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Good morning, Roca Nation. Here are today’s four need-to-know stories:
The US' largest aircraft carrier arrived in the Caribbean, escalating tensions with Venezuela
A Harvard report that found over 60% of students receive As (free)
The White House floated the idea of creating 50-year mortgages to address housing affordability concerns (free)
Democrats and Republicans released Epstein files tit-for-tat
By Max Towey
In yesterday’s We The 66, we shared the case for getting rid of the Department of Education.
The argument, as articulated by conservative education policy leader Rick Hess, essentially comes down to this: 1) The department doesn’t educate kids; 2) Education outcomes have worsened since it came into existence in 1979; and 3) Its most valuable functions could be better handled by other departments.
Hess – a Harvard PhD-turned-bestselling-education-author – said that “three guys named Steve” could execute its essential functions better than its current bureaucrats.
These words probably blindside most Americans, as polling shows two-thirds of US adults oppose closing the department. In fact, two nights ago I told a friend that I interviewed an education policy scholar who wanted to get rid of the department, and her jaw dropped: Wouldn’t that be like Adam Schefter wanting to get rid of the NFL?
Yet Rick Hess says that cutting it is so unpopular because people don’t know anything about it: “It’s not so much because they know what the department does, but because it seems like a laudable signal that education is important.”
But not so fast.
Today, we sit down with Peter Granville, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, who’s been a vocal critic of the Trump Administration’s cuts to the Department of Education. He believes the department still serves a useful purpose – an opinion he’s advanced in outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, andNPR. In this candid interview, he breaks down the department's functions, critiques the administration’s “shoot first, aim later” approach, and explains why gutting it could leave millions of students in the lurch. Once you read it, compare it with Hess’ take and make up your own mind!
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Editor’s Note
So there you have it. The role of an organization like Roca should be to share information so you can make up your own minds, not to tell you what to think. In fact, we want YOU to tell US what to think! Should the Education Department be eliminated or not? Let us know by replying here. Also, let us know what other topics we should cover in a two-sided format like this.
And don’t miss our latest stories if you haven’t read them yet:
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to send in your thoughts.
—Max and Max
