The Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing the Department of Education to move forward with major layoffs is more than disappointing — it’s dangerous.
As an educator and the founder of Teaching for the Culture, I have spent years witnessing the dismantling of our educational system. The execution to the Project 2025 plan feels like they’re taking a sledgehammer to the whole foundation.
We’re talking about gutting the very people who help hold our schools together. Layoffs may look like numbers on paper to those making these decisions, but to us these are lifelines being cut.
Let me be clear:
They didn’t ask to learn in overcrowded classrooms with broken air conditioning, leaky ceilings, and walls lined with mold. They didn’t ask for outdated textbooks, slow computers, or systems that crash mid-lesson. They didn’t ask for exhausted teachers juggling too much with too little, or leadership that changes every year like a revolving door. They didn’t ask to be born into a system that budgets for prisons before it budgets for their potential. And now, they’re being told AGAIN that they’re not worth the investment.
To make matters worse, it was recently revealed that the Trump administration withheld $6.8 billion in education funding — funding that could have been used to stabilize jobs, support classrooms, and support the programs that rely on this funding. Now, 24 states have filed lawsuits to demand that this money be released. The fact that states have to sue the federal government for the basic resources to educate our children is a shameful reflection of where we are in this country.
But the warning signs don’t stop there.
On Monday, Dr. Peggy Carr, the former head of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), broke her silence after being abruptly fired by the Trump administration in February. She issued a public statement declaring that the NCES — a nonpartisan agency responsible for providing critical data on the state of American education can no longer fulfill its legal duties under current conditions. Let that sink in: The agency responsible for telling the truth about how our schools are doing is now struggling to even function.
You can read her full message here:
👉🏾 A Message from Dr. Peggy Carr – July 14, 2025 (PDF)
And while all this chaos unfolds, children are still expected to show up, stay quiet, and perform like everything’s fine. It’s disrespectful. It’s dishonest. And it’s by design.
Enough is enough.
We can’t build anything meaningful on a system this unstable. You don’t freeze funding, cut jobs, and silence experts, then expect schools to function like nothing’s wrong. These layoffs won’t just cause disruption. They will deepen the chaos. They’ll hit students with the highest needs first and push already-exhausted educators past their limit.
At Teaching for the Culture ®, we’ve never been afraid to tell the truth. We will continue to speak up, push back, and stand in the gap for our children. This moment calls for courage. It calls for accountability. It calls for action.
We see what’s happening. And we’re not backing down.
Bianca Goolsby, MBA is a digital strategist and activist who partners with mission-driven organizations to increase their impact through innovative and effective online communications. She also empowers and equips families to curate safe social spaces for themselves and their children.