by Nathaniel Cline, Virginia Mercury

While Virginia leaders tout improvements in public education, they are still working to address achievement gaps, facility improvements and the diverse needs of students and educators.

However, recommendations in Project 2025 — a conservative plan for how the country should operate if a Republican wins the White House — if implemented, could derail those efforts. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has for years made recommendations found in the Project, and some were used in former President Donald Trump’s first term. 

The project includes conservative policy recommendations in various government areas, including defense, health and human services, and education. Some state leaders are concerned about the project’s proposed impact on school funding and resources. In contrast, others, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin, say the focus should be on what the presidential campaigns are proposing instead of Project 2025, which the governor characterized as a routine transition plan. 

“At the end of the day, there are lots of transition plans that are written, and they’ve been written for decades,” said Youngkin during an Aug. 15 meeting with reporters. “I do believe that what would really benefit Virginians and Americans is if the media would actually report on what the candidates are talking about, what they will do, or candidates that have yet to tell anybody what they’re going to do, as opposed to supposing what they might do from some transition plan that’s been written for presidents, literally since Ronald Reagan.”

The plan’s stance on public education 

Jonathan Butcher, co-author of the education plan and senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said nearly everything found in Project 2025 came from foundation research or is something it has advocated for years. 

The project’s education plan suggests eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, which is responsible for serving students, executing plans by the president and Congress, and advocating for parental choice in education and for civil rights.

Butcher said the agency “failed” to address its goals of closing the achievement gap and improving the outcomes of children from low-income areas, while the federal government is spending billions on schools, compared to 50 years ago. He also said reading and math scores have reached historic lows.

The authors of the plan also propose advancing school choice options, eliminating student loan forgiveness programs, eliminating a childcare program that focuses on children from low-income families, and rolling back regulations to protect transgender students.

The education chapter states: “When power is exercised, it should empower students and families, not government. In our pluralistic society, families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments that best fit their needs.”

The proposal recommends that the next president issue a series of executive orders requiring an unspecified group report on the “negative” influence of action civics on students’ understanding of history and civics and their disposition toward the United States. The report would also include an accounting of how federal programs and grants spread critical race theory and ideology centered on gender and diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

Democratic legislators leading the General Assembly’s education committees have expressed concern about the proposed ideas. Several Republican legislators did not return The Mercury’s requests for comment on how Project 2025 could impact education in the state, or said that they weren’t well versed in the material. 

In Virginia, the House and Senate are controlled by Democrats who have prioritized funding teacher pay increases, and dedicating additional funds for disadvantaged students, higher education and providing more mental health resources.

Democrats have dismissed Republican legislative efforts to ban certain books and allow parents to use state funding to cover the costs of educational opportunities outside of the public school system. But the two parties have worked together to improve special education and address child care needs. 

“What we’re seeing in Project 2025 is really steering away from those critical core issues that we need to focus on in education, particularly around giving our students the skills that they need to succeed in a very complex world not just in the academic sense, but also socially and culturally,” said Senate Education and Health Committee Chair Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond. 

In another section of Project 2025, the authors recommend eliminating the Head Start program, which has fostered educational and social development for children under 5 years of age across the country since 1965. In 2021, the Heritage Foundation wrote that the program negatively affected children and that the federal government should sunset it in 2023. Virginia currently offers 52 Head Start and Early Head Start programs across four regions statewide, according to the Virginia Head Start Association. 

Butcher said Project 2025 and the foundation have also called for an end to the federal student lending program, stating that it’s not “Washington’s job to be the bank for every college student.” Instead, the plan calls for consolidating student loans, moving them to the U.S. Department of Treasury and opening an opportunity for private lenders to offer loans to students.

House Education Committee Chair Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, said the plan is “dangerous for business” and could negatively affect early education, increase college costs, and deprive disadvantaged students of resources.

“We’ve made record investments in public education, and just this year, we put an extra half billion dollars into early childhood slots because businesses were saying ‘Our workers need this,’” Rasoul said. “This is sadly a poorly concocted right-wing agenda to just prey on people, and to me, it clearly would be taking Virginia backward, and a lot of the good work that we’ve done in a bipartisan way would be unraveled.”

Hashmi said Republican members at the state and federal levels have long pushed ideas to dismantle the Department of Education and return control to the localities, which she said has likely adversely affected public education funding.

“While a lot of these ideas are not necessarily new, they are really, really concerning in the ways in which Project 2025 spells out with great clarity the efforts to, in essence, destroy public education in the country.”

She said the plan also attacks the teaching of American History in schools, and protections for transgender and nonbinary children.

The plan lists several principles for safeguarding parental, student, and civil rights. The authors stated that “enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”

The authors added that federal officials should protect educators and students in jurisdictions under federal control from “racial discrimination by reinforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and prohibiting compelled speech.”

Butcher said while the education plan has no curricular recommendations based on gender, Project 2025 does follow the foundation’s The Given Name Act, which states that “no public education employee or contractor shall use a name to address a student other than the name listed on a student’s birth certificate, or derivatives thereof, without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians.”

In higher education, Hashmi said there is also a growing argument from Republicans that higher learning is not essential and students should be diverted to trade programs instead. While workers are needed across the economic sector, she said, the proposed measure should not be implemented at the expense of higher education.

Governor keeps Project 2025 author on GMU Board of Visitors

Lindsey Burke, appointed by Youngkin to a four-year term on the Board of Visitors at George Mason University, is one of the authors of Project 2025 and director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation. 

Some state leaders have criticized her role in the plan. Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, urged the governor in an Aug. 2 letter to remove Burke from her seat on the board, writing that “her extreme views are alarming and contradicts the commonwealth’s efforts.”

Youngkin responded by writing that the commonwealth is “very fortunate” to have Burke on the board and said he has no intention of removing her. He said Burke was among his early higher education appointees because of her extensive preschool, K-12 and higher education policy background.

“Removing her would not only do a tremendous disservice to George Mason University, but it would also undermine the spirit of Virginians from all walks of life coming together to improve their community and their commonwealth,” Youngkin wrote.

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