Ron Speaks
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From The WSJ:
President Trump’s election represented a mandate for change. This change includes putting American excellence back at the forefront of education policy and ridding ourselves of bureaucratic handcuffs that stifle success.
Mr. Trump can empower states to manage education policy by removing the cumbersome bureaucracy that has become the hallmark of the U.S. Department of Education. Abolishing the department and reinvigorating state control of education would enable states like Florida to serve better the needs of students, parents and teachers.
The president is doing what other Republicans have promised, but failed, to do.
We have led the charge in Florida to pursue student-focused, parent-friendly education policies. And we have had to take on bureaucratic overhang from both the Obama and Biden administrations to do it.
We abolished Common Core, which had been pushed by the Obama administration, because it didn’t work for our students. Florida replaced it with high-quality, content-rich standards, Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, or BEST, which outline the state’s expectations at each grade level.
Florida has also worked to end high-stakes exams and shifted our state testing model to first-in-the-nation progress monitoring. Our students are tested at the beginning, middle and end of the year, providing teachers and parents with immediate, real-time data on student progress and allowing the opportunity for interventions before a student falls too far behind. Our students have shown significant year-over-year improvements using this testing model.
Delivering on a decadeslong quest by conservative reformers, we enacted universal school choice, which eliminated financial eligibility restrictions and the enrollment cap for school choice scholarship programs. In 2024 Florida had more than 524,000 students utilizing a school choice scholarship for private school or home schooling.
We have also supported the expansion of charter schools, which now enroll more than 400,000 Florida students—a population that is majority low-income yet performs above its peers in traditional school districts.
These record expansions are why the Heritage Foundation and the ALEC Index of State Education Freedom have both ranked Florida as the No. 1 state for education freedom for several years in a row.
We also returned education to the core principles of teaching math, reading, history and science. That is why we were first to eliminate discriminatory and divisive theories that crept into our education systems such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Critical Race Theory. We created a simple legal framework: Schools should educate, not indoctrinate.
Additionally, we led the charge on solidifying parental rights in education because parents should have transparency regarding the curriculum used in the classroom.
Florida has led the nation in refocusing our education systems on educating our students for lifelong success by eliminating DEI, expanding educational options, and making data-driven investments that support positive student outcomes.
As a result of Florida’s state-led reforms and nation-leading approach to education, U.S. News & World Report has ranked Florida No. 1 in education among the 50 states for the past two years.
Florida’s success has been a direct result of the efforts I’ve described above—nearly all of which were done despite federal headwinds, and in opposition to the policies and priorities pushed by the federal Department of Education.
One telling example was the Biden administration’s attempt to strip Florida of federal school lunch money because I signed a law in 2021 to protect women’s sports. We stood our ground, but how ridiculous is it that the federal government would try to shoehorn states into jamming men into women’s athletic competitions?
For decades, the federal government has tied more strings than ever imaginable to our federal education dollars for both secondary and postsecondary education.
The idea of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education isn’t new. Ronald Reagan proposed it in 1981. Reagan said, “By eliminating the Department of Education less than two years after it was created, we can not only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”
More than 40 years after he uttered those words, the sentiment is truer than ever. The department had more than 4,100 employees and a $80 billion budget. What sort of return on investment did we see for our schools? Despite tens of billions of dollars pouring into the U.S. Department of Education annually, students never see the bulk of this spending in their classrooms—it gets tied up in a web of ideologically driven bureaucratic red tape.
Abolishing the department would usher in a new era of American educational excellence. States already implement their curriculum and operate their education programs. Through block grants, the states will be better positioned to invest federal dollars in programs that drive student performance without having to meet burdensome reporting requirements. Under the last administration, these requirements went beyond burdensome and required DEI measures to be used at every turn, a perfect example of bureaucratic red tape that was hindering progress.
Abolishing the U.S. Department of Education is a necessary step to unleash states to reach their full potential and copy the successful Florida model. President Trump will demonstrate leadership by following through on a four-decade-old Republican campaign promise. Then the states can get to work—and the prospects for student achievement will brighten.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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He should be President
@LuFins-Dad said in Ron Speaks:
He should be President
He's a darn good governor. He just has a charisma problem.
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If you replace ‘abolish the department’ with ‘keep the vast majority of the functions just move them to other departments’ the piece stops making sense.
And let’s be honest - Trump won’t remove hoops the states and schools have to go through to get their money. He’ll just replace them with his own hoops.
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From The WSJ:
President Trump’s election represented a mandate for change. This change includes putting American excellence back at the forefront of education policy and ridding ourselves of bureaucratic handcuffs that stifle success.
Mr. Trump can empower states to manage education policy by removing the cumbersome bureaucracy that has become the hallmark of the U.S. Department of Education. Abolishing the department and reinvigorating state control of education would enable states like Florida to serve better the needs of students, parents and teachers.
The president is doing what other Republicans have promised, but failed, to do.
We have led the charge in Florida to pursue student-focused, parent-friendly education policies. And we have had to take on bureaucratic overhang from both the Obama and Biden administrations to do it.
We abolished Common Core, which had been pushed by the Obama administration, because it didn’t work for our students. Florida replaced it with high-quality, content-rich standards, Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, or BEST, which outline the state’s expectations at each grade level.
Florida has also worked to end high-stakes exams and shifted our state testing model to first-in-the-nation progress monitoring. Our students are tested at the beginning, middle and end of the year, providing teachers and parents with immediate, real-time data on student progress and allowing the opportunity for interventions before a student falls too far behind. Our students have shown significant year-over-year improvements using this testing model.
Delivering on a decadeslong quest by conservative reformers, we enacted universal school choice, which eliminated financial eligibility restrictions and the enrollment cap for school choice scholarship programs. In 2024 Florida had more than 524,000 students utilizing a school choice scholarship for private school or home schooling.
We have also supported the expansion of charter schools, which now enroll more than 400,000 Florida students—a population that is majority low-income yet performs above its peers in traditional school districts.
These record expansions are why the Heritage Foundation and the ALEC Index of State Education Freedom have both ranked Florida as the No. 1 state for education freedom for several years in a row.
We also returned education to the core principles of teaching math, reading, history and science. That is why we were first to eliminate discriminatory and divisive theories that crept into our education systems such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Critical Race Theory. We created a simple legal framework: Schools should educate, not indoctrinate.
Additionally, we led the charge on solidifying parental rights in education because parents should have transparency regarding the curriculum used in the classroom.
Florida has led the nation in refocusing our education systems on educating our students for lifelong success by eliminating DEI, expanding educational options, and making data-driven investments that support positive student outcomes.
As a result of Florida’s state-led reforms and nation-leading approach to education, U.S. News & World Report has ranked Florida No. 1 in education among the 50 states for the past two years.
Florida’s success has been a direct result of the efforts I’ve described above—nearly all of which were done despite federal headwinds, and in opposition to the policies and priorities pushed by the federal Department of Education.
One telling example was the Biden administration’s attempt to strip Florida of federal school lunch money because I signed a law in 2021 to protect women’s sports. We stood our ground, but how ridiculous is it that the federal government would try to shoehorn states into jamming men into women’s athletic competitions?
For decades, the federal government has tied more strings than ever imaginable to our federal education dollars for both secondary and postsecondary education.
The idea of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education isn’t new. Ronald Reagan proposed it in 1981. Reagan said, “By eliminating the Department of Education less than two years after it was created, we can not only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”
More than 40 years after he uttered those words, the sentiment is truer than ever. The department had more than 4,100 employees and a $80 billion budget. What sort of return on investment did we see for our schools? Despite tens of billions of dollars pouring into the U.S. Department of Education annually, students never see the bulk of this spending in their classrooms—it gets tied up in a web of ideologically driven bureaucratic red tape.
Abolishing the department would usher in a new era of American educational excellence. States already implement their curriculum and operate their education programs. Through block grants, the states will be better positioned to invest federal dollars in programs that drive student performance without having to meet burdensome reporting requirements. Under the last administration, these requirements went beyond burdensome and required DEI measures to be used at every turn, a perfect example of bureaucratic red tape that was hindering progress.
Abolishing the U.S. Department of Education is a necessary step to unleash states to reach their full potential and copy the successful Florida model. President Trump will demonstrate leadership by following through on a four-decade-old Republican campaign promise. Then the states can get to work—and the prospects for student achievement will brighten.
@Jolly said in Ron Speaks:
For decades, the federal government has tied more strings than ever imaginable to our federal education dollars for both secondary and postsecondary education.
isn't this going on now?
We will cut off your federal money if you dont do X or Y or Z?
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@Jolly said in Ron Speaks:
For decades, the federal government has tied more strings than ever imaginable to our federal education dollars for both secondary and postsecondary education.
isn't this going on now?
We will cut off your federal money if you dont do X or Y or Z?
@taiwan_girl said in Ron Speaks:
@Jolly said in Ron Speaks:
For decades, the federal government has tied more strings than ever imaginable to our federal education dollars for both secondary and postsecondary education.
isn't this going on now?
We will cut off your federal money if you dont do X or Y or Z?
Yes, that is what is going on now, and Ron would like to see it changed.
