Illustration Credit: Nicole Xu
Author: ESTELLA NELSON – Mar 11, 2025
Topic: Education and Democracy
Committee: Government and Law
Committee Chair: ANDREW VANDERKOLK
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
-George Orwell, 1984
George Orwell’s classic has long been a staple in the literary world, a cautionary tale of government control and the dangers of not being able to think critically and for oneself. Ironically, it also joins the reams of other books facing bans across the United States. Under the new Trump administration, the very foundations of American democracy are changing, and access to education is becoming more important than ever. Democracy is built on the foundation of a well-educated populace, citizens who can critically evaluate issues and candidates to make well-informed decisions for themselves and their country. As soon as that fails, the system dies with it.
Is it that surprising that education would be the first to go under Donald Trump?
From Trump’s first campaign to his current presidency, he has long stood on a platform of rampant misinformation and baseless claims. PolitiFact recently published their 1,000th fact-check of the president, outpacing every politician to hold office before him. Now, Trump’s latest plans include abolishing the Department of Education (DOE), among other efforts to change the public school system – a move taken straight from Project 2025. As of Mar. 3rd, his pick for DOE secretary, Linda McMahon, advanced past the Senate with a 51-45 vote along party lines. McMahon has not made the policies planned for the department a secret. She has been quoted saying that she agrees with Trump’s plans to “put her out of the job”.
McMahon, billionaire co-founder of WWE, has long been a regular presence in Trump’s circle. They met at Wrestlemania in 2007, where he made an appearance on the show promoting The Apprentice. After his Republican nomination in 2016, she contributed close to 6 million in funding, later going on to lead the Small Business Administration that term. During his second campaign, McMahon chaired the America First Action, a conservative super-PAC that heavily endorsed Trump. Even before her DOE nomination, she served on his transition team this election cycle.
It’s safe to say that McMahon would be a loyal player to add to the board.
The DOE sub-cabinet nominations aren’t much different, naming six more conservative voices to serve beneath McMahon. Headlining the pack is Kimberly Richey, the proposed Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, who has long been outspoken against critical race theory and action civics within schools. Between the seven, several policies have reemerged as headliners for their departmental plans.
The largest of these is shutting down the DOE entirely. Despite this repeated claim, it’s an unlikely outcome. To fully shut down a department requires a vote from Congress, where Republicans only hold a slim majority (53-47 in the Senate, 220-215 in the House). And it’s not an issue that is cleanly cut down party lines. Several GOP lawmakers have expressed reservations about closing the department entirely, leaving a risky vote. Furthermore, the proposal is a likely candidate for a Democratic filibuster, should it be brought to Congress. It would presumably require a supermajority vote – defined by a total of two-thirds – which Republicans don’t have the presence for. The more natural outcome is Trump downsizing the department, putting pressure on states to conform to new policies.
Federal government funding only constitutes about 10% of K-12 school budgets, but it plays a vital role for programs such as Title 1, HeadStart, and Special Education. Title 1 is especially important in providing financial backing to school districts beneath the poverty line, bridging the educational gap. In the collegiate space, DOE is the largest holder of student loan debt. They also provide Pell Grants, money for college that students never have to repay. In the midst of everything, the program is already facing a 2.7 billion dollar deficit heading into the next fiscal year. In order to address this deficit, Congress would need to approve additional funds for 2026. While Pell Grants have historically been a bipartisan agreement, that is likely to change under the Trump era. He has been clear on his policies for cutting government spending, especially around education. While this is still a decision that would be decided in Congress, Republicans have continued to show that they will side with his orders. This would push more responsibility to provide aid on to colleges already facing extreme federal budget cuts.
For the most part, states are in charge of schools. The 10th amendment grants them power, as it’s not explicitly given to the federal government. However, the administration can still have a profound effect on shaping school policies through the usage of these funds. By making the funds discretionary, they can force schools to comply with the policies they want implemented, at the risk of losing the money. Trump has already started this process with two executive orders, one ending funding for schools with covid-19 mandates, and the other stripping budgets from schools that teach critical race theory, allow organizations that promote a specific gender or race, or allow transgender students to “socially transition” (go by a different name or pronouns than those assigned at birth) or compete in sports. It also underscores the importance of extolling American greatness and how it’s “grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history”, while simultaneously banning anything that says the US is “fundamentally racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory.”
But to ignore history dooms us to repeat it. The truth is, the United States has been discriminatory, from slavery to internment camps, to a lack of women’s voting rights and segregation. We still grapple with these issues today. Blind nationalism isn’t the answer. Education is.
This leads us to the last of Trump’s policies: the expansion of school choice. An executive order issued on Jan. 29 calls for using federal funds to support these initiatives, which previously have been at the discretion of the state. This has headlined the Republican party for the last few years, appearing prominently in the Project 2025 plan, a conservative policy action plan intended for the next president. It also appears to be a commonly restated proposal amongst his slew of DOE nominations. Wisconsin is uniquely situated to examine these programs, as it pioneered the country’s first voucher system back in 1991.
At its inception, school choice was designed to aid parents who were dissatisfied with their public schools, but lacked the means to move to another school district or send their children to a private school. Families who were beneath 175% of the federal poverty line (about $54,000 yearly) could apply for the program, provided that they had not attended a private school the year before. Essentially, the state grants the student a voucher to cover the cost of the new selected school. In 2023/24, this was around $10,000 for K-8, and 13,000 for 9-12. The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) was the first of now four Wisconsin school choice initiatives. The requirements have also since changed, allowing families to apply whose income is up to 300%, or almost $94,000 a year, above the poverty line. One other significant change was made. In 1995, religious schools became eligible to accept voucher students.
As of 2023-24, 96% of Wisconsin students participating in the program used the vouchers to attend a religious school. That’s a significant amount of state funds going directly to faith affiliations, especially when considering that nearly 55,000 students participated last year. It skirts around violations between church and state by stating that they are funding the parents, who then choose to use that money to send their children to religious schools.
However, despite these schools’ usage of public funds, they are not required to abide by the same guidelines as public schools. The government cannot do anything that would ‘deprive parents of fair opportunity to procure instruction for their children’ (Farrington v. T. Tokushige) on the basis of the due process clause. This case was late applied in Ohio to determine that too much legislation around private schools essentially makes them public schools, and therefore unconstitutional. The government is similarly limited in its oversight around religious private schools, given the free exercise clause in the First Amendment. Therefore, they are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and disability, unlike their public counterparts. At Fox Valley Lutheran, a private school in Appleton, WI, two female students faced expulsion for being in a homosexual relationship. The pair would only be allowed to graduate if they agreed to break up and speak with a pastor. Tony Evers, the WI state governor, was contacted, but due to the school’s status, the government is not allowed to intervene. Furthermore, these same private schools are exempt from the same heavy reporting practices other schools must comply with, making it difficult for authorities and parents alike to ensure that educational practices are up to standard.
Furthermore, these voucher funds are directly taken from public school endowments. A larger school choice program constitutes pulling more money back, leaving school budgets that are already tight worse off. For students who don’t want to attend a private school, they are suddenly left in the uncomfortable situation of being trapped in a worsening school system. It’s not always a choice either. For many students, particularly those in rural areas, there are simply no other options. Even if they received the voucher, there is no private institution to transfer to. Moreover, vouchers only cover the initial cost of tuition. It doesn’t cover expenses such as transportation, uniforms, books or anything else that may make these schools inaccessible for disadvantaged families.
These issues come into sharper focus when observed through the political lens of the upcoming state superintendent elections. On April 1st, two candidates, incumbent Jill Underly and challenger Brittany Kinser, will face off, with many of these issues on the table. Kinser, a former independent education consultant, is pushing for a stronger presence of charter and voucher schools in Wisconsin, all at the expense of the public school system.
What Trump is proposing goes beyond this. He’s advocating for a universal school choice program, where limitations like income and percentage of participating students are eliminated. This would gut public schools. Affluent families would be able to collect vouchers, collecting money they don’t need, while their rural counterparts remain trapped in increasingly underfunded schools. Education is what allows us to move up in the world, and equal access is crucial to that. It’s pure Orwellian doublethink:claim that universal school choice is about making sure everyone gets a fair chance at a good education while pulling funds from the places that need it the most.
In an era of decreasing test scores and nationwide book bans, schooling should indeed be a focus of importance. Instead, it’s under increasing attack from the new administration. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”
However, Trump has repeatedly shown that he cares little about that. Already, more than 600 million dollars of grants for teacher training across the country have been cut. More are sure to follow. From a campaign rife with misinformation and felony accusations, to his attempts to eliminate the Department of Education, he has consistently demonstrated disregard for American democratic ideals in favor of shifting more power to himself and his billionaire cabinet. Trump’s latest attempts at stifling a free press only further expose his motives. He does not want an educated populace. He doesn’t want people who question him. No, what Trump wants is people who fall into line in his quest for power. And they are winning senate confirmations one by one by one.
One last 1984 quote to leave you with. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Be careful who you give that control.