Willard E. Goslin, a tall, unassuming white man with the appearance of a made-for-TV principal, began his life and teaching career in rural Missouri in the early part of the 20th century. He earned a reputation as a progressive educator who championed the rights of African American children, supported school integration, and advocated sex education. After working as a classroom teacher and school principal, Goslin went on to become an award-winning public school superintendent in Webster Groves, Mo., and Minneapolis.
In 1948, he moved on to lead the public schools in Pasadena, Calif. His tenure there, however, lasted less than three years. In 1949, a group of disgruntled parents, many of them stay-at-home moms, demanded a thorough “ideological investigation” of the entire school system, accusing Goslin of participating in a campaign to undermine their way of life. Goslin’s fate was the result of a movement of conservative women in the 1950s in Southern California to force progressive educators and school leaders to resign, block policies, and ban books they believed were subversive to their way of life, contributing to divisiveness that would continue to surface in coming decades and has now reached a fever pitch. The massive resistance to Brown v. Board of Education galvanized conservative housewives and powerful rich businessmen who vehemently opposed America’s push for school integration and progressive educational reforms—what we now refer to as diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. Fueled by white rage, they channeled their anger into a well-organized movement, launching coordinated attacks on public education from multiple fronts through Republican and liberal women’s groups.
By 1955, just a year after the landmark Brown ruling declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, Milton Friedman, one of the most famous economists of the 20th century, wrote an essay arguing that the government should not fund public education, and if it did, it should be through vouchers. Friedman, known as the father of the school choice movement, would later call for the abolishment of the U.S. Department of Education. He told his devoted followers that discrimination is not racist, it’s just a matter of one’s “taste.”
By the 1980s, Friedman had become an economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan, whose education agenda included dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and largely defunding public education. Reagan was not alone; every president after him introduced flawed educational policies that were heavily promoted yet drastically underdelivered, all to the detriment of Black and brown students (e.g., America 2000, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top). During Donald Trump’s presidency, conservative educational reforms were zealously championed, spurring the rise of new women’s groups like Moms for Liberty, which continue to push forward anti-civil rights education policies through initiatives like Project 2025. Despite this, Trump has recently tried to distance himself from the document as recently as the Sept. 10 debate.
Thus, we are not witnessing the beginning of a MAGA conservative movement to gut public education; Project 2025 is the culmination. The massive resistance to school integration resulted in the foundation of Project 2025’s education agenda. The reforms proposed by the architects of Project 2025 are not new; they rinse and repeat reform measures, relics of a segregated America, like the coded language of school choice, which really means de facto racial segregation, using public money to fund private schools through vouchers, eliminating the Head Start program and Title I funding for low-income students, removing federal protections for LGBTQ+ students, and reducing funding for students with disabilities. Project 2025 is an attack on every learner who is not white, straight, cisgender, nondisabled, wealthy, Christian, or English-speaking.
As you read the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise (Project 2025), the section on education reads like an updated remix of Reagan’s educational policies, beginning with the same language and conservative heroes of the past. The authors write, “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated. … Elementary and secondary education policy should follow the path outlined by Friedman in 1955, wherein education is publicly funded but education decisions are made by families.” These so-called egalitarian efforts of school choice are made possible by Friedman’s idea of taste.
Make no mistake, though far from novel, the reforms proposed in Project 2025 will have devastating consequences for all of America’s children by dismantling public education as we know it. The education of America’s children and the future of our democracy are at stake in the upcoming elections. However, let’s be clear, no matter who is the president of the United States of America, the movement to destroy public education is a well-oiled machine that has proved to outlast any presidency.
The essay was inspired by an exchange on X with Philadelphia classroom teacher Dana Carter.
