So, we’ll “defund” the department, but the money will “keep flowing.” We’ll “dismantle” it, but really redistribute its programs across the government. We’ll “eliminate” it, but actually reassign its various responsibilities to other agencies. When you add that actually eliminating ED will require an act of Congress and 60 Senate votes (as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote under “What the right is saying”), what actually ends up happening is not at all clear to me.

Defund ED? Who would teach? Who would create curriculums? How would our public schools stay funded?  I was subsequently surprised to learn then that ED has very little to do with curriculum or employing teachers, and that its role in funding public schools is fractional.

The Department of Education is responsible for about 14% of all funding that goes to our K–12 schools, and at the same time the department’s reach into state and local education has gone incredibly far. Through the power of the purse, the Education Department now wields a great deal of influence over how parents, teachers, and schools behave. At the same time, a lot of what ED does could be easily moved to other departments (for instance, I think it’s pretty easy to argue that ED’s Office for Civil Rights could move to the Department of Justice).

Some writers, like Cato’s Neal McCluskey, have made straightforward arguments that we don’t need a federal education agency when the federal government isn’t allowed to regulate education, and that the department itself is neither competent nor effective. At the very least, I think one of ED’s biggest responsibilities — its federal student loan programs — has gotten completely out of control. When higher-education costs have exploded and the president responds to those costs by forgiving hundreds of billions in student debt, moving that responsibility somewhere else makes sense. Writers on the left and right have made the case that the Treasury would be better suited to manage and oversee student loans, and I’m inclined to agree with them.

my general view is that ED is not really emblematic of a thriving, successful expansion of federal government — and while trying to “delete” it with Musk-level tact or care would be a disaster, I also think Congress (if it wanted) could significantly reduce ED’s role in American life, turn over its responsibilities to other federal agencies, and streamline a lot of the work it does as a department.  The problem with the current debate is that doing so wouldn’t really reduce the size of the federal government — and it wouldn’t save us all that much money, either. Instead, the administration would just create a whole lot of disruption, risk interrupting popular services, and probably lose the political debate in the public square — all to simply pass on one department’s responsibilities to others.

Some pointed out that labeling nei ge or its pronunciation as offensive, as the USC ​administration seemed to do, following the letter, only makes sense within an Anglophone bubble – that doing so portrays the Chinese language as subject to English rules rather than independent and possessing its own contexts

The Black China Caucus, an American organization that describes itself as “amplifying Black voices in the China space,” also defended Patton on Twitter. “The BCC is shocked by how USC mishandled this situation,” the organization posted. “Not only would a quick Mandarin lesson reveal that “nèi ge” is a common pronoun, but USC’s reaction cheapens and degrades substantive conversations surrounding real (diversity, equity and inclusion) challenges on college campuses!”