Should The U.S. Department of Education Be Abolished? And Can It Be?

Now that Donald Trump is President-Elect once more, there is a lot of analysis, speculation, and predicting of what Trump will do during his second term. If Trump is serious about implementing his proposed tariff plan, for example, it will be the biggest coup to U.S. trade since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that compounded the effects the Great Depression. Another place of particular interest is that of education. 

Trump wants to end wokeness in education, which is a sentiment I appreciate given how much critical race theory and social justice have permeated the education system. From the looks of it, he wants to forbid Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) offices in public schools; forbid classroom lessons on gender identity and "structural racism;" keep male-to-female transgender individuals out of girl's sports; and go after colleges that have allowed anti-semitism to fester on its campuses. 

While Trump wants to reform education, his plan entails more than pulling certain levers around federal funding for public education. One thing this election cycle did, particularly with the Project 2025 controversy, was revive the debate about the U.S. Department of Education (ED). Project 2025 is technically separate from Trump's Agenda 47, but one thing they both have in common is a call to abolish ED, as did the Republican Party's 2024 Platform. I can see there being appeal to the idea:

• Abolishing ED would lower education costs. When thinking about college education, it is ED and its federal student aid that hands-down is the single largest factor as to why college tuition has skyrocketed in the past four decades. 
• Education should be localized, not coming top-down from politicians in DC. Forget for a moment that the federal government has no constitutional authority to govern education. A federal agency is ill-equipped to determine what education priorities are best. To quote the Cato Institute, "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."  
• Academic achievement has remained largely unchanged since ED's founding. Math and reading performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has remained stagnant. This was the case before the pandemic and the subsequent declines in standardized testing that ensued because of school closures. Furthermore, the achievement gap on the National Assessment of Progress (NAEP) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) have failed to budge (Hanushek et al., 2019). Average scores for NAEP have only been declining since the pandemic. Since academic achievement has not improved the education of children since the creation of ED, what purpose does ED serve?
•  ED is riddled with operational problems. Look at this report from the government's oversight agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO). ED was missing key monitoring documents in grant applications (GAO, p. 4), which means ED is not paying attention to where its money is going. ED does not independently assess the accuracy of program data (p. 4), which is poor data quality assurance. Because of data management and poor human capital management, ED has had ongoing issues with performing proper evaluations (p. 7).  

As compelling as this case is, I have to ask how viable of an endeavor abolishing ED would be. The Republican pledges to eliminate ED date back to Ronald Reagan's first time in the early 1980s. When Trump began his first term and had both chambers of the legislative branch, he did nothing, even in spite of there being legislative proposals to abolish it. 

On top of the historical intransigence, there is the issue of political feasibility. On the one hand, Pew Research survey data indicate how Americans feel about ED has a partisan divide, i.e., most Democrats like ED (62 percent) and Republicans dislike ED (at 65 percent). On the other hand, about two-thirds of Americans believe that too little is being spent on education (AP-NORC). Yes, Republicans in Congress and White House could make it more likely, although they lack a large enough majority to get past the filibuster. Conversely, it would be difficult for the U.S. government to spend more on education without ED or at least other U.S. federal agencies fulfilling that role in education. 

Even if ED itself is abolished, there is the question of whether its functions and duties would disappear or simply be transferred to other government agencies or cabinet departments. For example, federal student aid would most likely go to the Department of Treasury's Federal Financing Bank. Plus, few politicians would be inclined to slash or end funding for low-income students (Title I) or IDEA funding for students with special needs. 

So why should the U.S. taxpayers continue to fund an agency that received $228 billion in funding last fiscal year? It was not as if the American people received zero education prior to 1979 and that education magically appeared in 1979 with the creation of ED. The United States was successful without one and I am sure we could be successful if it were eliminated, especially given the cost and inefficacy of ED. 

At the same time, "Eliminate ED" needs to be more than a fancy slogan. In addition to getting past the political hurdles, proponents would need a solid plan of how to revert the role of education to state and local governments because it would take a lot of effort to modify the statutes, regulations, and bureaucracy surrounding ED. Otherwise, "Eliminate ED" is as hollow of a pledge as when the Republicans called to eliminate Obamacare last decade.