ANALYSIS: Project 2025 recycles retro education reform

When it comes to education, Project 2025 might as well be Project 1981.

The 922-page conservative public policy to-do list rehashes a retro item: dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. That was a novel concept back when music videos were a novel concept. Newly elected President Ronald Reagan pushed the idea, hoping to tear down a cabinet-level department minted by his predecessor, President Jimmy Carter.

Reagan abandoned the effort in 1985, in his second term. But it shows up in the very first sentence of Project 2025’s 44-page chapter on education. “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated,” wrote the chapter’s author, Lindsey M. Burke, the director of the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation.

Project 2025 is no summer beach read, except maybe in political circles. Democrats have been quick to paint the report as a sweeping, and ominous, ultraconservative manifesto. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from the report and its authors, drawing even more skeptical scrutiny in the process.

But what’s new here? The notion of ditching the U.S. Education Department couldn’t possibly come as a surprise to high-ranking Idaho Republicans. Still, most were mum this week, although state superintendent Debbie Critchfield said she’s open to the idea.

For all the controversy, Project 2025’s education agenda might be most notable for its scarcity of new ideas; many of its planks have been floating around for years, nationally and in Idaho. Instead, the report offers a mixtape of long-discussed proposals and long-harbored criticisms. Here’s a sampling:

Project 2025 endorses education savings accounts — one of several mechanisms to move public dollars into private K-12 schools. In 2023, the Idaho Senate rejected an ESA bill modeled after an Arizona law. The report recommends ESAs as one way to help parents of children with special needs, also a familiar idea. “ESAs were originally conceived as a means of supporting students who have special needs,” state superintendent Debbie Critchfield said Wednesday. “We have seen the expansion of that scope since the beginning.”

The report says no school employee should be forced to use a student’s preferred pronoun, if the request runs counter to the employee’s “religious or moral convictions.” The 2024 Idaho Legislature passed a similar law.

The report decries the Biden administration proposal to expand Title IX, the landmark federal ban on school discrimination based on sex. The White House wants to extend Title IX to LGBTQ+ students; Idaho has joined one of several Republican-led lawsuits opposing the move.

Echoing another recurring criticism from conservatives, Project 2025 urges Congress to amend federal law to block student loan forgiveness programs. “The Biden administration has mercilessly pillaged the student loan portfolio for crass political purposes without regard to the needs of current taxpayers or future students. This must never happen again.”

It’s impossible to decipher where Project 2025 ends and the Republican Party platform begins, at least on education, because the two documents are so similar. In considerably fewer words, the platform recites project talking points.

Sometimes, however, the platform’s message is contradictory. On one page, the GOP pushes for “universal school choice in every state in America.” On the next page, the GOP takes a federalist tack. “We are going to close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it back to the states, where it belongs, and let the states run our educational system as it should be run.”

The fair question, of course, is whether this latest run at the U.S. Department of Education will end any differently than those that came before it.

If repetition counts for anything, the people behind Project 2025 seem serious about mothballing the Department of Education. They present the idea as a cure for multiple ills.

The feds would still fund special education and support low-income families, just in a more streamlined way. Block grants would give states more control over how they spend federal dollars. As federal mandates go away, state education departments would be able to put the brakes on a compliance-driven “hiring spree.” (The report cites 2014 research from, predictably enough, the Heritage Foundation, which concluded that the feds pay 41% of salaries at state education agencies, including 31% in Idaho.)

There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that Idaho Republicans are gung ho about dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.

Gov. Brad Little, Sen. Jim Risch and Rep. Mike Simpson did not respond to repeated requests for comment this week.

Sen. Mike Crapo declined comment on Project 2025. “This is not a piece of legislation or proposal in Congress,” spokeswoman Marissa Morrison said Wednesday. “Sen. Crapo does not comment on independent proposals.” Of course, Crapo was first elected to Congress in 1992 — back when eliminating the Education Department was still a relatively new idea.

Rep. Russ Fulcher has supported eliminating the Education Department since at least 2017, when he first ran for Congress.

As for Critchfield — the state elected official who must work most closely with the Education Department — her attitudes are evolving.

“Two years ago, I would have said that a dissolution of the department was too drastic of a step,” she said in a statement to Idaho Education News Wednesday. ”Now, after being in office for the last 18 months, it’s clear to me that major changes are needed at the federal level, which might include dissolving the agency entirely. I also welcome the idea of block grants in lieu of the current system.”

That’s one convert. Possibly. But not necessarily.

Not exactly a groundswell, 44 years into a well-worn debate.