So You Want To Abolish The Department Of Education? Here’s What You Need To Know.

The demand for abolishing the US Department of Education is growing.

The sentiment has always lurked in the background, among conservatives and many Republicans who believe, somewhat rightly (more on that later), that the federal government should not have anything to do with education.

Remember the 10th Amendment?

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

My first voting election was the one where Ronald Reagan called to abolish the Department that had just been created, by Jimmy Carter, as a gift to the National Education Association, in what he hoped would mobilize enough votes for his re-election. But with high inflation and gas prices on his watch, not even the teachers unions could get him elected. Still, we were left with a new federal Department. Most do not know that it had indeed been an agency, in a similar location, with all the same programs as when it became a Department. Being called a Department just meant it now had Cabinet-level authority - and a chance for more positive influence, or so the theory goes.

So, what really is the U.S. Department of Education today?

Elon Musk X-ed a comment just this week, tying declining achievement to the Dept of Education’s growth.

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As bad as student achievement is today, lower than at any time in history since the Department was created, it was the impetus for 1983’s A Nation at Risk, the Commission on Excellence in Education that Reagan created and the subsequent report that declared the nation’s education mediocre at best, and its offerings to students “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

Our nation’s schools lacked rigor, not to mention high expectations for students to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.

History was lacking and teachers were paid to work regardless if they got results or not.

Reagan’s first Education Secretary Terrell Bell was what we at the time considered a “squish,” someone hesitant to buck heads, challenge the establishment. He liked the post he was in and he liked his ability to work with policymakers, governors and teachers. He led the growth of the Department - and it hasn’t stopped growing since.

And there’s the impetus for the growing call for its abolition.

There are more than 200 programs that are legislatively authorized and thousands more rules that follow those laws, which become requirements for how schools and districts spend federal money. Those requirements, in turn, become roadmaps for state education officials, who fear not following rules and losing federal funds, and who often just assume federal statutes are more important than state statutes.

Even among what we often called “reform-minded” state superintendents, the proclivity to question, push, or defy ridiculous and onerous federal rules on state policies is low to non-existent. They are not fighters, they are uniters, even when they are appointed by Governors that expect them to accomplish a lot. It’s just the nature of the role - with thousands of people around you every day telling you have you have to follow certain rules and guidelines, intertwined with thousands more school leaders and education personnel in every community making demands, and a morass of rules and regulations, combined with fictional assumptions about how things are expected to be done, all add up to making too many traditional schools impervious to change, and little even the wisest people in positions of authority can do.

It’s why Reagan’s second Education Secretary Bill Bennett famously called the education system, “the Blob.”

So how do you reduce or extinguish the Blob in real life?

The roadmap for getting there is fraught with difficulty, but it’s not impossible. I should know, I’ve spent most of my life doing just that. Now, we have an opportunity for cabinet level action.

First, start with President-Elect Trump’s biggest priority - School Choice.

Eighteen states have a range of modest to ambitious programs allowing dollars to follow students to schools, and in many cases, parent-designed approaches to education like microschools. Forty-six states have charter school laws permitting new public schools to open and be free from a variety of regulations (different depending on each state).

While the feds have not created these programs, they have managed to statutorily impede their progress and development.

For example, the federal school lunch program which sits in the USDA subsidizes school districts, not the schools that states have sanctioned to educate their kids. So food does not follow student choices.

Imagine a parent having to choose between a school that helps her child learn and one that feeds them lunch? Ridiculous.

The new Education Secretary needs to work with the new Secretary of Agriculture to turn that around, and secure the necessary legislation or policy changes to allow students to be fed no matter where they go to school.

Another example is the fact that schools educating students with disabilities - including an increasing percentage of new and emerging private schools and microschools - do not receive any federal funds for students with disabilities. No, those programs favor districts, not schools, which are by law the recipient and rule makers of how students with special needs are approached. Districts violate that law often instead of providing for a free and appropriate public education as required by public law, they simply throw those students into classrooms they deem appropriate while the students flail and fail to get any substantial education. Parents must hire lawyers just to fight their way out of such bad treatment, and never has an Education Secretary taken up the cause to put parents back in charge on this issue.

The Congress needs to act on this day one and only an Administration focused on what’s right for students can educate and entice them to make that happen in priority order.

These are but two of the many programs that thwart and burden the nation’s families and undermine the choices that parents make to leave traditional public schools that do not work for their children’s needs. The President’s new team needs to work hard to uncover the dozens of other such federal constraints and barriers to student achievement.

That will take someone willing to buck the system, and who knows how to call on the nation’s education innovators who can demonstrate the folly of these rules up close and personal. We need nothing short of a plumber, a person qualified to get into the federal and state pipes.

Second and simultaneously, move every program and principal office tied to postsecondary education funding to the U.S. Treasury.

The Office of Postsecondary Education is primarily a check-writing business, overseeing the gross growth of student loans without regard for higher education’s success, distributing gifts to schools that serve this or that kind of student, gifting the prize of accreditation by recognizing state, regional and national accreditation bodies that claim to “peer review” their colleagues. Counter to its intended role, it’s actually an academic and not very rigorous exercise, costly (and money-making to the accreditors) all so that schools can be recognized for the purposes of receiving federal funds.

Any postsecondary programs that the new Administration believes are worthwhile or that are congressionally-mandated should be moved to the Treasury to monitor the flow of funds to taxpayers, and get rid of tax-payer subsidies to higher education that are not helping students most in need.

Then, they must engage higher education leaders who are succeeding to weigh in on where to put, or whether to even retain, the accreditation office, and you’ve just reduced the federal education department footprint by about 50%. Only the “plumber” will be able to recognize them.

Third, identify and divvy up the remaining categorical programs that serve groups of students.

One critical area to ponder is why the Individuals for Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) doesn’t live in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services? It purports to fund students with special needs and yet parents of special needs students never have a say. Every student is different - and the people who understand a student’s health - every facet of it, physical, developmental, or mental - should be researching and guiding the distribution of funds to schools based on their ability to educate students, not just because they’re convenient.

This is sure to be controversial, but what can be more critical than fixing the miseducation of students with special needs? Regardless of one’s outlook, education officials farthest from the students should not be managing or dictating how schools serve students with disabilities as if all are identical.

Fourth, distribute all the Title 1 funds directly to schools based on how many disadvantaged students they serve.

This idea is as old as the U.S. Department of Education itself.

Bill Bennett tried to ‘voucherize’ Title 1 and everyone since then has shied away from the idea. Senators like former Tennessee Senator and HELP Chair Lamar Alexander knew it was a great idea - but his staff would simply argue that it wasn’t feasible. The list goes on.

While feasibility was once the guiding principle for public policy, today everything is on the table. After the above “assets” are redistributed or revised, which will take huge muscle, education, and grassroots to secure (enter, the plumber), the President should review what’s left at this federal department and decide - does this justify a cabinet-level agency and a secretary, or should it evolve to an agency of research, assessment, analysis, critical and life-changing support services (should they exist) and leave the rest to the states?

Those are just some of the questions - and the tasks - that loom for the 47th President, his Administration and the 119th Congress.

And the next Education Secretary must be up to the task.