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There’s something almost comforting about how predictable American political reinvention has become. Every few years, someone shows up with a promise to fix everything , armed with a PowerPoint, a buzzword (“reset”), and a deeply suspicious hatred of whatever system currently exists. This time, the target is public education — that sprawling, imperfect, stubbornly democratic institution that educates more than 80% of American children and refuses to collapse quietly. Enter Linda McMahon , Education Secretary, former wrestling executive, and now the face of a sweeping attempt to redefine what “education” even means in the United States. Her diagnosis is blunt: public schools are failing. Her treatment plan? Shrink them, sidestep them, starve them, and replace large portions with vouchers, private religious education, homeschooling, and a curriculum heavy on reverence, light on discomfort. If that sounds less like reform and more like a liquidation sale, that’s because it is. The “Har...

The funny thing about dismantling a federal agency is that it’s rarely the dramatic Hollywood demolition that people imagine. There are no detonators. No countdown clocks. No dramatic shots of the Education Department building collapsing into patriotic rubble while a bald eagle screeches approvingly. No, real-world demolition is much more mundane. It’s slow. Bureaucratic. Paperwork-heavy. And if the Trump administration has proven anything, it’s that it will dismantle the Education Department the same way you eat a stale bagel: slowly, painfully, and with far more force than anyone asked for. This week, Trump got closer than ever to fulfilling his long-promised dream of shrinking – flattening, steamrolling, deconstructing, or hey, maybe just misplacing – the Department of Education. And he didn’t do it with legislation, or a decree, or divine intervention from the ghost of Betsy DeVos. No. He did it through six interagency agreements that quietly unlocked a bureaucratic side quest: ou...

  Democratic Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani Declares “Every Child Is Gifted, Especially the Ones Who Can’t Sit Still” By The Brutal Truth Desk | The Onion’s NYC Bureau | October 4, 2025 NEW YORK CITY — In what education experts are calling “a bold leap toward total mediocrity,” Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani announced his plan to phase out New York City’s gifted-and-talented kindergarten program, effectively ending the city’s decades-long experiment in determining which toddlers are secretly Harvard-bound and which ones still eat glue recreationally. Photo: A 4-year-old solemnly handing in their Mensa resignation letter while their mother weeps into a Montessori brochure. The proposal, immediately hailed as “either visionary or deeply stupid depending on your co-op board,” has detonated a political hornet’s nest across the five boroughs. Parents are in chaos. Candidates are in heat. And somewhere in Brooklyn, a preschooler just launched a Super PAC. 🎓 “We Believe A...

Ah, American higher education. That bastion of intellectual rigor, that lighthouse of democracy, that… complicated mess of SAT prep courses, legacy favoritism, and donors with buildings named after them. For over a century, we’ve been trying to answer one question: Who gets into the “best” colleges, and why? Spoiler: The answer has never been “the most deserving student.” And now, President Trump has decided it’s time to “fix” that. Yes, because if there’s anyone who deeply understands the struggles of working-class kids fighting for equal access to education, it’s a billionaire real estate heir. Trump’s newest executive order forces universities to hand over the holy trinity of applicant data: race, test scores, and GPAs. Officially, it’s to stop “racial proxies” in admissions. Unofficially? It’s to hand the feds a nice, color-coded spreadsheet they can use to make life miserable for any school that dares to let diversity creep back in through the side door. Colleges, already scra...

When the Israeli Education Ministry told schools to shut their doors due to Iran lobbing ballistic missiles like it’s Purim and every Israeli city is a piñata , most schools did the obvious: they closed. You know—because missiles . But not 80 Haredi schools. No, they had a higher calling: Disobey the state, stay open, and study Torah like Iron Dome who? And honestly, the story that unfolded is such a textbook case of religious arrogance, bureaucratic jellyfish-spinelessness, and “God will save us from physics,” it reads like satire—if satire came with missile craters. Let’s break it down, shall we? Chapter 1: God Forbid We Miss a Day of Talmud The IDF Home Front Command—those annoying secular party-poopers who know stuff about missile trajectories and civilian safety—said, “Please, don’t die. Stay home. Close schools. Don’t get exploded.” Reasonable enough. But then came 80 Haredi boys' schools— Talmud Torahs and yeshivot ketanot —located in such obvious missile magnets as ...

Ah yes, the classic government response to systemic crisis: slap a band-aid on a broken bone, call it “innovative,” and pray no one notices the limb is still dangling off. This week’s education reform masterstroke comes courtesy of Nova Scotia, where the powers-that-be have decided that the teacher shortage is best solved not by fixing why teachers leave—but by flinging more barely-baked ones at the chalkboard as quickly as humanly (or legally) possible. Cue the educational confetti cannon: Saint Mary’s University (SMU) is cooking up not one, but two new education degrees. Add in a buffet of "expedited" programs from Acadia, MSVU, St. FX, and Université Sainte-Anne, and voilà— problem solved , right? Teachers for all! Except, well... not really. Let’s break this down, shall we? SMU's Grand Contribution: Four-Year Degrees With a Side of Bureaucracy SMU is reportedly preparing a four-year bachelor of arts in education and a bachelor of science in education . You kno...