Does Trump Want To Dismantle The Best US Schools?

Well, yes. And that tells us something about his education goals.

Disclaimer up front: I'm not a fan of school ratings based on scores on the Big Standardized Test. If I had my way, those scores would be a teeny tiny part of how we di8scuss school quality. But I don't always get to have my way, and policy makers want to toss such scores around-- especially when privateers want to "prove" that public schools are "failing."

And so we are subjected to a whole lot of chicken littling about how the latest NAEP scores show that it's time for vouchers and charters and microschools. "Stop doing wokey things, and get back to basics so scores will go up!" is the cry.

If that's your measure, then surely we should be talking about the top-ranked United States schools-- the schools run by the Department of Defense.

Year after year, they come in at the top of the educational mountain, even in those ugly moments right after the pandemic, they were coming in 15 to 23 percentage points higher than the national average. In 2024, they were still out in front by similar margins.

So, if education-minded politicians are really worried about NAEP scores, they should be looking at what the DOD does and calling for that to be replicated, right? Well, of course not.

Instead, the Trump administration has decreed that the Secretary of Defense must "submit a plan to the President for how military families can use Department of Defense funds to send their children to the school of their choice." Now, given the apparent excellence of DOD schools, one might think that military families will mostly use their vouchers to stay right where they are, but MAGA is working on that.

On February 6, the DOD education wing sent out a directive to all 161 schools telling them to scrub all "DEI" stuff, whatever that may be exactly, Fort Campbell schools was just one of the schools scrubbing all sorts of books about civil rights and slavery, as well as pulling down bulletin boards that made references to Black History Month and Black leaders. The anti-diversity, equity and inclusion directive also requires certain student groups to be shut down; in Wiesbaden, the Women in STEM group is done, and the portrait of Michele Obama has been taken down. An ever growing list of resources that are now forbidden has also been sent out, like a lesson entitled "How Does Immigration Affect the U.S.?" and an AP Psychology unit on sex and gender.

The irony of this "wokiness" purge, as Jennifer Berkshire has pointed out, is that DOD schools achieve their tops-in-US results by actually being extra woke themselves.

A New York Times piece by Sarah Mervosh dug into the question of how DOD schools get their high-scoring results.

The secrets are not very mysterious. The Department pays teachers very well, and it fully funds its schools, both of which help retain top educators, providing both high quality instruction and institutional stability. The families that the schools serve all have secure housing and healthcare; students come to school with basic needs met and no threat of disruptive hardship hanging over them. Imagine if that were a public policy goal for the whole country.

The military base schools are also among the integrated schools in the US system, both in terms of race and socioeconomic status. And a strong central administrative structure works to insure that all schools get the same level of resources, rather than segregating resources between wealthy and poor schools.

In short, the Department of Defense gets its education results by doing all the woke diversity equity and integration stuff (along with adequate funding) that the MAGA crowd is determined to stamp out.

The attack on the DOD schools is a clear statement of Trumpian priorities-- the administration has literally been given a choice between supporting schools that get the kind of results they want or pursing a culture panic and privatization agenda at the expense of those results. They are choosing panic and privateering, and military families will pay the price.

If only a reporter would ask the question-- if the DOD schools are getting the results you want, why are you stripping them of the tools they use to get those results? But as the zone is flooded, this is just one small story. But it matters. The administration is able to impose on DOD schools they policies they want to impose on all schools, and they are showing that panic and privateering are the real priorities-- not education. Buckle up.