The War on Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy cutting by the numbers: President Donald Trump and chief government auditor Elon Musk have set out to cut large chunks of the federal civilian workforce. So how are they doing?
Well, so far approximately 280 workers in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) roles have been axed. Some 9,000 employees have been affected by the dismantling of their agencies. About 75,000 workers have voluntarily signed up for the federal worker buyouts offered—so about 3 percent of the civilian workforce—per a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management.
The unions that represent federal workers have warned would-be quitters that the buyout offers might not be trustworthy and have also started filing lawsuits against the administration—somewhat odd behavior given that the buyouts provide pay through September and the alternative might just be getting axed altogether. (U.S. District Judge George O’Toole ruled yesterday that the unions did not have standing to bring the suit, so the buyouts resumed following the lifting of the pause.)
Musk reports that $1 billion worth of Education Department contracts have been canceled, including $101 million worth of DEI-related grants. The Institute of Education Sciences, which conducts research on things like student achievement and school safety, has been obliterated. Sen. Patty Murray (D–Wash.), a former preschool teacher, said Musk was “taking a wrecking ball to high-quality research and basic data we need to improve our public schools. Cutting off these investments after the contract has already been inked is the definition of wasteful.”
Three things come to mind amid the freakout. One: Spending $101 million dollars on DEI grants strikes me as the truly wasteful thing. Do American taxpayers actually want that? Did we ever vote on that? Did those grants make our school system better?
Two: The federal government has historically been quite bad at tracking data that Americans need access to. “At the end of the [2020-2021] school year, there was no consistent source with national data on how schools had operated during the school year,” wrote economist and researcher Emily Oster back in 2022. “Many district were missing information completely about whether they were virtual, in person or hybrid; some had limited information for only part of the year. The data that was there was missing or inconsistent.” Oster and her team decided to compile it themselves, as did the folks at data firm Burbio, for good reason: “The consequences of school closures will likely be felt for years, probably decades,” wrote Oster. “If we want to understand the consequences of these disruptions, we need systematic information on where they occurred.”
Third: Just because the data has been tracked doesn’t mean school districts actually course correct. Consider the literacy crisis: on-grade-level reading has been in steep decline in the country—but it’s gotten so bad in part because it’s taken parents and teachers a while to wise up to issues with the “balanced literacy” curriculum model vs. phonics-based instruction. A whole generation of children has been harmed by this, and
Article from Reason.com
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