DOGE has turned attention to the federal Department of Education (ED), cutting $101 million in DEI programs and terminating nearly $1 billion in contracts. While wasting taxpayer dollars, ED has been deployed in force against educational independence and parental choice. Consider, for example, the actions of Biden’s education secretary, Miguel Cardona.

Congressional Democrats smeared the independent Grand Canyon University as a “predatory for-profit school.” Cardona responded by targeting GCU with a fine of $37.7 million, part of his goal to “shut them down.” Consider also Arne Duncan, education secretary for President Obama.

In the style of Bill Clinton, Obama sent his children to the prestigious Sidwell Friends School, far beyond the reach of most D.C. families. Their only alternative is the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program, operated by Congress. Secretary Duncan had a problem with it.

The ED boss decided “to rescind scholarships awarded to 216 families for this upcoming school year,” and “nine out of 10 students who were shut out of the scholarship program this year are assigned to attend failing public schools.” That same anti-choice ideology has been on display in California for decades, along with the type of waste and corruption DOGE is now exposing.

Attorney Bill Honig, state superintendent from 1983 to 1993, authored articles such as “Why Privatizing Public Education Is a Bad Idea,” but the superintendent made California’s government monopoly system work for him. On his watch the state Department of Education was paying salaries at the Quality Education Project, run by Honig’s wife Nancy. In 1992, Honig was convicted on four felony conflict-of-interest charges, later upheld on appeal.

In 1993 Honig opposed Proposition 174, a ballot measure for school-choice vouchers. Also in opposition was Honig’s successor Delaine Eastin, a close ally of the California Teachers Association (CTA), once named the worst union in America.

On Eastin’s watch, the California Department of Education gave away more than $20 million to an interlocking directorate of ineligible “community-based organizations.” When auditors uncovered this massive fraud, Eastin fired the whistleblowers and kept the money flowing. None of this emerged when Eastin ran for governor in 2018.

Delaine Eastin was a colleague of John Mockler, who wrote Proposition 98, establishing funding guarantees for education as an “antidote” to the 1978 Proposition 13, which limited property tax increases. Mockler formed a lobbying firm to represent publishers and education bureaucrats. These connections came in handy when Mockler served as state secretary of education and executive director of the State Board of Education under Governor Gray Davis.

In 2003, California voters recalled Davis in favor of Arnold Schwarzenegger, on whose watch no school-choice initiative appeared. The actor gave way to recurring governor Jerry Brown, who appointed Bill Honig to the State Board of Education in 1983. In 2011, Gov. Brown again picked Honig for the state board, but the convicted felon withdrew his name. In 2018, Brown pardoned Bill Honig, and that year Gavin Newsom was elected governor.

In the style of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Newsom sends his own children to upscale private schools but has never backed any measure to extend the same choice to low-income families. On the other hand, the governor is a big booster of trans ideology.

Newsom signed a bill to make California a sanctuary state for trans youth and their families. Last year, the governor signed a bill to end the school practice of notifying parents about gender transitions by their own children.

Last year at San Francisco State University, a trans mob roughed up NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines, held her captive for several hours, and demanded money for her release. Newsom issued no criticism of the SFSU administration and no support for Gaines, who had been forced to compete against men.

Newsom now claims that forcing women to compete against the trans types is “deeply unfair,” a reversal that invites comparison with his mentor. Jerry Brown loudly opposed Proposition 13, but after it passed in a landslide, he proclaimed himself a “born-again tax cutter.” After four terms as governor, Brown left California with some of the highest income and sales taxes in the nation.

Before they reach students in the classroom, those tax dollars must trickle down through a bureaucracy known for waste and fraud, with no DOGE looking on. The system does not allow parents full choice of the schools their children attend, government or independent. If parents and students thought that was “deeply unfair,” it would be hard to blame them.