Pressley Provides a History Lesson, Speaks to Role of Public Education in Democracy

Video (YouTube)

WASHINGTON – As Donald Trump and Elon Musk threaten to disrupt and dismantle the essential work of the U.S. Department of Education, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) delivered a powerful floor speech to affirm the role of public education in American democracy. 

In her remarks, Congresswoman Pressley outlined the essential federal role in public education in America and highlighted how the U.S. Department of Education has been critical to implementing civil rights legislation, educating students with disabilities, and expanding access to education for all children.

Her remarks, as prepared for delivery, are available below and the full video is available here.

Transcript: As Trump and Musk Lock Members out of Department of Education, Pressley Uplifts Essential Federal Role in Education
February 6, 2025
U.S. House of Representatives
*As prepared for deliver*

Good morning and happy Black History Month.

Black history is American history. So I rise today to give a history lesson. I think at moments of inflection for our country, history provides critical contextualizing. 

In order to go forward, we need to look back, especially when you have a White House that is working overtime, as laid out on their playbook, Project 2025, to ban our history and to dismantle our Department of Education. So let’s start at the beginning. 

Why did we establish a federal Department of Education? In the early days of this nation, education was left entirely to the states, and schools were run by a patchwork of religious schools and one room schoolhouses, leaving many children excluded based on their race, gender or poverty. 

Now, there’s much I disagree with our Founding Fathers on, but they knew that preserving democracy required an educated population, one that could participate in civic issues, understand social and political issues, vote, and resist tyrants. 

So in the late 1700s and early 1800s, the concept of free public education began to take hold, but not for everyone.

Enslavement ruled the day. Black and Native American families faced state-sponsored violence and systemic exclusion from education. 

In the 1830s, it was the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a legislator named Horace Mann that established the common school movement pushing to extend free public education to poor and middle class children. 

Yet Black children across the nation were still barred from learning and faced severe punishment and abuse, if they tried. 

By the 1870s, Reconstruction in the south gave way to Jim Crow laws that segregated public spaces, including and explicitly, our schools. 

Additionally, child labor exploitation was rampant. Education for girls lagged far behind, and children with disabilities were far too often institutionalized and not educated at all.

A little more than 100 years later, our Department of Education in its modern day form, was championed by none other than the late great President James Earl Carter, may he rest in peace and power. 

He knew that fully implementing the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and fighting Jim Crow would require a well-resourced federal role in education. This agency had existed for over a century in many iterations, but Carter explicitly understood that at the core of education was a vision of opportunity and access for every child in America.

He and Congress resourced the department accordingly, and this department was tasked with implementing core tenants of the Civil Rights Act and the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. 

Federal funding through the Department of Education became integral to addressing disparities, hiring and training teachers, to building accessible school facilities, enforcing civil rights protections, to heating and powering those buildings and to, finally, to live up to our ideals of education as a pathway to opportunity in America. 

Madam Speaker, today that progress is under attack. 

The Trump Administration’s attacks on education, are a fundamental attack on democracy and on every child who calls this country home. 

Let’s call it what it is, resegregation, a full scale attack on civil rights.

Dictating what can be taught. Shameful. Tearing books off the shelves of school libraries, and using the bully pulpit to attack our kids and taunt their race, gender, or who they love is horrific.

The work of diversity, equity and inclusion is the work of the American Dream—the dream that tells every child they can grow up to be whoever they want.

We all know the transformative power of a dedicated teacher.

We’ve seen how a classroom can be a safe harbor in a storm.

This is the work of democracy. Raising up our babies, teaching them our history, empowering them with critical thinking skills, and entrusting them with the education they need to build a more just and compassionate nation.

Education is everything. It is not a privilege or a nice-to-have, it is a fundamental right for every person in America.

I stand firmly on the side of our public school babies, and our educators and families, today and always.

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