President Trump proposes to dismantle the federal Department of Education and return education policy to the states. That will certainly be a good move, as the federal DOE has been a key promoter of the woke component of the education establishment, but this action will not of itself restore vitality to the institution of public education in our nation.

Writes Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, “Dismantling the Department of Education won’t make any measurable difference in educational outcomes... If you want real transformation, fight the elected school boards, defang the unions, and create alternatives to the ed schools.”

We must understand that, operating at the state level, there are other promoters of wokeness in education. Every state has several such woke promoters, including (1) its own state DOE, (2) its own state teachers’ union, (3) its own colleges and universities with their own Departments and professors of Education, and (4) its own woke culture shared by its teachers and administrators.

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Each of these four agencies of influence operates in its own ways and means to bring its influence to bear in its own theatre of operation. The central nut that ties them all together in an irresistible juggernaut of influence is the state statute that mandates school boards may hire only state-certified teachers and administrators.

We all favor local control and place our hope in electing right-thinking school board members to take charge of our local schools. While we may understand that people are policy, we fail to realize that the state statutory certification requirement constrains the school board to hire only the woke because only the woke are certified.

Hence, the most well-intentioned new school board member often finds his plans frustrated by the teachers, who are nearly all woke. This is due to the 1-2 punch of (1) the state law that mandates schools hire only “certified” teachers and (2) the 100% woke output of the teachers’ colleges, as noted in Chapter 6 of Stanley K. Ridgley’s Brutal Minds. This situation paralyzes the well-intentioned school board.

That is why even in red counties in red states, the schools remain woke. Andrea Widburg reminded us recently that the worst people in the world are teaching our children.

Now is the time to unwind that central nut that ties these four agencies together.

A well-placed statutory rifle shot that repeals the statutory certification mandate will liberate school boards and empower them to allow the sun of rationality to shine into the darkness of wokism by replacing certified teachers with qualified teachers. Let the school boards hire who they damn well please, whether or not state certified.