As calls to dissolve the U.S. Department of Education continue, two questions likely come to mind: Will it happen this time around (there were legislative attempts in 2017 to “terminate” it) and what would happen without the agency?
Eradicating the agency would be complicated, and while it is unlikely (albeit, not impossible), those on the political left, the political right, and everyone in between should support such a move, according to Kerry McDonald, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
If you voted for Harris and the Democrats, you should support eliminating the U.S. Department of Education so that President-elect Trump doesn’t get the chance to implement education policies that you despise, or repeal those that you adore. Similarly, if you voted for Trump and the Republicans, you should support eliminating the Department of Education so that the next time the Democrats win the presidency, they can’t impose education policies that you loathe, or jettison the policies you love.
“…[S]huttering the U.S. Department of Education would not be the end of the world,” she continues. “A decentralized education system is much better able to reflect and respond to the diverse needs and preferences of a pluralistic society than one controlled from the top.”
Created in 1979 by Pres. Jimmy Carter, the Department of Education opened its doors a year later, replacing a federal Office of Education that had been in place since 1867 and was “relatively small and inconsequential,” McDonald continues. “Education was largely managed by states and local school districts, as it should be.”
In fact, the creation of the U.S. Department of Education was Pres. Carter’s fulfillment of a 1976 presidential campaign promise to the national teachers’ union after earning its endorsement. Here’s what the Washington Post reported in 1980:
The NEA gave its first presidential endorsement ever in 1976, when Walter Mondale promised them, at an NEA annual meeting, that the Carter administration would form an education department. At the 1976 Democratic National Convention, more delegates — 180 — belonged to the NEA than any other group of any kind. They’ve endorsed Carter for 1980, and were a major force in getting delegates to the Iowa caucuses…
Is the department, then, a creature of the NEA?
“That’s true,” says NEA executive director Terry Herndon. “There’d be no department without the NEA.”
This set “a dangerous precedent of ‘educational’ organizations meddling in politics to gain power and influence — exactly why our nation’s founders forbade federal influence in education,” writes Rebecca Friedrichs, veteran school teacher and founder of For Kids & Country.
For FY 2024, the federal agency was appropriated just over $79 billion, and Pres. Joe Biden’s budget request for FY 2025 is over $82 billion. What does the U.S. Department of Education do with this budget? According to a recent TIME magazine article, its three main functions are: “designating federal aid through Title I, which gives state and local funding for schools serving low-income families, handing out Pell Grants, and regulating student loan relief through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program or income-based repayment plans.”
In Minnesota, federal aid is forecasted to make up around 5 percent of the state’s E-12 education funding in 2025, according to estimates from the Minnesota House of Representatives Research and Fiscal Departments.
These federal dollars aren’t only from the U.S. Department of Education — also included is money from other federal agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services for Head Start programs and the Department of Agriculture for school nutrition programs.
Federal aid spiked during the COVID years and in 2010, but even with those increases has, historically, made up a small share of Minnesota’s total E-12 education funding.
Dissolving the agency, though, wouldn’t mean that money to support low-income students or special education students would just disappear — Congress could still appropriate dollars, as they currently do, and send that money to states directly, giving them the responsibility to decide what is needed to serve kids best.
It would mean that all policies related to education would be determined at the state and local levels, where they should be made, continues McDonald. Those policy decisions will look different from state to state, and the residents of each state should be able to grapple with those policy choices amongst themselves, “without the federal government chiming in.”
Minnesota E-12 Education Revenue by Source, FY 2000-FY 2023 (preliminary)
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Photo credit: GPA Photo Archive / U.S. Department of State (IIP Bureau) on Flickr