Since President Jimmy Carter created the modern Department of Education in 1979, the department has faced continuous calls for its abolition. This threat has persisted through Republican administrations, from President Ronald Reagan’s to President Donald Trump’s.
Never following through on their campaign promises to abolish it, some presidents have often used the department to push agendas hostile to public schools. Reagan’s department brought exaggerated claims of doom and gloom in “A Nation at Risk,” denigrating our public schools with a still-existing narrative. And Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos did little to hide her disdain for public schools, even calling for abolishing the department she ran.
However, no matter how often presidents promise to ax it, ending the department would require an act of Congress. While there is little reason to believe Congress would agree, given the volatility of government, one can never be sure. At the least, the promise to abolish the department is a rallying cry and a dominant feature of the right-wing agenda to end what it calls “government schools.”
That right-wing agenda, reflected in Project 2025 and to a more limited extent in the Republican platform, is to eliminate democratically governed public schools. It emanates from the vision of Milton Friedman, who believed that public school systems should be replaced by a patchwork of private, home-school, religious, and semi-public schools like charter schools.
Parents would receive funds in a “savings account” to shop among them. Proposers of this voucher-like funding scheme know that public school systems could not survive without reliable systemic funding streams. The remnant of public schools would serve the children no private or charter school wants.
Over time, funds for families are likely to decrease, with parents required to make up the difference. “But today, I would argue there’s no case for (the) government even financing (K-12 education), except for the indigent,” Friedman stated in his later years.
Without the Department of Education, the process of defunding K-12 education would accelerate, and other consequences would ensue.
Individuals with Disability Education Act funding, now implemented and regulated by the Education Department, would go to states with no strings attached, as per Project 2025. Before IDEA, students with the most severe disabilities were institutionalized or not educated at all. Students with milder disabilities were ignored or put in “slow classes.” In some states, those days would return.
Title I funding, which helps level the playing field for schools with large proportions of high-needs students, would be distributed without department regulation at the whim of state politicians. Funding would eventually be eliminated, according to Project 2025.
Without the Education Department’s extensive data collection through its National Center of Education Statistics and Office for Civil Rights, researchers would not have access to the data they need to compare states and their outcomes. Without the department’s Office of the Inspector General, there would be no federal agency for parents and teachers to register serious violations of students’ rights and know they will get the investigation they deserve — especially when states turn a blind eye to such abuses, as they often do.
As states go off to do their own thing, which is only sometimes in the best interest of students, there would be no way to measure the effects. Guess who oversees our nation’s report card, known as NAEP? The Department of Education, of course.
Department overreach has occurred during Republican and Democratic administrations. No Child Left Behind created unreachable goals, resulting in watered-down proficiency scores and test-driven instruction that states are still trying to unwind. Race to the Top, with its Common Core, the misguided evaluation of teachers by test scores, and the incentivization of charter schools, did as much damage as No Child Left Behind.
Despite such flaws, the department has a critical mission. It serves as the only guardrail protecting schools and students in states that appear hellbent on destroying their public schools and every equity initiative that most Americans stand for and support.
The department’s elimination would turn back the clock on student rights and protections and bring those who wish to destroy neighborhood public schools one step closer to their goal.
That’s why public schools are still needed today.
Carol Burris is executive director for the nonprofit advocacy group
(networkforpubliceducation.org) in New York City.
