
President Donald Trump fulfilled a key campaign promise when he signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education (ED), sending shockwaves throughout an entrenched bureaucracy that has been the face of American education for decades.
Though officially dissolving the ED can only be done through Congress, Democratic officials like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, teachers unions and several education groups have wasted no time in protesting Trumpâs actions. Despite the outrage, experts say a full shuttering of the department would bring much-needed changes to a bloated education system that spends over $10,000 per pupil with very little to show for it.
âAmerica is on the precipice of radical education reform and change, where we are empowering parents, and weâre not empowering the bureaucrats anymore,â Norton Rainey, CEO of ACE Scholarships, an organization that gives financial support to children so that they can attend the school of their choice, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. âWeâre putting money into the hands of our children, not into administrators, and thatâs a good thing for America.â
Trumpâs executive order is framed around âreturning education to parents and communities,â and directs the Secretary of Education to âtake all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.â
The department excused half of its employees March 11 while Secretary of Education Linda McMahon vowed to end the âbureaucratic bloatâ of her department to fulfill Trumpâs mandate.
McMahon announced on March 3 that her departmentâs âfinal missionâ is âto send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children.â
âAmerican education can be the greatest in the world,â she continued. âIt ought not to be corrupted by political ideologies, special interests, and unjust discrimination. Parents, teachers, and students alike deserve better.â
The main complaints surrounding the Department of Education, stemming from conservative and libertarian critics, is that the agency is unconstitutional, fails to deliver on the promises it makes and that is corrupted by left-wing ideology.
The taxpayer spends about $14,840 per pupil every year, according to figures from World Population Review, though educational achievement does not seem to be improving.
âIncreases in education spending do not produce student achievement,â Johnathan Butcher, a senior research fellow for education policy at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in a statement provided to the DCNF. âHow we use the spending matters far more â and since centralized policies will not meet the needs of a diverse study body nationwide, interest groups will claim that they need more money in order to make the programs work.â
Numerous reports regarding student test scores have revealed shocking declines in academic performance, one example being the Nationâs Report Card released in January. Its 2024 data showed plummeting reading scores for fourth and eighth grade students and static math scores for students in both grades. The report stated that this was âcompounding a decline in the nationâs reading scores that started prior to the pandemic.â
Trump has championed the demise of the department for months, declaring that âwe will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Educationâ while on the campaign trail in Wisconsin in September.
âClosing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them,â Trump said during his speech accommodating his executive order signing on Thursday.
The Department of Education did not respond to the DCNFâs multiple requests for comment.
âA Product Of Leftist Politicsâ
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act, with the office officially established in 1980. Carter stated that though the primary responsibility for education falls to the âstates, localities, and private institutions,â the federal government âhas for too long failed to play its own supporting role in education as effectively as it could.â
âThe Department of Education is a product of leftist politics from the late 1970s,â Butcher continued. âPresident Jimmy Carter negotiated with teacher unions about its creation, and it has since become a way for special interest groups to identify and claim funding streams from federal taxpayers.â
Federal education projects and grants were already being organized and doled out before the ED, though the department was created to âimprove the coordinationâ of these programs, as well as âsupplement and complementâ state efforts to improve education.
The office was contested by Republicans from the start, while in the Cato Instituteâs policy recommendations for the 108th congress, the think tank cited several Democrats that werenât fond of the idea, either. Democratic Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal went along with the plan out of ânot wanting to embarrass the president,â according to the handbook.
The libertarian think tank also pointed to one House Democrat that spoke to the Wall Street Journal at the time. âThe idea of an Education Department is really a bad one,â the anonymous House Democrat told the Journalâs Al Hunt in 1979. âBut itâs NEAâs [National Education Association] top priority. There are school teachers in every congressional district and most of us simply donât need the aggravation of taking them on.â
During his first State of the Union address in 1982, President Ronald Reagan called on Congress to eliminate both the Energy Department and the Education Department.
âThe budget plan I submit to you on February 8th will realize major savings by dismantling the Departments of Energy and Education and by eliminating ineffective subsidies for business,â he said.
The âGazillion-Dollar-Questionâ
Leading libertarian and conservative thought leaders at the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the American Enterprise Institute the Center for Education Reform remain convinced that dissolving the ED will not diminish the quality of American education.
Important programs would continue and could even flourish if given more flexibility if their grants were provided âin block grants to the states,â Butcher argued.
âLikewise, student loans should be moved to another agency, and the main adjustment will be to whom or where students make payments,â he continued.
Butcherâs long-term vision for education is that âlocal schools and state departments of education will not have to keep navigating burdensome federal education regulations or âdear colleague lettersâ that micromanage local school practices. And this will be one of the largest benefits from closing the federal agency.â
âWe do not have the option to send our kids to public school because of a progressive agenda. Itâs not an option for a committed Christian family,â Pam Costes, administrator of Spirit Christian Academy, a private school with an alternative education model referred to as a NAUMS inc. university model school, told the DCNF. The institution is âa [private] school that puts the parents into their rightful place,â Costes said, though she is not against public school. Costes emphasized that the partnership between parents and the school are essential to the institutionâs model.
During the COVID-19 shutdowns, the school looked to what other academic institutions were doing for guidance and that the schoolâs leadership was âreally good about listening and letting people make their decisions about what they thought was for their family, and allow parents to make those decisions, rather than us,â Costes said.
âWe donât for sure know why some districts are really able to leverage their dollar to get greater growth for their students,â Dr. Marguerite Roza, research professor and director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, told the DCNF. âBut itâs clear that some districts are really quite successful at leveraging their money and getting better outcomes than maybe some of their others.â
Roza agreed with Butcherâs assessment that it is not the amount of funding that seems to make a difference, but how the funding is used. Edunomics has dedicated years of research to measuring statesâ return on investment. The professor pointed to several factors that might impact a stateâs return on investment, including differing work forces, certifications, âappetite[s] for academics,â poverty levels and pay structures.
Edunomics documents the correlation between state funding and student outcomes, with some data showing that increased spending doesnât positively relate to increased academic achievement. However, some school districts in certain states within them do show a positive correlation.
The âgazillion-dollar-questionâ is why some states are more effective at converting their state or federal funding into academic success than others, and that it canât be attributed to any one factor, Roza said.
The professor emphasized that it is not necessarily a department that leads to improved education, but good policies. She pointed to former President George W. Bushâsâ âNo Child Left Behindâ policy, which she said was âwidely suspected to be responsibleâ for âsome steady improvement in student outcomes,â though other sources say that the policy was âa failed experiment.â
The policy triggered âmore focus by states on getting the student outcomes,â Roza argued. No Child Left Behind expired in 2009 but was later officially changed in 2015 to the Every Student Succeeds Act.
A common critique of private schools is that they are not accessible to all students. Organizations like ACE Scholarships and the Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based think tank dedicated to expanding school choice and fighting government overreach, work to ensure that school choice options are available, even for low-income families.
âI think we as taxpayers need to ask ourselves what we are getting from the U.S. Department of Education,â Rachel Langan, a senior education policy analyst at the Commonwealth Foundation, told the DCNF. âWhat are we getting for all of those tax dollars and is there a better way for those dollars to be spent?â
Langan is a former public-school teacher and described herself as once âvery pro-public educationâ to the DCNF. She pointed to the COVID-19Â shutdownsâ effects on education as having changed her perspective.
The policy analyst noted that the âCOVID crisis open[ed] the eyes of American parents as to the value they were receiving or not from their public schools.â Langan pointed to the shutdowns as a catalyst for many parents to realize that education could be improved, that school choice options are a necessity and how confusion emerged among parents over funding.
âWhere is our money going?â She asked.
The Commonwealth Foundation âwould like to see a dollar amount attached to every child in Pennsylvania that would follow that student to the school of their choice, whether thatâs a public, private, homeschool, career, technical school or charter school,â Langan continued.
She also referenced that in January, the think tank learned from a Right-to-Know request that there are about 50,000 students who applied for a tax credit scholarship in the state and did not receive one due to Pennsylvaniaâs state program caps. âThereâs 50,000 kids whose families want something better for them who applied for scholarship but because of program caps, they didnât receive it,â she said.
ACE Scholarships also provides K-12 scholarships to lower-income children. The organization also collaborates with state legislatures to advocate for school choice policies.
âOur belief at ACE is that school choice works,â Rainey told the DCNF. He also noted that ACE financially supports children with partial tuition scholarships for up to $4,000 annually, and that a childâs quality education prepares kids for the âAmerican dream.â
Rainey said that at ACE, they believe every child âshould experience the American dream. And we think that it really does begin with education, but sadly, as we all know and we lament about this, our country is not providing the American Dream for too many kids. Theyâre being left behind. Theyâre not being educated.â
Rainey pointed to some âexcitingâ upcoming changes in education, including Texasâ proposed education savings account bill and Trumpâs federal tax cut initiative. (R
âWe believe that when you invest in kids, great things will happen, and that when you change education, that youâre changing everything in their lives,â he said.
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