The move to abolish the education sector will live on for decades
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On the very day Congress confirmed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education in early 2017, Rep. Thomas Massey (R-Ky.) introduced a bill to dismantle the federal agency she led.
“The Department of Education will end on December 31, 2018,” the one-sentence bill read.
Five years later, Massie says the Department of Education (DOE), now with 4,400 employees, a $68 billion annual budget, and tasks that include student assistance administration, civil rights enforcement, and teacher certification, is not there to begin with. I still believe I shouldn’t have. .
When the self-described libertarian Republican introduced a largely similar bill last year, he said, “No unelected bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. should be in charge of the intellectual and moral development of our children. ‘ said.
Even DeVos now agrees that her previous job, which she quit early on, was by no means legitimate. “I don’t think this department should exist,” said DeVos, who appeared on Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” show in July. “The Federal Ministry of Education adds no value to children’s education.”
suspicious beginnings
The United States had almost 200 years of bureaucracy until October 1979, when the Democratic-majority Congress narrowly passed legislation creating a cabinet-level bureaucracy independent of the existing ministries of health, education, and ministries. There was no federal ministry dedicated to education. welfare. The move faced bipartisan opposition in the House, with more than a third of his Democrats voting against the creation of another division.
Passage of this bill helped President Jimmy Carter fulfill his 1976 campaign promises. Critics of Carter’s presidency say that rather than allowing the federal government to fulfill its responsibilities in education “more effectively, more efficiently, and more quickly,” the powerful teachers’ union that supported him will be rewarded. sign the bill into law.
Corey DeAngelis, an advocate for school choice, told the Epoch Times, “It was a political payoff for teachers’ unions to inject more money into the public school system and demand more managerial positions. I did,” he said.
The National Education Association (NEA) first endorsed the president after Carter’s campaign in 1976 promised to create an education sector.
DeAnglelis’ view is not new. Indeed, the Washington Post noted in a 1980 report that the NEA, which boasted a strong membership of 1.8 million at the time, had “for years been lobbying for another education sector.” .
“At the 1976 Democratic National Convention, the NEA had more delegates (180) than any other group. It has been a great force in attracting delegates,” the report said. “So the department is a creature of the NEA?”
“It’s true,” then-NEA executive director Terry Herndon told the Post. “There is no department without NEA.”
constitutional controversy
Opponents call the DOE unconstitutional, given that the US Constitution does not explicitly mandate education as a federal responsibility. Some would argue that, following the principles of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, education should be left to the states and the people.
“The Constitution gives the federal government specific, enumerated powers,” Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, told The Epoch Times. “Neither of these powers said anything about their powers to be involved in education, so their creation represents unconstitutional activity.”
Proponents of federal intervention in education cite the Constitution’s “expenditure clause.” This allows Congress to raise taxes and use the money to provide general welfare. The idea is that if a state accepts federal aid, it may be conditioned to adopt certain legal and regulatory changes, including those related to education.
an unfulfilled mission
Aside from the controversy surrounding its creation, DOE critics still find that the department has done little, if not hindered, the educational goals set for the United States.
“I knew before I went there…the federal government isn’t doing education well,” DeVos said when asked about the “big lessons” he learned leading the DOE. “It’s not engaging in education in a good, positive, constructive way.”
A large portion of the agency’s K-12 budget is spent on what is known as Title I, which supplements state and local education funding for children from poor families. But the academic achievement gap between low-income students and their more affluent peers persists 40 years after DOE opened.
A 2019 study by the K-12 education magazine Education Next found that the academic performance gap between low-income and high-income students did not widen as dramatically as commonly believed. Efforts to close them.
Meanwhile, the DOE, led by President Joe Biden, recently attempted to tighten regulations on public charter schools. Public charter schools are relied upon by many economically disadvantaged families to provide their children with a quality education.
In March, DOE proposed a new set of priorities, requirements, and criteria that public charters should meet when applying for federal funding. Under the proposal, public charters seeking federal funding would have to prove that schools in neighboring districts are “overenrolled.” This is not possible as public schools are losing students nationwide due to her COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. The public charter also required submission of demographic data to examine its impact on racial segregation, although many of them primarily serve Black and Hispanic communities and cannot be registered or employed. We do not prioritize racial balance in our models.
Faced with overwhelming backlash, the DOE had to withdraw from allowing charters to show evidence of their claims using evidence other than overregistration. The final rule must also explain why schools are less likely to establish and maintain racially and socioeconomically diverse student bodies, but not to serve schools solely to serve homogeneous communities. relaxed its anti-racism provisions so that it would not be denied funding. Still, critics warn that these priorities leave the DOE with potential leeway to deny funding to charter schools.
“Charter schools do not have client quotas like most government-run schools do, so they have an incentive to do good work.” Teachers’ union monopoly in the teaching profession.
“It’s a slap in the face to the family,” he added. “This is another good argument for abolishing departments. Why is the Biden administration protecting the current teacher union monopoly at the expense of parents by regulating teacher union competition, which happens to be a charter school?” Is it possible?”
Weaponized Bureaucracy
Discussion of DOE repeal was limited to a few politicians and advocacy groups, but recently it has become more popular among the average American. With 19 schools closed, more questions began to arise about the federal government’s role in K-12 education.
When President Donald Trump said in a speech in Texas in August that the DOE should be abolished for imposing “inappropriate racial, sexual and political material” on children. , his audience cheered in agreement.
In August 2021, the DOE went back and forth against Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed an executive order affirming the right of parents to decide whether their children wear masks at school. When DeSantis punished school districts for ignoring his orders by withholding the salaries of school board members, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona created a fund to help those school districts and said, “Keep our children safe.” We are implementing a policy to keep
The exchange comes after the DOE launched civil rights probes into banning universal mask mandates in schools in five Republican-led states: Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. The NEA applauded the move, accusing governors of those states of “choosing partisan politics over protecting students” from COVID-19.
road not chosen
In his September 1981 address to the nation on economic recovery, Republican President Ronald Reagan promised to eliminate the two DOEs Carter created, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. By eliminating the latter, Reagan could “not only cut budgets, but also ensure that local needs and preferences, not Washington’s wishes, dictated the education of our children.”
Reagan’s attempt to defund the DOE was ultimately blocked by House Democrats. “While I still feel that this is the best approach, the proposal has received little support in Congress,” he wrote in a 1985 letter, reported the Los Angeles Times.
In the 1990s, the almost entirely Republican effort on DOE was led by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and then Senator Bob Dole during the presidential campaign. But the DOE was witnessing unprecedented expansion under President George W. Bush through his No Child Left Behind initiative.
Instead of retiring the DOE itself, a more viable approach might be to phase out the program, McCluskey said.
“Departments should disappear, but I can’t say that eliminating them is necessarily the top priority,” he said. “If we can abolish the department and still keep all the programs, the federal government still does a lot of unconstitutional things.”
McCluskey wondered if there would be a conservative-led effort to end the DOE for the 2024 election cycle, but DeAngelis expected the popular abolitionist movement to become stronger. I’m here.
“Many families understand that the Federal Department of Education can be weaponized by those in power,” D’Angelis said. “Parents care about their children more than anyone else, so I am optimistic that this momentum will continue.”
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Bill Pang is a reporter for the Epoch Times.
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