What Would Really Happen If the US Department of Education Went Away?

But don’t hold your breath.

When Trump won the presidency in 2016, Republicans also controlled both chambers of Congress and the Department of Education remained solidly intact, despite legislative proposals to abolish it.

That is not to say that lawmakers shouldn’t try. There is no constitutional role for the federal government in education, and all policies related to education should be made at the state and local levels. If voters here in Massachusetts (including me) want to eliminate high-stakes standardized testing in public schools, we should be able to do so without a peep from Washington, DC. Similarly, if the citizens of Oklahoma support Bible study in public schools, they should be able to grapple with that policy amongst themselves, without the federal government chiming in.

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.

While unlikely, shuttering the US Department of Education would not be the end of the world. Abolishing the department may sound extreme, but it’s important to remember that the federal Department of Education is a relatively new installation, created as a cabinet-level position by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and opening its doors a year later. Prior to that, there was a federal Office of Education in place since 1867 that was relatively small and inconsequential. Education was largely managed by states and local school districts, as it should be.

Almost as soon as the department was created there were calls to eliminate it. In 1980, Ronald Reagan campaigned on the idea; but when he won the presidency, he was unable to follow through on the promise and, in fact, asked Congress to increase the department’s budget. Even so, only about 11 percent of the nearly one trillion dollars that today’s US taxpayers spend each year on public schooling comes from the federal government—although that percentage has ticked up in recent years.

Trump has called for wide-ranging changes in American education, from promoting prayer in school to enacting mandatory patriotic education. Anyone worried about how the Trump administration could affect education policy should wholeheartedly support the elimination of the US Department of Education. Similarly, anyone worried about the education policies that the Biden administration touted, from college debt relief to DEI, should also support the elimination of this department. A weak federal role in education policy is not only what the Constitutional framers envisioned; it is also what will ensure that each state and school district can enact the policies that their people want—without DC bureaucrats getting in the way.