tOP STORY

A Call to Close the U.S. Department of Indoctrination

By GREG TAYLOR with Mary Otto-Chang HBA, MES, PhD (Candidate)

These policies led schools to focus on social engineering, with resources redirected from core courses to DEI training, exacerbating learning gaps.

Our Country Our Children has previously expressed significant concerns regarding the emphasis on ideological indoctrination over traditional education by both state and federal governments. The introduction of critical theory into educational curricula is often perceived as overshadowing critical thinking, transforming educational institutions into platforms for activism rather than nurturing qualities essential for realizing one’s potential and for societal contribution.

Under Trump’s second term, this discourse has progressed towards actionable steps, with executive orders being drafted and discussions on possible legislative amendments gaining traction.

History of the U.S. Department of Education

Prior to its formation, education was managed under the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The department’s mission has been to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access to education. In the years since the DoE was established student achievement has dwindled.

However, over the years, there’s been a significant debate about the effectiveness of these standards. Particularly under the Biden administration, neo-Marxist ideology including Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and gender ideology have been at the fore of DoE policy, at the further cost of the standards for which the institution was established.

Since 1979, children have become less academically gifted and more ideologically indoctrinated.

Academic Standards

Since the beginning of the U.S. Department of Education, concerns about American students’ academic performance compared to their international peers have grown. While the U.S. has made strides in educational access, its attainment in core subjects like Math and English has lagged behind many developed nations, particularly at the grade level, based on international assessments like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

In the early 1980s, international comparisons like the First International Mathematics Study showed U.S. students already trailing in math, with 13-year-olds outperformed by most participating countries and high school seniors ranking last. By the time PISA began in 2000, the U.S. ranked 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science in 2015, with reading scores middling. The 2022 PISA results further highlighted this trend, placing the U.S. 31st in math, 20th in reading, and 27th in science among OECD countries and partner economies. These rankings indicate a persistent struggle to keep pace with nations like Singapore, Japan, and Finland, which consistently outperform the U.S. in math and reading.

In math, U.S. students have shown little improvement since the early 2000s, with PISA scores dropping 13 points between 2018 and 2022, aligning with a broader OECD decline but still lagging behind top performers. For instance, only 7% of U.S. 15-year-olds scored at advanced levels in math in 2022, compared to 41% in Singapore. This gap is evident at earlier grades too, with TIMSS data from 2019 showing U.S. fourth-graders ranking 14th in math among 64 education systems, a decline from earlier decades when fewer countries outperformed the U.S.

English (reading) performance has been more stable but still middling. While U.S. reading scores on PISA have hovered around the OECD average, they fall short of top performers like Finland and Canada. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) also reveals stagnation, with 2022 reading scores for nine-year-olds declining five points since 2020, the largest drop since 1990. Several factors contribute to this decline. U.S. education funding varies widely by state, leading to inequities. But one key factor might explain that drop of five points from 2020 to 2022: Ideological indoctrination at the cost of all else.

While U.S. high school graduation rates have risen since 1979, from 71.5% to 87% by 2022, academic attainment in core subjects is a prime concern. The persistent lag in math and middling performance in English compared to international peers signal a need for reform.

Political and Ideological Teaching

Under various administrations, the DoE has seen shifts in focus. However, under President Joe Biden, there was marked emphasis on Social Emotional Learning (SEL), Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory (CRT), and transgender issues. These initiatives have politicized the education system and there is much evidence of this.

During the Obama administration, the Department of Education issued the 2014 “Dear Colleague Letter” on school discipline, aiming to address racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions. Many “marginalized” children were being punished for violent and disruptive behavior at a rate greater than non-marginalized children. Without considering cause, the answer was to implement systems that provided for equality of outcome. Irrespective of behavior, children would be punished according to their race, sexual orientation or similar. The guidance in that 2014 letter encouraged schools to adopt affirmative standards to reduce disproportionate discipline rates for students of color, emphasizing restorative justice over punitive measures. While intended to combat what Democrats considered to be discrimination, it led to a lax educational environment where misconduct, was often excused in the name or racial equity.

The guidance was pointed and warned that disparities in discipline could violate Title VI if not justified by necessity, pressuring schools to lower suspension rates to avoid federal and Democrat scrutiny. Some districts, like Oakland, agreed to “targeted reductions” in suspensions for African American and Latino students, which critics labeled as racial quotas. Reports emerged of schools hesitating to discipline violent behavior to maintain compliance, leading to increased classroom chaos. While the intent was to promote racial equity, the leniency undermined school safety, and fairness in education. The political ideology behind racial equity punished all children. The chaos caused by the Obama Dept. of Education was just the warmup for what came under Biden.

The Biden Administration’s Department of Education prioritized policies emphasizing CRT, DEI, and gender ideology, aiming to address what they considered to be systemic inequities in education. To the Democrats, the problem has always been that unfair power structures in society, and the institutionalized inequity that they bring seek to maintain that power structure. It is Marxism 101. Their role was to address their perception and install their own power structure through positive discrimination. Children’s academic attainment, particularly in core subjects like math and reading, has subsequently suffered.

This push encouraged schools to teach that systemic racism pervades American institutions, potentially diverting focus from foundational skills. This emphasis on ideological content over academic rigor contributed to stagnant or declining NAEP scores, with 2022 results showing only 33% of 4th graders proficient in reading and 36% in math, down from pre-pandemic levels.

DEI initiatives, such as increased funding for programs like the Magnet Schools Assistance Program, aimed to reduce racial isolation but often prioritized equity metrics over academic outcomes. These policies led schools to focus on social engineering, with resources redirected from core courses to DEI training, exacerbating learning gaps.

Gender ideology policies, including Title IX reinterpretations to protect Marxist driven gender identity, mandated schools to ask young students about nonbinary identities. Critics, including parental groups, argued this indoctrination on gender discussions distracted from academic priorities, with an inevitable decline in literacy rates. The 2021 Civil Rights Data Collection requiring gender identity questions for kindergartners was seen as prioritizing ideology over education, contributing to classroom disruptions and reduced instructional time.

At OCOC we have previously written about Department of Education supported Social Emotional Learning (SEL) as a method by which schools can promote CRT, DEI, gender ideology as well as introducing children to climate change to create the building blocks of a collective consciousness, not requiring parents or the church, that will indoctrinate children to accept global collectivism (Marxism) and a global religion that the New World Order seeks for us.

The Biden administrations Department of Education was systematically brainwashing children for ideological purposes, to be activists for the future that Democrats dreamed of a one world Marxist government where collective rights supplant the inalienable rights of the individual.

Teachers Unions

Critics argued this shift prioritized ideology over academics, leading to concerns about declining test scores and political indoctrination in schools.

Federal grants were quickly advanced to NGOs supporting these ideologies, training NEA and ATF teachers, shifting focus from core education to politically motivated training for teachers.

NGOs

We are only now finding out about some of the grants that were made under the Biden Administration to teaching NGOs. What is being uncovered is astounding.

One such NGO, funded with $8 million by the DoE, is the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP EAC). According to Rufo’s findings, MAP EAC advises 7,000 school districts, pushing the notion that America is a “white supremacist society” and demanding educators “disrupt their whiteness.” Their materials claim that babies exhibit racist tendencies by three months old, a concept rooted in CRT’s obsession with systemic racism. This isn’t academic theory, it’s psychological manipulation, teaching children to see themselves and others through a divisive racial lens from infancy.

These NGOs, backed by federal dollars, operate as ideological enforcers, infiltrating classrooms with extremist agendas. The DoE’s Equity Assistance Centers (EACs), which received millions, host DEI trainings that compare the U.S. education system to a “concentration camp” with “gas chambers everywhere.” Such rhetoric, uncovered by Rufo, isn’t about equity, it’s about demonizing America and indoctrinating students into hating their country. One instructor claimed the system is “designed to harm black and brown children,” pushing for defunding police in schools, further destabilizing learning environments.

What the Future Holds

The original goal of the DoE to centralize and enhance federal oversight over education policy has been replaced under radical left Democrats to now be focused on indoctrination policy. Education in its traditional sense has very little role in the Department of Education. It is now the Department of Neo Marxist Indoctrination.

This taxpayer-funded indoctrination must end. The DoE’s, with its Marxist ideological policies, collaboration with unions, and partnership with these NGOs isn’t education, it is a betrayal of trust, it is anti-American and it is weaponizing schools to radicalize the next generation.

President Trump cannot close the Department of Education by Executive order, it must come from an act of Congress. However, the president can interrupt funding, often with the ideologically focused Federal judges trying to stop him. However, Congress must investigate, permanently defund these programs, and restore education to its core mission: teaching, not brainwashing.

If the Department of Education cannot be reformed, it must be closed. America’s children deserve better than to be pawns in a radical ideological game.

Please call your local Representative, and your Senator and demand that Congress investigate the Department of Education in your town or city and state and stop the indoctrination of our children!

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Sources:

https://nypost.com/2017/12/23/obamas-lax-discipline-policies-made-schools-dangerous/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

https://nces.ed.gov/Surveys/PISA/pisa2009highlights.asp

https://x.com/patrickc/status/1734400215187431587

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/two-decades-of-progress-nearly-gone-national-math-reading-scores-hit-historic-lows/2022/10