3-21-25

I don’t know if you have been tracking the changes being made to education in

recent history…..Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and in several other state capitals

around the nation…… there has been a major move afoot to review, revise and

renovate the way education is handled…..for decades there has been a move put

up by the left and too often shrugged by on the right to allow a massive big

government centralization of education…….and it has failed in epic

proportions…….so changes are being made, but not just in the states…..because

yesterday President Trump threw down the gauntlet…..he signed an executive

order that would effectively dismantle the bloated bureaucratic nightmare known

as the US Department of Education……but there is a major fight between the

usual suspects of the Teachers Unions, the School Board Associations, the

progressive left and the big government bureacrats who believe that states righs

and parental rights are secondary to centralized big-brother style government

programs…….

Alabama began breaking free in 2014 with the passage of the Alabama

Accountability Act….the first major piece of legislation that addressed the idea

that parents should have more say in what is best for their child’s

education….think about it….it took legislation to affirm that if a child is stuck in a

failing school…..literally stuck, with no financial ability to go to some place better

to meet their needs…..it took legislation to say that was wrong……, that it was just

not good enough to continue letting shoulders be shrugged as education numbers

trended down and students fell further and further behind……so yes, in 2014 we

cracked the ice and last year the legislature took us completely out of the ice age

and into the warm light of day for education……we were dead last…….dead last in

national rankings but the teachers union fought and scratched and clawed…….but

we pushed through and passed it…….why? because we were dead last!......

You heard me……deadlast! There used to be a time when people could shrug their

shoulders and say “well, thank goodness for Mississippi!” because they always

ranked below us……not anymore……Alabama was last in the nation in

education……deadlast……and you know the old adage……continuing to do the

same thing over and over again and expecting the same result is just the

definition of insanity……..but this past year Republicans in Alabama finally threw

off the yoke of oppression from days past and passed what became known as the

CHOOSE Act….CHOOSE is an acronym that stands for “Creating Hope and

Opportunity for Our Students Education”……a full-on comprehensive school

choice bill that allows education dollars to be spent on the education of a child,

and not the feeding of a bloated failing bureaucracy called the Department of

Education……Parents actually apply for the funds, and then the parents get to

decide how they are applied…..take your pick: change schools, private schools,

home schools, you name it……parents and legal guardians now matter more than

bureacrats……kids matter more than dollars…….education can get back to being

about the education of the child and not just the feeding of the bureaucratic

beast…….…….parents and legal guardians are given the say-so and the funds get

to go with the child…….why not? It’s their tax dollars!......this is an exciting change

of the status quo for Alabama……and we have nowhere to go but up…….

But what about the federal side?.......Donald Trump said that school choice is the

civil rights issue of our lifetime, and I believe that he is right…..and the wave of

school choice legislation has been sweeping the nation…….state level leadership

and Republicans in various offices who say that they want to fix education……

have been acting with courage and striving to do so…….school choice is in the

Statehouses around the nation in a big way…….

But the federal side…..not so much…..for the last 40 years the US Department of

Education has presided over vast mediocrity and outright failure……since being

founded by the Carter administration in 1980 the Department of Education has

been the main hub for educational stagnation nationwide…..the DOE has spent

more than a trillion tax dollars and yet nationally we have seen test scores remain

flat and school choice opposed by national efforts……the DOE has been a

micromanager of the states…..it has demanded Congress allocate ever-increasing

budget appropriations while having no true return on investment to show for

it…..nothing in the realm of student outcomes that could prove the value of

keeping this epic bloat of bureaucracy……the Department of Education also

became the poster child for DEI……hundreds of millions of dollars have been

spent to train teachers and indoctrinate students in alternative lifestyles,

promotion of critical race theory, and teaching that America is a racist nation……

Lest we forget…..it was the Biden DOE that advanced the cause of transgender

boys playing in girls sports by issuing reimagined version of Title IX……and we

should also take note that when campuses around the nation had anti-semitic

activities and hostile takeovers that the Department of Education remained

silent……

Secretary Linda McMahon said yesterday that before President Trump issued the

directive for all government employees to return to in-person work at their offices

that many Department of Education personnel were showing up at all…..some of

them had even moved hundreds of miles from their duty stations…..

President Trumps new action yesterday is huge….it is bold,…..and it is going to

cause liberal heads to explode….there has never been a government department

this big ever taken down……the mandate yesterday from President Trump is very

simple……

(1) to plan, in coordination with Congress, for eliminating or relocating the

functions and operations of the Department of Education, and (2) to ensure that no

taxpayer money flows to DEI programs or institutions that embrace DEI. 

But it will take more than just political will……it will take statesmen……it will take

leadership…..it will take a fight…….but like General George Patton once said, “If

everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” …this is a new

idea……there has to be a means to educate our children without continually

feeding the beast of the education system……We are at the bottom……right

now……that’s a given…..do we just lay there….and wallow in our continual

educational misery……if we do then the many kids who’s parents cannot afford to

move them to better opportunities will continually be relegated to less than they

deserve……studies have proven that a quality education is one of the surest

means to overcome a cycle of poverty…….we have to bounce from this

bottom….Is it scary to do something new? Of course……there has never been

success without risk……but when you’re already last there is nowhere to go but

up….. the teachers union fought us every single step of the way will very likely get

nasty and desperate….they always do……if legislators and bureaucrats fear failure

then they will be in paralysis and nothing will happen….except more failure….this

going to take some steel fiber in our elected officials…..many of whom have

already become accustomed to taking campaign donations from the teachers

union despite the fact that the Republican Party platform urges them not to do

so……You ask any of us who were there in the 2010 class of legislators…..it was a

daily fight…..I got all of the hate mail….they tried to dox me…..they published my

cell phone number in the AEA journal and drew caricatures about me……people

dropped threatening letters in my home mailbox without a stamp meaning that

they came to my house…..and I was not alone…..and we won……Legislators in

states that are still considering school choice either take this stand now with all

the moral courage that it will require or the status quo elitists will know that they

can beat you up and get your lunch money any time they want to……and the

public…..the public will know it too…..and now you have the full backing of the

President of the United States…..the wind is at their backs…..put school choice in

place at the states and prepare to be more in control at the state and local level

on how best to educate America’s kids…….

it takes a strength of will, a statesmanlike view, a willingness to recognize that

dollars are for the child, not for the system…….bureaucrats will wring their hands,

and teachers union sycophants will shout and scream……but education of a child

will be retooled if they will stand their ground and see their constituents and not

their paychecks and campaign coffers…… I for one am excited about what that

means…….we have nowhere to go but up…….

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way