposed to have equal access to all academic materials. | ||
| Well, you know, it translated into fix it, make it look like geometry, make it look like chemistry, do what you got to do. | ||
| And then as a dedicated teacher, you rent out and you spend your own money on the weekend trying to find materials that you can modify, fix, to show that you're doing this. | ||
| So that's one thing about getting rid of the Department of Education. | ||
| Secondly, I've also served briefly as a Title I coordinator. | ||
| Get this. | ||
| My students aren't even verbal, but we had Title I funding coming in, so we had to go to the meetings. | ||
| Nothing but layer upon layer upon layer of bureaucracy, paperwork, paperwork, meetings to be in compliance, how to fill out the paperwork properly, how to get the funding, how to word it correctly. | ||
| This has been just a bunch of bureaucratic nightmare. | ||
| All right, Helen, I'm going to jump in so that I can put a little bit more meat on the bones of what you're saying. | ||
| This is from USA Today. | ||
| Title I, Student Loans and Other Programs Will Continue Under this Executive Order. | ||
| Public schools rely on the Education Department to distribute federal education dollars. | ||
| Major stream comes from Title I, a program that boosts funding to schools serving high-power poverty populations. | ||
| Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, said federal Title I and funding for students with disabilities, as well as Pell Grants and student loans that help students pay for college will be administered by the department under the order. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So all of that stays in place. | |
| Caroline Lovitt also telling reporters in the driveway at the White House yesterday that the Education Department has failed to deliver despite spending $3 trillion since it was created in 1979. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go to Dana in Indianapolis, a Democratic caller. | |
| You're next. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation. | ||
| Yes, I my son is special education, and it did wonders for him. | ||
| It did him very good as far as helping him on his communication skills, as far as helping him want to get out in the public and his comprehension of certain topics and whatnot. | ||
| So I think the program is great, especially for federal grants to lose. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| John in Syracuse, New York, Independent. | ||
| John, what do you say? | ||
| Well, first of all, I think what concerns me is discrimination. | ||
| The Department of Education kind of monitored school districts that like to discriminate, especially out of the South. | ||
| So I think it was a mistake. | ||
| I think educators should have gotten together. | ||
| If there was a problem with the Department of Education, then those educators who have a really strong union should have gotten together, band together, write to your congressmen or tell your senators, look, we're having issues here. | ||
| And so instead of destroying the department, try correcting the department. | ||
| And that big, powerful teachers' union could have done it. | ||
| So quit crying like babies and blaming and doing the finger-pointing name-blaming game and work together to try to improve it. | ||
| All right, well, look at this to your point about getting Congress on board because it would take an act of Congress to fully eliminate the Education Department. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Back to USA Today. | |
| Legislation in Congress to eliminate the Department of Education will require support from Democrats, which makes such an effort unlikely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's unclear whether moderate Republicans in the U.S. Senate would be on board with a Republican proposal to shift the agency's offices elsewhere within the federal government. | |
| Trump has begun discussing the idea with his cabinet anyway. | ||
| Kyle in Buffalo, New York, Republican. | ||
| Kyle. | ||
| Hey, good morning, Grandma. | ||
| Yeah, so as a teacher for 23 years, the call from California was partially right. | ||
| It was actually the programs, all these things started under the No Child Left Behind Act under the Bush administration. | ||
| The mandates. | ||
| Yes, the mandates, which changed a lot of these programs. | ||
| But the problem I have is that even still, states are left to do what they really do. | ||
| And so that's one of the reasons why I was a few years ago had questions, anyways, about why we need the department, federal Department of Education, because all 50 states pretty much came up with their own curriculum and different types of policies. | ||
| So I would be comfortable if the federal department had a blanket caliber for all 50 states when it came to the curriculum. | ||
| But since they do not, I kind of agree that we need to downsize it. | ||
| As long as they keep the funding still for the special, I actually have a master's in special education. | ||
| And so the funding, you know, as long as they keep the funding, then I'm comfortable with that. | ||
| I mean, we have to downsize a lot of these government, you know, departments that kind of blew up over the last 30, 40 years. | ||
| That's costing us a lot of money. | ||
| You know. | ||
| All right, well, let's talk about money, Kyle. | ||
| This is from Washington Times. | ||
| The Education Department enforces non-discrimination policies in schools. | ||
| The money it distributes to schools accounts for less than 10% of the nation's public school funding, which is driven primarily by state and local taxes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So 90% of the funding. | |
| You can watch the rest of this on our website, C-SPAN.org. | ||
| We're going to leave it to take you live to a summit on conservative policy being held just outside the nation's capital. |