Point/Counterpoint: There is neither joy nor gloom in ending the U.S. Department of Education – Duluth News Tribune

The presidential election has brought back an issue that always seems to need more momentum to succeed but always has enough support to stick: abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. Why has it remained in political purgatory? While there are good reasons to dismantle the department, there is little benefit in leaving the programs it administers in place.

Unfortunately, we cannot discuss the abolition of the ministry because the proposal raises suspicions of mischief, as if the Ministry of Education were the country’s primary school teacher. In other words, if you kill the department, you endanger education itself.

This contradicts basic facts.

The U.S. Department of Education has existed since 1980, while the origins of public schooling in the U.S. date back at least to 1837, the beginning of Horace Mann’s “common schooling” crusade as first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Education was already widespread because parents recognized the importance of educating their children themselves.

Federal intervention in education also dates back to the founding of the Department of Education, but essentially dates back only to the Great Society laws and programs of the 1960s, including Head Start, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the Higher Education Act. Why so long before such an engagement? Because it was widely accepted that the U.S. Constitution gave Washington no authority to regulate education. It was an area reserved for the states and the people.

Education didn’t need the department, as even former American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker argued at the debate.

Since its involvement in K-12 education, the federal government has been by far the smallest of the three major funders of public schools. On average, it has provided only 8.5% of all public school revenue since the 1969-70 school year.

However, Washington has used these relatively small resources to take control of education. The No Child Left Behind Act, enacted from 2002 to 2015, forced states to adopt uniform standards and tests in math and reading and penalized schools that did not make “adequate annual progress” toward full mastery of those subjects.

The Ministry of Education has also developed a national curriculum. In 2009, states were forced to adopt the Common Core standards, adapt tests and evaluate teachers based on them. In 2015, people on the left and right said they were tired of micromanaging and reducing education to math and reading notes. No Child Left Behind was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act.

However, we need federal money to fairly fund lower-income districts.

Federal funds tend to go to lower-income districts, but that frees states and districts from spending so much of their own money. There has now been significant success in increasing support for lower-income counties through “adequacy” litigation at the state level. There is no need to violate the Constitution, jeopardize clumsy federal control of K-12 education, and worsen the already-declining national debt to advance balanced funding.

The Department of Education’s impact on higher education has arguably been worse than on K-12 education.

In recent years, we have seen ample evidence of the Department’s failures in student loan forgiveness, including poor recordkeeping of loan repayments and a botched simplification of the FAFSA’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Last school year, the latter left students in the dark about their funding well into the point when aid and enrollment decisions should have been made. Delays are also expected this year.

Dismantling the Department of Education and moving student loans to the Treasury Department, for example, wouldn’t be a disaster, it would almost certainly be an improvement.

However, dissolving the department but retaining its programs would not significantly improve education.

More effective implementation of student support programs would likely save taxpayer money and make life easier for students and universities. However, we still have the big problem with student aid: it drives tuition inflation. Fixing this will require federal loan reductions, including ending the infamous debt-generating Graduate and Parent PLUS loans.

Likewise, there is little evidence that federal K-12 funding significantly improves K-12 education. This is particularly true for the lack of rules tying funding to test results, perhaps indicating a greater focus on testing than deep learning.

End the U.S. Department of Education but keep spending the same, and little will likely change.

It’s time to end the unconstitutional, ineffective department. That alone would only be a modest improvement.

Neal McCluskey directs the Cato Institute

Center for Educational Freedom

. The Cato Institute (cato.org) is a think tank founded in San Francisco and now headquartered in Washington, DC

(Photo by Richie Downs/Cato Institute)