I am blaming Kevin Kruse, who wrote a bit here about the Elon Musk interview, for my opening the transcript of the interview.
With a sigh, I will concede that having the nonsensical sentences that he actually says in front of us should be done.
Here's the education section, with notes from me:
Proposal to Close Department of Education
DONALD TRUMP: I want to close up Department of Education, move education back to the states where states like Iowa, where states like Idaho, you know, not every state will do great because states that basically aren’t doing good. Now, you look at Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. He’s terrible. He does a terrible job.
As we've noted before, closing U.S. DoE is a perennial proposal, which has never gone anywhere. It of course would fundamentally create additional inequity in education, both due to the funding loss--the title grants and IDEA, which Project 2025 wants to make block grants before phasing out--but the loss of the civil rights division, which is the federal government's ability to ensure, well, civil rights in schools.
Ranking of states against each other in education is of course a fool's errand (and I say this sitting in the one that frequently comes in first), as it entirely depends on what you're measuring, but both Iowa and Idaho have of course fundamentally been undermining their students' basic rights, while California has been protecting them. I'm not sure what else is going on there.
So he’s not going to do great with education. But of the 50, I would bet that 35 would do great. And 15 of them or, you know, 20 of them will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great.
You can name them. I mean, just they’re so good. Some of these countries are so good. But if you go into some of these really well run states, you know, we have states that don’t know what debt is. We have states that have low taxes, no debt. Everybody work. You know, they’re really well run.
ELON MUSK: Sure.
State Advantages and Education
DONALD TRUMP: And maybe they have certain advantages in terms of location, in terms of, you know, the land or the the sun, the sun and the water and the whole thing. You know, there are a lot of advantages to some people. But if you moved education back to the 50, you’ll have some that won’t do well, but you’ll have. But they’ll actually be forced to do better because it’ll be a pretty bad situation.
If you think about it. You’ll have some of these states. I’ll bet you’d have 30, 35 states. It’ll be much better. And you know what? It’ll cost less than half what it is in Washington. And these people don’t care about students in these, you know, faraway states. And it will be unbelievable.
It's impossible to know what "it'll cost less than half what it is in Washington" means, aside from Trump one assumes not understanding that the federal government pays for about 10% of K-12 public education.
His primary argument here, of course, is that somehow competition improves public education, a misunderstanding of both Democrats and Republicans for at least the past twenty years. But of course, public education has the charge of educating every single student, even the inconvenient, expensive, difficult ones. It fundamentally doesn't work.
ELON MUSK: Yeah. I think you’re making a good point in that. If the states have — if each individual, if each state has to compete against other states, then people will naturally move to states where it’s better.
Only someone for whom the questions of money and family have no bearing could say such a thing.
