Will the Department of Education force schools to teach patriotism and make school prayer compulsory for students under the new Trump administration? Billie Lee, a video podcaster and self-described “comedian,” claimed that President-elect Donald Trump announced precisely that.
“Trump announced his Department of Education plan that will require forcing schools to teach patriotism (White Christian Nationalism) and require praying in school,” she posted to Instagram and TikTok on Wednesday. “Teachers who do not obey with these new requirements will be fired. Schools that do not comply will lose all federal funding. This is Project 2025.”
Lee captioned the video on her Instagram account, which has more than 100,000 followers, “We warned y’all everyday!” Lee also pinned another Instagram user’s comment on her post: “This is true and verifiable,” the user claimed.
This claim is not true. Trump has not publicly commented on education policy since becoming president-elect. While he did make campaign statements supporting “patriotic education,” he made no pledge to require specific curricula, and the president has no power to fire teachers.
As the Trump campaign wrote in its “Ten Principles For Great Schools Leading To Great Jobs,” published in September 2023:
Just as he did during his first term, President Trump will fight for patriotic education in America’s schools. Notwithstanding that America’s founding principles of liberty and equality have successfully guided the United States throughout the most difficult periods in its history—including the long struggle to abolish slavery, our victories over fascism and communism, the advancement of civil rights for all, and the expansion of material prosperity to more people of every background in a remarkably short period of time—decades of poor scholarship have vilified our Founders and the principles that they championed and have taught many of our young people to hate their own country.
In Trump’s “Plan to Save American Education and Give Power Back to Parents,” published by his campaign in July, he urged for public education to reorient toward “high quality, pro-American education.”
In both documents, the campaign vowed to create a “credentialing body” to “certify teachers who embrace patriotic values.” In the July memo Trump pledged, “We will create a new credentialing body that will be the Gold Standard, anywhere in the world, to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values, support our way of life, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but very simply to educate them.”
However, when it comes to educational credentialing programs, the federal government is not in the driver’s seat. “Virtually all teacher preparation and certification rules are a matter of state policy,” said Andy Smarick, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Education. Federal involvement in teacher certification is not unheard of—Smarick noted that one teacher certification program, the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), was created in 2001 after receiving a $5 million grant from the Department of Education. “Still, states had to adopt it,” Smarick told The Dispatch Fact Check. So, while the federal government can help form credentialing bodies like the ABCTE, states are under no obligation to adopt them. “The federal government can do some work here,” Smarick added, “but it’s ultimately state policy.”
Meanwhile, the official 2024 GOP platform—endorsed by the Trump campaign—stated it is committed to promoting “Fair and Patriotic Civics Education”: “We will support schools that teach America’s Founding Principles and Western Civilization,” the platform said.
In his first term, Trump established via executive order the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, to promote “patriotic education.” In January 2021, the 1776 Commission released a report examining the role of American history and the country’s founding in civics education. “When we appreciate America for what she truly is, we know that our Declaration is worth preserving, our Constitution worth defending, our fellow citizens worth loving, and our country worth fighting for,” the commission’s 16 members concluded in the report. “It is our task now to renew this commitment.” Because curriculum requirements are within each state’s purview, neither the 1776 Commission nor any Education Department entity had the authority to unilaterally impose what it determines to be “patriotic education.”
The claim that Trump would require prayer in school is also false—though, the president-elect has supported returning prayer to public schools. “We will support bringing back prayer to our schools,” Trump said in September 2023. The Trump campaign pointed to updated federal guidance from the first Trump White House that ensured students could exercise religious practice and prayer while at their public school, at the threat of losing federal funding. “To receive Federal funds, local educational agencies must confirm that their policies do not prevent or interfere with the constitutionally-protected rights outlined in the guidance,” a White House statement said at the time. “The new guidance makes clear that students can read religious texts or pray during recess and other non-instructional periods, organize prayer groups, and express their religious beliefs in their assignments.”
Supreme Court precedent also stipulates that school-directed prayer is unconstitutional. While students have the right to religious expression at public schools, the court ruled in the 1962 Engel v. Vitale case that any official public school prayer—even those that were “denominationally neutral”—violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause and is not permitted.
Trump has not said he would fire teachers “who would not obey” his education requirements. However, Trump has expressed support for empowering parents to fire public educators. “We will empower parents and local school boards to hire and reward great principals and teachers, and also to fire the poor ones,” Trump said in September 2023. “The ones whose performance is unsatisfactory, they will be fired. Like on The Apprentice, you’re fired.”
While public school teachers are not federal employees, Department of Education personnel are, and Trump has called for firing some of those federal employees. “On Day One, we will begin to find and remove the radicals, zealots, and Marxists who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education, and that also includes others, and you know who you are,” Trump said in July.
None of Lee’s claims are part of Project 2025, a conservative policy manual organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Project 2025 does not say anything about “forcing schools to teach patriotism,” nor does it mention “patriotism” in the context of education. In fact, in the entire 922-page document, the word “prayer” is mentioned only once—and not in the context of education policy or religious expression.
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