Myth of the Week: Does Wittman care about public education?
Based on his actions, no.
Welcome to Myth of the Week, where we address some of the most-repeated myths about Rob Wittman’s work as our VA-01 Congressional representative.
MYTH:
Rob Wittman cares about public education.
REALITY:
Rob Wittman stood by while the Trump Administration took a sledgehammer to public education.
Congressman Rob Wittman presents himself as pro-education. He claims to care deeply about teachers and about student success, and often reminds us that his wife and one of his parents were public school teachers. Besides vague statements about how important it is, what has Wittman actually done for public education?
Public education is essential to America’s economic and democratic future. That’s what Virginia’s own Thomas Jefferson believed, and why he advocated for state-funded, secular education systems. Public education builds and defends the republic by lifting up all Americans and fostering informed and capable communities that expand economic opportunities for all.
Control of public education is split between local, state, and federal governments. Local and state governments exert the most influence over schools in their districts, but what happens in the Department of Education impacts public education everywhere, including VA-01.
Wittman has failed to fight for us in four main areas associated with public education:
Dismantling of the Department of Education
Erosion of civil rights protections and local autonomy in schools
Cuts to the Education Department
Efforts to replace public/secular schools with private/Christian schools
Let’s do our homework on each of these points.
Dismantling of the Department of Education
The Trump Administration’s Project 2025 aims to eliminate the Education Department and “radically reform public education” in order to engineer a system that favors “parental choice” and erodes civil rights. “Parental choice” means redirecting money “from a universal public system towards an exclusionary private one.” The core argument for dismantling the Education Department comes from Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s unfounded and unsupported claim that America’s public schools are failing their students and that students are being “subjected to radical anti-American ideology.”
President Trump can’t close the Department of Education without Congressional approval, but that hasn’t stopped him from exploiting loopholes to change how the Education Department is run. The Trump administration slashed the number of Education Department staff by half – costing taxpayers $28 million – and wrote executive orders pressuring school divisions to end their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies.
In response, Wittman advocated for public education reforms and said that there’s “a more compassionate way to go about this” than dismantling the Education Department. Where are Wittman’s actions to back up those words? If he has “more compassionate” concrete strategies for improving the Education Department, he should have proposed them already.
Wittman also said: “Major policy changes, such as the elimination of a federal department, must be thoroughly examined through the legislative process in Congress.” If Wittman does indeed believe in the power of Congress – which is hard to fathom, based on his actions – the issue still remains: the Trump administration has zero respect for Congressional authority. Wittman hasn’t done anything to stop Trump and Secretary McMahon from upending public schools and slashing their budgets.
Erosion of civil rights protections and local autonomy in schools
During the second Trump Administration, the Education Department rolled back civil rights protections. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has a backlog of over 1,000 racial harassment investigations, the majority involving harassment of Black students. Instead of resolving those cases, the agency has focused more on investigating claims of “discrimination against white students.” The OCR has also been dragging its feet in starting investigations of new racial harassment complaints. Wittman has done nothing and said nothing to determine why this is the case.
The Department of Education, to comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) law, is responsible for ensuring schools meet the needs of disabled students. But during the 2025 government shutdown, the Trump Administration decimated the Education Department’s special education services. (A judge temporarily halted the staffing cuts in October.) Wittman did nothing.
The Education Department targeted five Virginia school districts, threatening to suspend or cut their federal funding because of the school’s transgender bathroom and locker room policies. There were also moves in 2025 to ban trans female athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. Yet again, Wittman did nothing even as sanctions on trans athletes drew widespread criticism. He was called to task for failing to protect trans students:
“Shame on the Republican congresspeople from Virginia who chose fealty to Trump – and their political future – over their constituents. And shame on me for thinking Rep. Rob Wittman, a Westmoreland Republican who ultimately voted for this monstrosity after expressing reservations, would put Virginians over party.” (via Virginia Mercury)
Wittman gets an F for his utter failure to protect students.
Cuts to the Education Department
Although the majority of funding for K-12 schools comes from state and local sources, federal cuts (or the threat of cuts) still had enormous impact on Virginia, especially on low-income students. Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine condemned the Trump Administration for what they claim is the illegal withholding of “$108 million in federal funding earmarked for Virginia’s K-12 schools.” Congress had approved the funding for “teacher training, after-school programs, mental health resources and more.”
The Trump Administration’s objection to transgender student policies in Virginia schools placed “$300 million in federal funding at risk for more than 386,000 students.” Federal funding for public schools cannot be made contingent on policies enacted at the district and state level. Local school policy is not the domain of the federal government, nor subject to its ideological demands. Wittman should know this, but he hasn’t done anything to protect VA-01 from Trump’s overreach.
After the Department of Education terminated VCU’s Teacher Residency Program grant because some aspects of the program (such as teacher diversity and educational equity for underserved students) conflicted with the Trump administration’s anti-DEI policies, Wittman asked Secretary McMahon to let VCU have “the opportunity to rewrite their grant application to ensure it complies with the president’s policy priorities.” Translation: Erase everything DEI-related in the grant to get it reinstated. Essentially, Wittman tried to solve a problem that he helped create. In the end, a federal judge reinstated the funds.
Except for his meek and ineffective intervention with the VCU Teacher Residency Program grant, Wittman has been silent about the Trump Administration withholding funds from VA-01 schools. Clearly he refuses to stand up in any meaningful way to prevent federal plundering of education funds. That’s no way to protect students.
Efforts to replace public/secular schools with private/Christian schools
Wittman notes in his statement on education: “Strengthening America’s education system is important in fostering innovation and promoting economic security.”
Note that he didn’t specify “public” education. Why the omission? The answer lies in Project 2025, which has a stated goal of “instilling Christian values into public schools” — a precursor to the ultimate goal of “a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars.”
Wittman voted for H.R. 1, which included “an ‘unprecedented’ tax credit for a national school voucher program.” He gave the green light to funnel our tax dollars into charter and religious schools, and under-regulated homeschooling — all at the expense of public schools. A dollar diverted to a private institution has multiplier effects in subtracting money from public schools, diminishing opportunities for anyone who cannot pay for education directly.
Private schools without transparency or oversight are opportunities to misuse taxpayer funds designated for public education. There’s evidence that the voucher system can serve as a channel for “nepotism, self-dealing and conflicts of interest among… private schools that likely would have violated state laws had the schools been public.” America is in a tug-of-war between people who want public, secular schools and those who want private, religious ones. At a time when the Trump Administration is downright hostile to public education, why hasn’t Wittman condemned these attacks?
If his goals align with the Trump Administration’s, then he only favors education for certain Americans: white, wealthy, and Christian. Perhaps Wittman thinks that if he keeps us uneducated and ignorant, we won’t understand the harm he’s unleashing.
What else has Wittman done?
Has Wittman done anything good with education initiatives? We can point to a couple of examples, but they come with the massive caveat that certain people benefit at the dire expense of others.
Wittman introduced the bipartisan Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act to help students pay for post-secondary training programs. This became law in July 2025. One potential benefit of this law is that it can help increase the number of long-term care workers. But the law itself privileges those with enough income to stash money in Section 529 accounts — the wealthiest among us benefit the most!
Wittman’s PROPEL Act “would expand access to Career and Technical Education (CTE) by opening up federal Pell Grants for short term vocational or technical training and apprenticeships.” One of the provisions of H. R. 1, for which Wittman voted, allows for the expansion of Pell Grants to job training programs.
But for the little good these programs do, H.R. 1 causes an overwhelming amount of damage. The fact that it contains some reasonable provisions (even though they most benefit the wealthy) cannot outweigh the overall catastrophic consequences of this disastrous bill.
Wittman is destroying the public education that preserves and builds our republic
Public education is vital and works best as a government-led system that provides accessible learning to all. It unifies a diverse population, shapes civic values and behavior, promotes social-emotional learning, trains students for the workforce, helps reduce inequality, and prepares America to be more prosperous and democratic.
But Wittman’s (in)actions show that he doesn’t care if we lose the knowledge, community, and training that enhance our quality of life. His empty words demonstrate how little he cares about preserving public education as part of the bedrock of American society.
What action should Wittman take to protect our public education system? Let us know what you think by posting comments here or on any of our social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, or Reddit.