【中美创新时报2025 年 2 月 5 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）据报道，特朗普政府正准备解散教育部，这是共和党人长期以来的梦想，他们希望将教育政策制定权交还给各州。《波士顿环球报》记者希拉里·伯恩斯和迈克·达米亚诺对此作了下述报道。
与此同时，特朗普总统发布了一系列指令，本质上要求联邦政府继续积极参与教育，在 K-12 学校推广“爱国”学习，并消除大学校园中的 DEI 和反犹太主义。
教育界的一些人认为这其中存在矛盾。 “他似乎在说，‘我们将利用联邦政府来推进一项特定的课程’，这似乎与教育不是联邦的，而是州和地方的理念相矛盾，”自由主义的卡托研究所教育自由中心主任尼尔·麦克拉斯基说。
特朗普同时在追求两条轨道。
本周，教育部让数十名工作人员带薪休假，因为他们的工作据称违反了特朗普的反 DEI 行政命令。与此同时，由埃隆·马斯克领导的削减成本计划政府效率部仔细研究了教育部的数据，寻找更多可以裁员的工作。据两位知情人士透露，特朗普计划中的行政命令旨在缩小或解散教育部。周二，特朗普告诉记者，他希望“让各州管理学校”，并希望他提名的教育部长琳达·麦克马洪“让自己失业”。
但与此同时，特朗普已下令教育部执行其议程的部分内容。1 月 29 日，特朗普发布行政命令，指示教育部长帮助政府根除大学校园中的反犹太主义。根据另一项名为“结束 K-12 学校的激进灌输”的行政命令，特朗普还命令教育部成立 1776 委员会来“促进爱国主义教育”。
“我不知道特朗普政府是否发出了明确的信息，”麦克拉斯基说。“他们要么打算让联邦政府下台，要么打算利用联邦政府来推进他们自己关于应该教授什么以及学校应该制定什么政策的想法。这种紧张局势可能存在于整个政府中。”
尽管废除教育部需要国会采取行动，但白宫发言人在给《波士顿环球报》的一份声明中表示，特朗普“计划通过重新评估该部门的未来来履行竞选承诺。” （《华尔街日报》首先报道了这项计划中的行政命令。）
1979 年，在吉米·卡特执政期间，国会将联邦教育办公室改为内阁级部门，负责收集美国教育数据并向学校、州和学生发放联邦援助。从那时起，该部门的员工人数增加了约一倍，达到 4,300 名员工，年度预算增长至 600 亿美元。它是 15 个内阁级部门中规模最小的一个。
教育部的职责包括管理大学赖以盈利的学生贷款和联邦财政援助、向有低收入学生的 K-12 学校发放联邦补助金、资助特殊教育项目、收集数据并执行联邦反歧视法。
自该部门成立以来，保守派一直主张废除它，将所有教育控制权归还给各州和市政当局。 1980 年竞选总统时，罗纳德·里根称其为“吉米·卡特总统的新官僚浪费”。1996 年，共和党全国委员会誓言要废除它。2016 年，多位共和党候选人也做出了同样的承诺。但这一言论从未转化为政策。
特朗普及其盟友表示，教育部提倡向年轻人灌输进步思想，将政府资金浪费在 DEI 项目上，同时也未能履行其核心使命，即改善从幼儿园到大学的教育成果。
教育部没有回应《波士顿环球报》的提问。
华盛顿特区美国教育委员会主席泰德·米切尔 (Ted Mitchell) 表示，解散教育部的努力“是错误的，最终会造成更多的官僚作风、混乱，并导致关键资源无法及时提供给学生、学校和大学。”
共和党人对此有不同的看法。
“教育部没有达到成立时的期望，”美国传统基金会研究员乔纳森·布彻 (Jonathan Butcher) 表示，他曾为特朗普政府的 2025 项目执政手册做出贡献。“该机构的存在没有表明它对纳税人或学生有好处。”
尽管如此，布彻还是告诫特朗普政府不要强制在课堂上使用课程。（他确实支持重启 1776 委员会，并表示它可以用于其他目的）。
“制定课程不是华盛顿的工作，”布彻说。
特朗普内部对最终目标是废除还是改革该部门存在一些分歧。
保守派曼哈顿研究所的伊利亚·夏皮罗表示，他赞成解散该部门，但他承认这不可能一蹴而就。他说，一些核心职能必须转移到其他机构。
例如，学生贷款组合可以转移到财政部，而民权办公室的职责可以转移到司法部，正如 2025 计划中概述的那样，特朗普在竞选期间与该计划保持距离，但现在正在实施。
一些保守派人士表示，这比目前的安排更有意义。
“目前尚不清楚，一群教育领域的官僚是否是管理一家债务超过 1 万亿美元的巨型银行的天然管家，”右倾的美国企业研究所研究员里克·赫斯 (Rick Hess) 表示。“让了解银行业的人来管理这些债务可能更合理。”
该部门的一些职能和职责不能通过行政命令转移或取消。国会指定了该部门的许多职责，只有国会采取行动才能取消它们。许多政治观察家认为，由于共和党在众议院的微弱多数以及需要获得一些民主党选票以克服参议院 60 票的阻挠，国会几乎不可能同意这些变化。
右倾的全国学者协会研究主任大卫·兰德尔 (David Randall) 承认，国会需要采取行动，才能将该部门缩减到他所希望的程度。但他表示，他不排除任何可能性。
“过去两周，政治上发生了前所未有的事情，我认为没有人有资格说他们知道人们会如何表现，”他说。
然而，传统基金会客座研究员亚当·基塞尔说，特朗普仍然可以利用这一优势促使学校按照他的意愿进行改造，包括采用更“爱国”的课程——只要他不使用法律力量。
“他应该表达他认为什么是受过教育的公民，一个爱国的公民，”基塞尔说。“是否同意这一点，并按照总统的想法去做，仍然取决于每一所学校[和]大学。”
《环球报》工作人员杰基·库辛尼奇对本报告做出了贡献。
题图：周二，特朗普在白宫表示，他希望他提名的教育部长“让自己失业”。Evan Vucci/美联社
附原英文报道：
Republicans praise Trump plans to dismantle Department of Education, but others see a contradiction
By Hilary Burns and Mike Damiano Globe Staff,Updated February 5, 2025
At the White House Tuesday, Trump said he wanted his nominee for education secretary to “put herself out of a job.”Evan Vucci/Associated Press
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to dismantle the Department of Education, a longtime dream of Republicans wanting to return education policymaking to the states.
At the same time, President Trump has issued a series of directives essentially asking the federal government to remain heavily involved in education by promoting “patriotic” learning in K-12 schools and ridding college campuses of DEI and antisemitism.
Some in the education world see a contradiction. “It seems like he’s saying, ‘We’re going to use the federal government to advance a particular curriculum,’ which seems to be at odds with the idea that education is something that is not federal, that is state and local,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.
Trump is simultaneously pursuing both tracks.
This week, the Education Department put dozens of staffers on paid leave because their work purportedly ran afoul of Trump’s anti-DEI executive order. Meanwhile, the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting initiative led by Elon Musk, combed through the Education Department’s data, seeking more jobs to eliminate. Trump’s planned executive order aims to shrink or dissolve the Education Department, according to two people with knowledge of the plan. On Tuesday Trump told reporters he wants to “let the states run schools,” and wants his nominee for education secretary Linda McMahon to “put herself out of a job.”
At the same time, though, Trump has ordered the Education Department to carry out elements of his agenda. His executive order on Jan. 29 directed the education secretary to help the administration root out antisemitism on college campuses. Trump also ordered the department to set up a 1776 Commission to “promote patriotic education,” according to another executive order, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.”
“I don’t know that there is a clear message from the Trump administration,” McCluskey said. “Either they intend to get the federal government out, or they intend to use the federal government to advance their own ideas of what should be taught and what policies schools should have. This tension might exist for the whole administration.”
Although congressional action would be required to abolish the Department of Education, a White House spokesperson said in a statement to The Boston Globe that Trump “plans to fulfill a campaign promise by reevaluating the [department’s] future.” (The Wall Street Journal first reported on the planned executive order.)
In 1979, during the Jimmy Carter administration, Congress turned the federal Office of Education into a Cabinet-level department tasked with collecting data on US education and distributing federal aid to schools, states, and students. Since then, the department’s headcount has approximately doubled, to 4,300 employees, and its annual budget grew to $60 billion. It is the smallest of the 15 Cabinet-level departments.
Among its responsibilities, the Department of Education administers the student loans and federal financial aid that colleges rely on for revenue, distributes federal grants to K-12 schools with low-income students, funds special education programs, collects data, and enforces federal antidiscrimination laws.
Since the department’s creation, conservatives have advocated for abolishing it and returning all control of education to states and municipalities. Campaigning for the presidency in 1980, Ronald Reagan called it “President Jimmy Carter’s new bureaucratic boondoggle.” In 1996, the Republican National Committee vowed to abolish it. In 2016, multiple Republican candidates echoed that promise. But the talk never turned into policy.
Trump and his allies have said the department promotes indoctrination of young people into progressive ideology and wastes government dollars on DEI programs, while also failing to deliver on its core mission of improving education outcomes from kindergarten to college.
The department did not respond to questions from the Globe.
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C., which represents about 1,600 colleges and universities, said efforts to dismantle the department are “misguided and would ultimately create more red tape, confusion, and delay in getting crucial resources to students, schools, and colleges.”
Republicans see it differently.
“The department has not lived up to the expectations set up for it when it was created,” said Jonathan Butcher, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who contributed to the Project 2025 governing playbook for the Trump administration. “There is nothing about the agency’s existence that demonstrates it’s good for taxpayers or good for students.”
Still, Butcher cautioned the Trump administration against mandating curriculum for use in classrooms. (He does support the restart of the 1776 Commission and said it could be used for other purposes).
“It’s not Washington’s job to be coming up with curricula,” Butcher said.
There is some disagreement within Trump world about whether the end goal is abolition or reform of the department.
Ilya Shapiro, of the conservative Manhattan Institute, said he would favor dismantling the department, but he acknowledges that couldn’t happen overnight. Some core functions, he said, would have to transfer to other agencies.
The student loan portfolio, for example, could move to the Treasury Department while the responsibilities of the Office for Civil Rights could transfer to the Justice Department, as outlined in Project 2025, which Trump distanced himself from on the campaign trail but is now implementing.
Some conservatives say that would make more sense than the current arrangement.
“It’s not clear that a bunch of bureaucrats around education are the natural stewards for a megabank with obligations in excess of $1 trillion,” said Rick Hess, fellow with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “It probably makes more sense to have that run out of treasury by people who know banking.”
Some of the department’s functions and responsibilities cannot be transferred or eliminated by executive fiat. Congress designated many of the department’s responsibilities and only congressional action can remove them. Many political observers think it’s virtually inconceivable Congress would go along with many of these changes because of the Republican Party’s slim majority in the House of Representatives and the need to secure some Democratic votes to overcome the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate.
David Randall, the director of research of the right-leaning National Association of Scholars, acknowledged that congressional action would be required to pare back the department to the extent he favors. But he said he’s not ruling any possibility out.
“The last two weeks have seen things unprecedented in politics such that I don’t think anybody is in a good position to say they know how people are likely to behave,” he said.
Trump, though, can nevertheless use the bully pulpit to spur schools to remake themselves according to his wishes, including adopting a more “patriotic” curriculum — as long as he doesn’t use the force of law, said Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
“He should express what he thinks makes an educated citizen, a patriotic citizen,” Kissel said. “It’s still up to every school [and] college if they agree with that, and do what the president thinks.”
Jackie Kucinich of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
