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We're excited to be joined now by Lindsay Burke. She is the director at the Center for Education

Policy at the Heritage Foundation and also wrote the chapter in Heritage's Mandate for Leadership,

also known now as Project 2025 on Education Policy. This is a very timely conversation given

recent developments of the last 24 hours about how Doge is starting to turn its attention

to the Department of Education. So, Lindsay, first of all, thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Emily.

Yeah, no, we appreciate it.

I think you and I come from a very different place than Ryan does on this.

And the question about just like what's going to happen to the Department of Education is obviously a sensitive one for parents around the country who are worried about a shutdown affecting them.

So, Lindsay, I think maybe a good place to start is actually if you could walk us through, you know, your take on why people, why parents with kids and, you know, schools that are almost entirely, unless they're at Hillsdale,

funded by the federal government in some part, should not be afraid from your perspective of

Doge kind of tackling the Department of Education? Yeah. Well, first, we should make a distinction

between K-12 and higher ed. So in the K-12 space, federal funding

is less than 10% of all school funding across the country. And it's worth noting. And so this is

different than higher ed, right, where you get student loans. It's wholly federally funded. 93%

of all loans are originated in service by the federal government. So two separate things. But in K-12

education, it's very important to remember the Department of Education does not run a single school,

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