By John Hood
RALEIGH — President Donald Trump’s executive orders on education have some North Carolinians crying foul.
When the University of North Carolina system moved to comply with Trump’s order against discrimination by federal contractors, for example, a group of UNC-Chapel Hill faculty members argued the resulting prohibition against requiring students to take diversity-themed courses threatened “shared governance principles.”
Another executive order — banning federally funded schools from inculcating claims about “structural racism” and “white privilege” into curricula — drew criticism as “political theater” and “a blast of steam” that could nevertheless endanger local control of education.
When previous Democratic administrations used the lever of federal funding to compel state and local compliance with their preferences on race and gender, however, no angry letters or defenses of federalism arose from such quarters. Indeed, North Carolina progressives were delighted when in 2016 President Obama intervened in the “bathroom bill” controversy with both executive action and a federal lawsuit.
I’m not advocating tit-for-tat here. I seek consistency. Some of the Trump administration’s orders do violate the constitutional separation of powers, by which I mean the proper relationship not just among the federal branches but also among Washington, state governments, and localities. But we can’t revitalize American federalism by engaging in ideological gamesmanship, by progressives resisting only conservative violations and conservatives resisting only progressive ones.
Let’s be clear: some longtime policies by schools and universities were always against federal law. The latest executive orders merely serve to reinforce that fact. Discriminating by race or ethnicity when hiring employees or awarding contracts was never anything but a violation of federal law. (The use of race in university admissions was, by contrast, a contested legal issue until the U.S. Supreme Court definitively ended the pernicious practice in 2023.)
But should the president or Congress use the lever of federal funds to dictate what public schools teach and how they must teach it? Certainly not.
I’ve long argued that the most effective way to restore federalism is for Washington to exit policy sectors for which there is no power explicitly granted by the United States Constitution. Given its massive deficits, all those grants-in-aid are essentially borrowed money, anyway, which violates at least the spirit, if not the letter, of balanced-budget requirements in state constitutions such as North Carolina’s.
Perhaps the new GOP-led Congress will push the exit button on education, transportation, and public-assistance programs. I’m skeptical but would be overjoyed to be proven wrong.
Failing that, the next-best alternative is for Washington to aid recipients directly, by voucherizing federal funds (as with Pell Grants and rental assistance) or adjusting the tax code accordingly. With regard to K-12 education, I don’t think Washington should directly fund vouchers (except in places properly subject to federal governance such as the District of Columbia). There’s too much danger that some future administration or Congress will yank federal strings to reduce the autonomy of recipient schools.
A better solution is the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA). The latest version was filed last month in both chambers. It would allow households and businesses to claim tax credits for donations to private scholarship organizations, which would in turn offer educational scholarships to families. The bill caps total credits available at $10 billion a year, distributed proportionally across the various states.
Among its congressional cosponsors are both Thom Tillis and Ted Budd in the U.S. Senate and North Carolinians Richard Hudson and Greg Murphy in the U.S. House. Rep. Virginia Foxx, who now chairs the Rules Committee, supported the same concept two years ago when she led the House Education and Workforce Committee. The tax-credit bill would “expand education opportunities for millions of students,” Foxx wrote, “giving them and their parents the freedom to direct their own academic careers.”
The broader principle here is that if we truly believe in state and local autonomy, we should minimize the extent to which states and localities depend on federal funds. Don’t just yank the strings in different directions. Cut them.
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).
Demoncrats love to waste our hard-earned money! Why should my tax dollars fund their stupid radical belief’s. Withhold all federal funding
The argument that federal oversight of education is an overreach ignores the critical role the U.S. Department of Education plays in ensuring equal access to quality education, enforcing civil rights protections, and providing funding to schools that need it most. While the author claims to seek “consistency” in opposing federal influence over education, their position ultimately enables a conservative agenda that seeks to dismantle public education under the guise of restoring federalism. Trump’s executive orders restricting discussions of race and diversity in schools were not about preserving local control—they were about censoring history and controlling what students can learn. The same conservatives who now argue for cutting federal funding to reduce “strings attached” were more than willing to accept federal intervention when it suited their political goals, such as when Trump attempted to dictate what schools could and couldn’t teach.
The reality is that Trump and Elon Musk are likely to succeed in eliminating the Department of Education, given the GOP’s increasing embrace of authoritarian governance and their willingness to gut federal agencies they perceive as obstacles. If they succeed, education policy would fall entirely to state governments, many of which have already shown a clear intention to impose partisan control over curricula, defund public education in favor of private schools, and weaken protections for marginalized students. Wealthier states might maintain relatively strong public school systems, but poorer states—particularly those with Republican leadership—would be left with underfunded schools, overburdened teachers, and fewer resources for students with disabilities or those in need of extra support. The push for school vouchers and tax credits for private education, as outlined in the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), would accelerate the privatization of education, siphoning funds away from public schools while creating a system where the quality of a child’s education is determined by their zip code and financial background rather than their potential.
Under this scenario, public education would fracture into a deeply unequal system. Affluent families would have access to well-funded private or charter schools, while millions of students—especially in rural and low-income areas—would be left in crumbling public schools with fewer teachers, larger class sizes, and outdated materials. Efforts to whitewash history, restrict discussions on race and gender, and ban books would escalate without federal oversight to intervene. Meanwhile, corporate interests would seize the opportunity to profit from the dismantling of public education, with tech-driven “education solutions” replacing traditional schooling, further reducing accountability and student support.
The idea that eliminating the Department of Education would somehow restore local control is a smokescreen. What it would actually do is create a chaotic, deeply inequitable system where only the wealthiest and best-connected students thrive while the rest are left behind. Trump and Musk’s vision for education isn’t about improving outcomes—it’s about controlling narratives, dismantling federal protections, and turning public education into a free-market experiment that benefits the privileged few at the expense of everyone else.
Less government does not equal authoritarian governance. In order to be an authoritarian, you would need more government. You make no sense. Furthermore, the state governments can provide everything you said the Feds would take away. You make no sense sir.
Your argument fundamentally misunderstands how authoritarianism works. It’s not just about “big government” vs. “small government”—it’s about who controls the government and how much power they have. An authoritarian regime doesn’t necessarily expand government programs; it centralizes power, suppresses dissent, and eliminates checks and balances. Gutting federal oversight of education, for example, doesn’t create “freedom”—it hands control over to state governments, many of which are already restricting what teachers can say, what books students can read, and what history is allowed to be taught. That is textbook authoritarianism—not through more government, but through unchecked, ideologically driven control.
As for state governments “providing everything” the federal government does—that’s simply not reality. Many states, especially those run by Republicans, are actively defunding public schools, rejecting federal education funding, and slashing resources for low-income and special-needs students. Without federal protections, those students would be left behind, and education quality would depend entirely on where you live—further widening inequality.
So no, eliminating federal oversight doesn’t create more freedom. It creates a patchwork system where extremist politicians can impose their will unchecked, punish educators for teaching inconvenient truths, and funnel public money into private hands. That’s not less government—it’s less democracy.
You obviously haven’t been in a public school in a while. Kids are being passed along at an alarming rate. The “poor” kids aren’t getting a quality education. They are just getting passed along. Look at our test scores, they tell the tale. What is happening is the dummying down of those who could succeed by teaching to the lowest in the class!
The idea of putting kids in the least restrictive environment was something should have NEVER happened. You are losing the kids that could be future leaders and it is doing NOTHING for the kids that need more specialized environments to learn. They KNOW they are the weakest link the class and they actually perform lower by being compared to those that they KNOW are smarter than they are. They thrive better when they can struggle and not feel like they are the weakest in the class. You kid yourself when you don’t think that kids don’t know when others out perform them.