How to Effectively Reform the Department of Education

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

Commentary

In 2025, the U.S. Department of Education is expected to be the recipient of sweeping transformation. Recently introduced legislation that would abolish the department, by South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, and a newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, aim 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 Department of Education from its current status, restructure it, or relegate the department to a less influential national role or sub-Cabinet regulatory level.

Effecting changes in this mammoth federal bureaucracy will not be easy. And eliminating the Department of Education 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 of education in the U.S. government.

The origins of a department of education within the U.S. government has varied over the last 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, the Carter administration elevated the Department of Education 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 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation 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, Department of Education oversight grew with the $4.35 billion Race to the Top (RTT) Grants in 2009, and the $1.6 billion Every Student Succeeds Act enacted in 2015. However, an analysis of the RTT grant performed by the department in 2016 concluded, “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 the United States’ official data, the Department of Education’s fiscal year 2024 budget is $241.7 billion, and 4,200 employees are employed. 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 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by the Administration for Children and Families. 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 Department of Education 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 (OCTAE), which is a widely supported federal and state program that provides support for vocational training funds at the local and state level. Originally authorized by Congress in 1963 as the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, it has been reauthorized by Congress for the last 60 years. In 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law the reauthorization of the Act.

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 U.S. Census Bureau. This program will garner strong support and push back on any changes made by DOGE. In school year 2021–22, 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 by-product of our founding fathers’ vision for America. They recognized that a literate and educated citizens are 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 powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.

Under the 10th Amendment, the federal government and Department of Education 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 Department of Education 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) reflects 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 the U.S. score was lower than the average in 25 countries. Nations such as Korea, Vietnam, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Canada, and Slovenia ranked higher than American children. 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 the eventual role and purpose of the Department of Education 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 for lawmakers and DOGE leadership led by Musk and Ramaswamy include:

• Transfer, dilute, and change the role and responsibility of the Department of Education 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 Department of Education structure to a sub-Cabinet level equivalent.
• Advance school choice, charter schools, and create funding for charters 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.
• Early child care and childhood education should be a state and not a federal priority. Transfer preschool initiative programs to state and local government to expand preschool.
• Federal Student Aid administration can be transferred to the U.S. Department of Commerce, and student loans should not be the responsibility of the tax payers to pay back.
• Bilingual instruction and English language grants should be the responsibility of the states and not the federal government.
• The Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) training should be transferred to the U.S. Department of Labor.
• School-based mental health services should be the responsibility of the states.
• The Civil Rights division of the Department of Education should and could easily be assumed by the U.S. Department of Justice.
• Allow states and not the federal government to provide discretionary academic grants.
• The Office of Indian Education can be transferred to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Washington lawmakers and DOGE should advance smaller government, individual freedoms, and school choice, while securing parental rights in the upbringing of their children. Time will reveal what the DOGE effect will have on downsizing or rolling back the influence of 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.