Laura Meckler:
Well, I just think it’s part of a larger campaign to really make big changes in this country around education.
Now, in some ways, it’s at odds with it, because this is now a big new federal role in shaping school choice, where there was — never been a federal role before. And at the same time, you have them saying, well, we want to turn education back to the states, we want to diminish the Department of Education.
Now, the tax credit will be administered by the Treasury Department, but, still, I do think there is something of a contradiction here. In any case, these layoffs are allowed to go forward, which means that the Education Department will be about half of its former size, which is making a substantial difference in their ability to run the student loan program, to deal with the case backlogs at the Office for Civil Rights and to conduct education research, all of which have been cut back severely.
