Protecting Students by Upholding the Department of Education

POLICYMAKERS, EDUCATION LEADERS, AND ADVOCATES,

These moments of instability require our courage. Students must see us as upstanders against injustice and unequivocally committed leaders who will confront fear-mongering tactics and attempts to weaponize education into a tool of segregation and elitism. The fact remains that the U.S. Department of Education (ED) is vital in providing the funding, programs, data, civil rights enforcement, financial aid access, and national coordination necessary to prepare the next generation of students who will power our democracy and economy. The move towards closing the department has been touted under the guise of ending government inefficiency and overreach, but—in fact—it would only further exacerbate inefficiencies, remove accountability, and create obstacles to access and affordability for students. This egregious action would also harm students and families during the peak season of FAFSA, at a time when a troubling low of 35% of students have completed their aid application. We must call these actions for what they are: a thinly veiled effort to break our spirits as they continue their attempts to rob our nation’s most vulnerable students—first-generation, low-income, Latinx, Black, Asian American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native students—from their constitutional right to an education free of barriers.