Rep. Harris and Rep. Miller: "Trump is right: The Department of Education must go."

WASHINGTON, DC — On Monday, Representative Mark Harris (NC-8) and Representative Mary Miller (IL-15) penned an op-ed in The Washington Examiner supporting President Trump’s calls to rethink the Department of Education. 

Representatives Harris and Miller both serve on the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

Some key quotes are below:

• “It is past time to admit that the Education Department has produced a terrible return on America’s investment. Since its creation in 1980, test scores have dropped, with math and reading scores falling to their lowest levels in decades under former President Joe Biden. Civics knowledge is abysmal, as evidenced by middle school U.S. history scores recently hitting all-time lows.”

   

• “It became crystal clear that Washington bureaucrats have failed our families and have put their radical ideology over the actual educational needs of our children. Since then, we’ve seen a revolution of parents standing up and speaking out to retake their schools. That needs to continue.”

   

• “It now seems clear that gender theory, racial ideologies, and anti-American interpretations of history have become more important than reading, writing, and math to many teachers and administrators. Parents who dared oppose such policies, such as Scott Smith in Virginia and Shannon Adcock in Illinois, were considered racists, white supremacists, and even domestic terrorists by their own local school boards and governments.”

   

• “The top-down approach to education policy fails the common-sense test. With nearly 100,000 public schools serving almost 50 million students, no federal bureaucracy could or should attempt to oversee a system that large. In fact, when Congress established the Education Department, it was not meant to. It was intended to serve as a clearinghouse of ideas, helping schools learn from each other — not to control them.”

   

• “We must return to a time when the government recognizes that parents, on the whole, know their children better than even the most skilled and well-meaning teachers ever could. That’s not a criticism — it’s just a natural reality. And that reality informs the duty that parents have in raising their children and the rights they have in determining how those children will be educated. This used to be common sense. Unfortunately, it just isn’t that common anymore.”

   

• “Re-empowering parents will be a good investment in our future and a necessary step to truly make America great again. President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are absolutely right to dismantle the Education Department as we know it, and every parent, student, and teacher in this country should welcome it.”