Well the education system certainly needs attention and a refactoring. I don't think anyone can dispute that. The details of what the end goal looks like vary wildly based on who you talk to.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. The article you linked says they plan to remove federal involvement in education, delegating that responsibility back to the states. From my perhaps naive viewpoint, decentralizing government education seems like it would allow more competing ideas and approaches into classrooms. It's not clear to me why this approach would dismantle education.
Why do you think this approach would dismantle education?
Because we’ve done it before and it yielded segregation, embedding of (one) religion in schools, and gigantic gaps in educational attainment based on where a child happened to be born.
Is it that hard to foresee what’ll happen if Louisiana et al started teaching children that the earth is 6000 years old, evolution is a farce, the US is a Christian nation, and also don’t worry about learning much outside of our immediate local (failing) economy?
It would be interesting to see if much of that has changed since the DoE was created in 1980. Do schools in Louisiana currently not teach that the earth is 6,000 years old, that evolution is a farce, and that the US is a Christian nation? Do we no longer have gigantic gaps in educational attainment based on where a child happened to be born? Segregation is federally illegal, so the proposed decentralization would only apply to curriculum and funding. I have no idea how the centralization of the education system has positively or negatively affected education outcomes, so I don't find the outcome of decentralizing it again obvious.
By the way, it's sad that this needs to be written, but I'm commenting in good faith. Without any kids in the education system, and without having been through the education system in many years, I'm not up to date with the latest statistics. All I have to go on is the occasional anecdotes from the people around me, which seem to be largely negative, but which could also be based in fantasy. I recognize that I have these blind spots, which is why I'm asking these questions.
I would be extremely careful to dismiss this out of hand. The group includes a large number of people from the Trump administration team, and the main purpose of the plan is to reform the government through loopholes/grey area means to consolidate power in the executive branch - thereby allowing rapid and sweeping changes throughout the government as a whole. Trump would love that, and has sung the praises of dictators and openly said he plans to be a dictator "on day one".
The system isn't designed to handle anything like that, and a ton of damage could be done by a concentrated effort from a group that intentionally refuses to play by the rules/norms.