Wittman Truth Files #9: Education
As "the son and the husband of …public school teacher[s]," why did Rob Wittman vote to hollow out our schools?
Welcome back to WTF: the Wittman Truth Files. Over eight weeks we’ve opened the files on affordability, jobs and the economy, healthcare, earned benefits, immigration, crime and public safety, foreign policy, and elections and democracy. The whole series lives on the WTF page.
This week, in our ninth and (probably) final file, we examine Wittman’s record the issue that shapes every child in VA-01: education.
On his House website, Rob Wittman introduces himself as “the son and the husband of a public school teacher,” because he wants to project the idea of public service as a family commitment. He talks up STEM. He champions career and technical education. He says teachers are “invaluable.”
So here’s a fair question a constituent could ask: when the schools that made him were put on the chopping block, what did Rob Wittman actually do?
The answer is a familiar WTF pattern: warm words for the teachers in his family, and a voting record that diminishes the schools in your neighborhood.
Claimed to oppose dismantling the Department of Education, then voted to kill it
On March 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing his Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, to “facilitate the closure” of the Department of Education. McMahon has been candid that shrinking the agency down to nothing is, in her phrase, the “final mission.” This is the department that sends states the money for Title I (high-poverty schools), Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Pell Grants, and teacher preparation. The administration has cut the department’s staff by roughly half.
By November 2025, the administration stopped waiting on Congress, and proceeded to announce plans to shunt more than 50 programs and about $30 billion of Education’s annual funding out to the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury. The offices that oversee special education and civil rights enforcement were hit hardest by the layoffs. In July 2026, a House committee advanced a ten-bill package to make the fracturing of the Education Department permanent.
Wittman questioned Trump’s cuts to research funding at VCU, which was a good sign. But words mean nothing without actions to back them up. Wittman filed no bill to shield Education’s funding, and stayed silent as $30 billion in programs were shipped off to agencies with no experience running them. What he did do, in May 2025, was vote yes on the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (which he likes to refer to as the “Working Families Tax Cut Act” but is properly known as H. R. 1), the centerpiece of the very agenda by which he claims to be troubled.
Say one thing, vote the other, and let the silence do the rest. WTF, Rob?
VA-01 loses education funding while Wittman is hiding
About one in nine dollars in a Virginia public school comes from the federal government, and the districts that most rely on federal funding are the small, rural divisions of the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula – the counties in Wittman’s district where a graduating class can be a few dozen kids.
Take the Rural Education Achievement Program, for which 30 rural Virginia school divisions qualify. Nationally it totals only $215 million, but rural experts say those dollars stretch far enough to pay for the aides who help struggling students make it to graduation. But the Trump administration has fired the Education Department statisticians who determine which schools qualify for the money. That cut means the whole program is under threat, and Virginia’s rural schools probably won’t get the funding they need to support students.
Then there’s special education. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the federal government promised to cover 40 percent of the extra cost of educating students with disabilities. It has never come close, and now the office overseeing that money is being dismantled. When those federal dollars slip, a county has only two options: cut something else your kids use, or raise your local property taxes to backfill the funding gap. That means the cost of special education is landing on VA-01 residents while Rob Wittman talks about “returning education to the states.” Translation: you pay for it. It’s deliberately misleading doublespeak.
College and trade school just got more expensive, with Wittman’s vote
Wittman defended his H. R. 1 vote by saying the bill would “invest in rural schools.” Read the fine print on what it actually did to the families paying for what comes after high school:
Tightened Pell Grant eligibility
Eliminated Grad PLUS loans
Capped how much students can borrow
Made forgiven student debt taxable starting at the end of 2025
Independent analyses describe the result plainly: a less borrower-friendly, less generous federal aid system. While Wittman claims the bill “invests” in education, the facts are clear: first-generation students, along with desperately-needed nurses and teachers across VA-01, are getting less help than before.
To be fair, the same bill did one constructive thing: it expanded Pell to short-term workforce and credential programs. That is a real positive for many. But celebrating opening a new door for trade-school students while quietly closing the loan window for everyone else is not an “investment” or a vote that helps the majority of VA-01.
Yes for parents’ rights; no for funding schools
Here is where Wittman is loudest. In March 2023 he voted yes on the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which passed the House 213 to 208. Its principles are hard to argue with: parents should know what is taught, see the school budget, and be told about violence at school. Reasonable. Popular. An easy vote for the cameras.
But look at the right to keep your child safe, and then look at what Wittman did when safety cost something. In 2022 Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which carried the largest school-safety investment in decades: $200 million for the STOP School Violence program, another $100 million through the COPS office, and hundreds of millions for school mental health. Wittman voted no. Why? Because it also regulated guns, and Wittman has a 92% rating from the NRA. He was in favor of parents knowing about violence at school. He was against the money to prevent that violence. (We covered this pattern in the crime and public safety file.)
And notice what is missing entirely. The Parents Bill of Rights passed the House and died in the Senate; it was a message, not a law. Meanwhile, the factors that actually determine whether a child in VA-01 has a well-qualified instructor went unaddressed. Virginia teachers earn about $5,900 below the national average and only 68 cents for every dollar compared to similarly educated professionals; this is the third-worst pay gap in the country. And our Commonwealth opened the school year with more than 3,200 unfilled teaching jobs, with special education among the most understaffed areas. On the messaging bill, Wittman showed up. On the paycheck and the staffing crisis, he was nowhere to be found.
We give Wittman due credit on one front: his Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act, which lets families use 529 savings for job training and credentials, and which has drawn more than 175 cosponsors from both parties. Notably, this does not help the majority of Virginians; use of a 529 plan requires discretionary income that can be saved, and the affordability crisis makes that impossible for most. (Wittman also crows about being the lead sponsor of the PROPEL Act to open Pell to short-term training, and he supported the 2018 Perkins V reauthorization that others authored. His PROPEL Act never passed, and the 2018 Perkins V law he backed was written by others.)
See the pattern for what it is: Rob Wittman shows up for the employer-facing pipeline and the culture-war floor speech. He bails on the money that keeps the lights on in the schoolhouse: the special-education funding, the rural grants, the teacher paychecks, the safety dollars. The son of a teacher has plenty to say about workforce credentials.
Ask him about the department that funds his mother’s old classroom, and all you get is a press quote and a yes vote for the people tearing it down.
What Wittman costs VA-01
Strip away the “son of a teacher” framing and the record is consistent: Rob Wittman is fluent on the parts of education that poll well or please donors, and absent on the parts that cost money and protect kids. Here is what that costs you:
If you’re a rural parent in the Northern Neck or Middle Peninsula, your school division leans on federal dollars that are now scattered across agencies that have never run them, while the staff who decide if your schools even qualify are being fired.
If your child has an IEP, the office that safeguards special-education funding is being dismantled, and when that money slips, your county cuts services or raises your taxes to cover its legal obligations.
If you’ve got a kid headed to college or a career, the law Wittman voted for tightened Pell grant eligibility, killed a loan program, and taxed forgiven debt, making the bill bigger for most families in the district.
If you’re a teacher, or married to one like Wittman is, he voted for the messaging bill and declined to fight for your paycheck, in a state with the third-worst teacher pay gap in America.
If you believe parents’ rights means safe schools, ask why he voted against the biggest school-safety funding in a generation.
The next time Rob Wittman introduces himself as the son and husband of public school teachers, ask him a simple question: which of his votes would those teachers thank him for? Ask him why he opposed dismantling the Department of Education in a press quote but voted for the agenda to destroy it. Ask him why the money for special education, rural schools, and teacher pay in VA-01 never seems to make his priority list. You can call his Glen Allen, Yorktown, or DC office, show up at his mobile office hours, and remind him that in VA-01, the parents and the teachers are paying attention.
With that, the ninth file closes, and so do the Wittman Truth Files…for now. Nine issues, one consistent finding: Rob Wittman has mastered the language of the moderate and the voting record of MAGA. Share the files, and keep the focus on what Wittman does more than what he says. He’s hurting VA-01, and we can’t afford Rob Wittman.
The Wittman Truth Files (WTF) is a weekly series profiling the gap between Rep. Rob Wittman’s public claims and his voting record.
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