Gut the Dept of Ed?
With all the hoopla in the news about the current administration’s promise to eliminate so-called wasteful federal spending, let’s break down what it will really mean if/when they succeed in gutting the U.S. Department of Education.
Since I claim Houston as my hometown, we’ll start with the state of Texas – which is home to many cool things like Blue Bell, the Johnson Space Center, Buc-ees, and the Astros/Rockets/Texans – but also where 6,393,597 Red-hatters (56.2% of voters) voted Republican in the 2024 election.
About half (49.8%) of Texas’ funding for public K-12 education comes from local sources, primarily property taxes. Texas is currently one of only seven states that levy no individual income tax whatsoever, yet state support still accounts for nearly 38% of the public K-12 budget, with the remaining 12% coming from federal funds, aka, the US Dept of Ed.
Twelve percent may not sound like much, but for Texas, it’s in the ballpark of $9 billion (yes, with a B … put another way = $9,000,000,000). Within that pot:
$22 million goes toward rural, low-income schools whose property taxes don’t cut the mustard (think 1A & 2A speed-trap towns)
$12.5 million supports education for homeless children
$127 million is for Career & Technical Education grants to the state
And $1.2 BILLION is allocated for Special Education programs & services
I don’t know where Greg Abbott and his ilk are planning to conjure up nine billion bucks to bridge the gap, but something tells me it won’t come from taxing Space X.
Out of curiosity (though I suspected I knew the answer already), I decided to check to see which states rely on US Dept of Ed funding the most to support their schools. As I pretend to be shocked, it turns out that among the top 15 states whose public K-12 revenue comes from the feds, 14 of them voted Republican, while the 10 least reliant on federal funding for their schools voted blue:
Most reliant on US Dept of Ed (19.7% - 13.8%)
South Dakota
Mississippi
Montana
Arizona
Alaska
North Dakota
Arkansas
Idaho
Louisiana
Alabama
West Virginia
Kentucky
Tennessee
Oklahoma
Maine
Least reliant (8.7%-4.6%)
41. Oregon
42. Washington
43. Illinois
44. Delaware
45. New Hampshire
46. Maryland
47. Massachusetts
48. Connecticut
49. New Jersey
50. New York
It’s a little too late for Red-hatters to act surprised that the US Dept of Ed provides so much support for kids with disabilities and vo-tech programs and rural communities. “Drain the swamp” probably doesn’t feel so great when you realize that you, too, are in the marsh.
We tried to warn you.
References (for anyone who cares):
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2024/texas-2024-general-election-results/
National Center for Educational Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/ (Digest 2023, Table 235.20)
U.S. Department of Education Funds for State Formula-Allocated and Selected Student Aid Programs, by Program
Image credit: AI-generated (DALL·E)