How to Effectively Reform the Department of Education

The Department of Education in Washington, in this file photo. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Commentary

In 2025, the Department of Education is expected to be the recipient of a sweeping transformation. Legislation recently introduced by Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) that would abolish the department, a move supported by the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, aims to make the government more efficient by shrinking and streamlining the federal bureaucracy.

However, it remains unclear if lawmakers and the new administration’s focus will eliminate the Education Department, restructure it, or relegate it to a less influential national role or sub-Cabinet status.

Effecting changes in this mammoth federal bureaucracy will not be easy. And eliminating the Education Department is unlikely to happen, because abolishing a Cabinet agency requires an act of Congress and 60 votes in the Senate.

Learning From Mistakes of the Past

To reform any federal department requires an understanding of its history within the U.S. government.

The role of a federal department of education has varied over the past 150 years. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson signed legislation for a department that had only four federal employees. It was designed to collect data and information similar to that gathered by the Department of Agriculture to help farmers in the mid-19th century. After numerous gradual changes to the office across more than a century, the Carter administration elevated the Education Department to a Cabinet-level agency in May 1980.

President Ronald Reagan made a campaign pledge to eliminate the department in 1980, but he was unable to achieve this goal. Two decades later, in 2002, President George W. Bush campaigned to increase the involvement and role of the federal government in local and state education. His efforts resulted in what is now infamously known as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law that focused on standardized testing. According to a study by the University of Michigan, NCLB may have helped improve mathematics outcomes for younger students, but no evidence was found that NCLB improved student achievement in reading.

Under the Obama administration, Education Department oversight grew with the Race to the Top (RTT) grants in 2009, costing $4.35 billion, and the $1.6 billion Every Student Succeeds Act enacted in 2015. However, an analysis of the RTT grant program performed by the department in 2016 concluded that “it is not clear whether the RTT grants influenced the policies and practices used by states, or whether they improved student outcomes.”

Today, according to official United States data, the Education Department’s fiscal year 2024 budget is $241.7 billion, and the department employs 4,200 workers. The department will spend $92.28 billion in award obligations.

Families and taxpayers may ask an obvious question: Can our country justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars on federal government programs that do little or nothing to improve education outcomes?

Popular Federal Programs

Currently, there are several popular federal programs with bipartisan support that should not be abolished, but rather assigned to another federal agency for oversight, administration, and implementation. Those programs deserving special consideration are as follows.

First is Head Start, which, contrary to popular belief, is administered through the Department of Health and Human Services by its Administration for Children and Families division. This program is intended to support school readiness for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers in families that meet income eligibility requirements. The administration of Head Start is an example of how federal departments other than the Education Department can administer federal entitlement programs.

Next is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which was originally signed into law in 1975. This federal program is very popular with families of children with disabilities and is the main federal statute governing special education for children in the United States.

Third is the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, which is a widely supported federal and state program that provides support for vocational training funds at the local and state levels. Originally authorized by Congress in 1963 as the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, it has been reauthorized by Congress for the past 60 years. In 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law the reauthorization of this law.

Fourth is Title I Elementary and Secondary Education Act appropriations, which will require thoughtful policy decisions. Title I federal funds were established in the 1970s by Congress to support school districts that served economically disadvantaged students and families. Title I allocations to state education agencies and local education agencies are based on poverty estimates produced by the Census Bureau. This program will garner strong support and pushback against any changes proposed by Department of Government Efficiency. In the 2021–2022 school year, about 63 percent of traditional public schools and 62 percent of public charter schools were Title I eligible.

America’s Education Mission Drift

Public education is a byproduct of our founding fathers’ vision for America. They recognized that a literate and educated citizenry is best positioned for self-government and to determine America’s future. However, the U.S. Constitution never authorized the federal government to create education policy. It is not mentioned in the listed powers in Article I section 8, and the 10th Amendment reserves to the states powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.

Under Article I section 8 and the 10th Amendment, the federal government constitutionally lacks authority in determining state educational functions, standards, and local curricula. Unlike the education systems of many other countries, education in the United States is organized by the state constitutions in all 50 states. But the influence of the Education Department is now broad, and under its leadership, oversight, and direct influence, the primary purpose of education is suffering from mission drift.

Direct academic instruction has been replaced by unproven academic theories, educational fads, and political ideas. Recent data released from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reflect average scores for America’s students in reading, mathematics, and science literacy. This international benchmark exam shows the U.S. ranking consistently behind many other advanced industrial nations.

For example, the 2022 PISA mathematics results for America’s children when compared to the 80 other countries in PISA showed that the U.S. score was lower than the average in 25 countries. Nations such as South Korea, Vietnam, the UK, the Czech Republic, Canada, and Slovenia ranked higher than the United States. PISA also ranked U.S. students in the domains of reading, science, and financial literacy, and among industrialized countries, “Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Switzerland maintained or further raised already high levels of student performance.”

Suggestions and Recommendations

Many Americans believe that the eventual role and purpose of the Education Department will be considerably different than the current status quo. Yet reforms may be difficult, and eliminating any government program will be challenging.

My suggestions and recommendations, after 29 years as an elected county board of education trustee, that I would address to lawmakers and the Department of Government Efficiency leadership led by businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, include:

• Transfer, dilute, and change the role and responsibilities of the Education Department to a substantially less influential function in state and local education, similar to its size and role prior to the Carter administration.
• Transform the current Education Department structure to a sub-Cabinet level status.
• Advance school choice and charter schools, and create funding for charter school facilities and school sites through a newly defined sub-department within a newly defined Department of Housing and Urban Development.
• Dissolve all federal discretionary funding to state and local education agencies.
• Continue to support children with disabilities and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act under another department.
• Make early child care and childhood education a state, not a federal, priority. Transfer preschool initiative programs to state and local government to expand preschool.
• Transfer the Federal Student Aid administration to the Department of Commerce. Repayment of student loans should not be the responsibility of the taxpayers.
• Make states, not the federal government, responsible for administering bilingual instruction and English language grants.
• Transfer the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education to the Department of Labor.
• Make states, not the federal government, responsible for school-based mental health services.
• Transfer the duties of the civil rights division of the Education Department to the Department of Justice.
• Allow states and not the federal government to provide discretionary academic grants.
• Transfer the Office of Indian Education to the Department of the Interior.

Washington lawmakers and the Department of Government Efficiency should advance smaller government, individual freedoms, and school choice while securing parental rights in the upbringing of their children. Time will reveal what effect the department will have on downsizing or rolling back the federal role in local and state education. This pivotal moment in history could create a tidal wave of positive change in America’s education of its children.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.