They Are Dismantling Public Education And Declaring Teaching “Not A Profession”
A veteran teacher, principal, and professor lays out the real agenda behind Trump’s assault on America’s educators
By Dr. John Petrone
I taught U.S. History, World History, Government, and Economics in high school classrooms for several years. I spent a decade as a high school principal responsible for safety, instruction, and the futures of hundreds of students whose lives unfolded inside that building. Now, as an associate professor who prepares the next generation of school leaders, I’m watching something unfold in real time that I never imagined seeing in this country.
The federal government is moving to dismantle the Department of Education while simultaneously announcing that teaching and educational leadership no longer qualify as “professional” degrees.
This isn’t reform. It’s demolition — carried out with a smile, a slogan, and a knife behind the back.
And I know exactly what it means because I’ve lived every level of this profession.
Dismantling the Department of Education: What It Really Means
People hear “close the Department of Education” and assume it’s some bureaucratic reshuffling. It’s not. It’s the removal of the only federal agency with actual legal teeth to protect students and enforce equity.
It’s the agency that enforces civil rights when districts fail students with disabilities, when discrimination is ignored, when harassment is tolerated, when Title I funds are mishandled, when Pell Grant rules are violated, and when states try to creatively dodge federal protections.
Dismantling that agency is not streamlining. It’s burying accountability so deep across multiple departments that families and educators hit a maze instead of a guardrail. It’s ideological vandalism dressed up as “efficiency.”
And it sends a message: public education should have no federal oversight, no civil-rights enforcement, and no unified system that protects students from states that choose to look the other way.
Declaring Teachers “Not Professionals”
The second blow came wrapped in bureaucracy. New federal degree classifications quietly removed education, counseling, and social work from the list of “professional” programs.
Law? Still professional.
Medicine? Still professional.
Theology? Still professional.
Teaching? Not anymore.
The federal government is now treating those who prepare America’s children as something below professional status — with lower borrowing power, lower support, and lower prestige. It’s financial gatekeeping designed to shrink the pipeline and push working-class and first-generation students out of the field entirely.
I’ve taught the people who will feel this the hardest: paraprofessionals trying to earn a degree, assistant principals raising families while finishing their licensure, and first-generation college students who want to serve their own communities. These individuals aren’t disposable. They’re the future of public education.
Stripping their professional status is a deliberate insult — and a deliberate deterrent.
What I’ve Seen Across My Career
As a classroom teacher, I stood in front of students who deserved everything their country promised them: a free, high-quality public education delivered by professionals who knew what they were doing.
As a principal, I carried responsibilities that would break many people — threat assessments, crisis management, due process hearings, instructional leadership, and the safety of every single person in the building.
As a professor, I now prepare leaders who still believe in this work despite the political assault being waged against them. They step forward anyway, even when the federal government signals that their degrees are not worthy of professional recognition.
Across all of it, one truth holds: education is a profession that demands intellect, ethics, courage, and stamina. The attempt to declassify teaching as “non-professional” is nothing short of an attempt to downgrade the entire system.
The Pattern Is Impossible To Ignore
This is not a disconnected set of decisions. It’s a coordinated, well-funded strategy.
You attack teachers as “indoctrinators.”
You ban books and censor history.
You push loyalty tests in schools.
You shift public dollars to private vouchers.
You dismantle the federal department responsible for equity and accountability.
Then you strip the professional status from the very degrees that prepare teachers and leaders.
This is how you weaken a democratic institution without ever admitting that’s your goal. It’s how you replace a profession with a labor pool. It’s how you make room for political control and ideological schooling.
This is the authoritarian playbook applied to education — and it’s happening in the open.
How We Fight Back
If you care about the future of public education — whether you’re a teacher, principal, professor, veteran, or citizen who believes in democratic institutions — here is how we push back.
Pressure Congress to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education
Demand that every Member of Congress publicly confirm whether they support or oppose closing the Department. No slogans. No hedging. A recorded position.Force public hearings on the professional-degree attack
Removing education from the ranks of professional programs is a direct strike on the workforce. Oversight hearings should be mandatory, televised, and relentless.Organize aggressively at the state level
States can create loan forgiveness for educators, raise salaries, and protect due process. But they won’t unless they feel sustained pressure.Tell communities what is really happening
Speak plainly. Explain how dismantling the Department of Education and declassifying teaching as a profession will lower quality, shrink the pipeline, and erode civil-rights protections.Mentor the next generation and keep them in the fight
Support the para trying to finish a degree, the intern on the edge of burnout, and the aspiring principal digging through tuition bills. They need professional elders now more than ever.Vote as if the future of public education depends on it — because it absolutely does
School boards, legislatures, governors, and federal officials all have the power to either defend or dismantle public education. Elections decide which path we take.
The Stakes Could Not Be Higher
I’ve spent my life serving public education from every angle — teacher, principal, professor. And I’ve never seen an attack this direct, this coordinated, or this dishonest.
This is not about improving schools. It is about weakening them. It is about shrinking the profession. It is about removing the safeguards that protect students, educators, and democracy itself.
We either meet this moment with clarity and resolve, or we watch a cornerstone of the American republic crumble in slow motion.
They also decided that nursing was not a profession. An American’s future could depend on the education they receive from teachers and their life could depend on the care they receive from their nurse. I believe the reason these professions are being declassified as “professions” is because they are primarily women’s professions. It’s all part of the devaluation of women in the MAGA world.
Don’t accept it. I’m an older woman who fought to be treated as an equal in my time. Do whatever necessary to tear down this regime and restore the country we gave you before MAGA.
The regime in Washington is clearly engaged in a campaign to undermine and destroy some professions in an effort to replace them with a new script and rewritten history, serving attempts to replace truth with fiction. This is tantamount to the disgusting experiment of turning on a burner under a pot full of frogs in water. At what will we all understand that we’re actually being boiled alive while horrific behavior is being normalized.
Is the goal to dummy everyone down and “retrain” (brainwash) us into believing the lies the regime is pushing?
Is the goal to replace teachers, therapists, nurses and other professionals with A.I.?
I think it’s both and more - none of it serving our country or the world. When I think of the amazing teachers I was fortunate to have model the importance of learning and who taught me how to think - not what to think, I am filled with gratitude.
Every student is absolutely entitled to the same opportunity - to learn from great PROFESSIONAL teachers. No one should devalue teachers and their importance.