Dismantling the Department of Education Is Not Enough

After his nomination of Linda McMahon as the new Secretary of Education, President Trump told reporters that he wanted her to put herself out of a job. The following month, on March 20th, Donald Trump signed an executive order with the promising title “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities.” The order instructs the Secretary of Education to dismantle the federal Department of Education and return authority over children’s education to parents, states, and local communities.

The Department of Education was already dismantled once before, but through the efforts of the National Education Association (NEA) it returned. The NEA has also lobbied for federal spending on education, which has dramatically increased without improving student outcomes. Trump’s executive order is a step in the right direction, certainly improving government efficiency, but it is not enough.

Education in the Hands of the Federal Government

The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Since the Constitution does not delegate power over education to the federal government, this power is reserved to the States or to the people. States and individual people are free to decide how to handle education.

The Department of Education does not directly regulate education, but it exercises powerful indirect influence through its grant-giving ability. In 2022, the Department of Education provided 13.7 percent of the funding for K-12 education. The department gives grants to districts and schools based on their adherence to its specific guidelines. The federal government also gives grants to teachers for professional development and training programs, like National Board Certification or TEACH. The more money available to the Department of Education, the greater its power, a power that should be reserved to the states.

Thomas Jefferson was the Founding Father who spoke most extensively about education. He is often misrepresented as one of the early pioneers of the public school system, but he advocated for a very limited version of state-regulated public schools. In 1779, Jefferson successfully passed “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge” in the Virginia state legislature. This bill provided free education for three years in reading, writing, and arithmetic to all citizens. In an 1817 bill proposed by Jefferson, he encourages local control of public school funds and warns that with control at the level of state government, “they would be badly managed, depraved by abuses, and would exhaust the whole literary fund.”

For many years, the role of the federal government in education, as described in the 1785 Land Ordinance, was simply to ensure land grants for public schools. Government involvement expanded with the establishment of the federal Department of Education in 1867.

History Repeats Itself: The Department of Education and the NEA

The NEA has played an instrumental role in molding federal education policy, though it began with different aims. The NEA was founded as the National Teachers Association (NTA) in 1857. Thomas Valentine, President of the New York Teachers Association, invited forty-three other educators to a National Teachers’ Convention in Philadelphia to discuss the formation of a national teachers’ union. Valentine told these educators that the NTA would gather and disseminate education information to teachers across the country. Valentine assured those present that the NTA would perform the duties of a much-needed federal department of education which, once established, would remove the necessity of the NTA. Other speeches at the first meeting of the NTA also called for a Department of Education in the federal government, including that of Zalmon Richards, voted to be the first president of the NTA. Speakers at subsequent NTA meetings year after year called for a federal Department or Bureau of Education.

Finally, in 1867, the United States Congress passed an Act to Establish a Federal Department of Education. The following year, however, Congress abolished the department and replaced it with an “Office of Education,” due to questions about its constitutionality and fears that a federal department might exert too much control over local education policies in the states. Nevertheless, the Office of Education remained part of the federal government, a long-term victory for the NTA.

In 1870, the NTA merged with the American Normal School Association, the National Association of School Superintendents, and the Central College Association. Upon this merger, the National Teachers Association changed its name to the National Education Association (NEA).

Writer and educator Samuel Blumenfeld details the lobbying efforts made by the NEA in his book NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education. In 1889, a committee of the NEA urged legislators that “the Bureau of Education should be restored to its original position as an independent department.” In 1918, the NEA set up its headquarters in Washington and created a “Legislative Commission” (now the “Legislative Program”) for drafting legislation proposals to Congress. In 1921, the Journal of the National Education Association  started running a column in every issue that detailed the status of legislation related to education, urging members to write to their legislators for support. By 1964, the NEA was sponsoring weekend “Teacher-In-Politics” training workshops with the purpose of inspiring and aiding teachers to become active in politics at the service of NEA-driven goals.

After years of NEA lobbying, in 1965, Congress approved the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), with an initial appropriation of $1.3 billion. This act granted a yearly payout to be administered to schools based on the school meeting certain requirements (in 2023, the ESEA appropriated $29.3 billion).

The success of the 1965 ESEA did not satisfy the NEA. NEA president Sam Lambert said the following in his 1965 inaugural speech as executive secretary:

NEA last year had 1,030,000 members; and by the end of this year we will have at least 1,100,000. . . . We are already four times as large as any other professional organization in this country. Within a few years we will be six or seven times as large. And, beginning now we are going to put our power and influence to work for the things that are most important:

NEA will become a stronger and more influential advocate of social changes long overdue.

NEA will become a political power second to no other special interest group.

NEA will have more and more to say about how a teacher is educated, whether he should be admitted to the profession, and depending on his behavior and ability whether he should stay in the profession.

And, finally, NEA will organize this profession from top to bottom into logical operating units that can move easily and effectively and with power unmatched by any other organized group.

In 1975, the NEA published a report entitled “Needed: An Education Department.” In 1976, for the first time in 119 years of its existence, the NEA endorsed a presidential candidate: Jimmy Carter. In 1979, Jimmy Carter repaid the favor by signing a bill re-establishing the Department of Education.

Just two years later, Ronald Reagan announced plans to dismantle the Department, threatening a historical repeat of the first establishment and disestablishment of the department in 1867. The NEA voiced strong disapproval, and Reagan was ultimately unable to get the legislation passed by Congress.

Spending without Results

The Department of Education website states the following:

In the 1860s, a budget of $15,000 and four employees handled education fact-finding. By 1965, the Office of Education had more than 2,100 employees and a budget of $1.5 billion. As of mid-2010, the Department has nearly 4,300 employees and a budget of about $60 billion.

How did the “Office of Education” grow its budget so much from 1867 to 1965? Clearly, the power of the “Office of Education” was not limited during its time as a mere “office.” Even considering inflation, the education budget grew by a factor of 40,000. From 1965 until 2024, the growth in budget was not nearly as significant, only growing by a factor of between seven and eight.

The figure below maps a timeline of the spending in billions of dollars by the department of education together with the NAEP reading results from 1970 to 2022. The spending dollars are inflation-adjusted to represent constant 2022 dollars.

Chart created using data from the Digest of Education Statistics

The National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP), sometimes called “The Nation’s Report Card,” is a nationwide test administered to students to get an idea of how well students are learning various subjects. Despite an increasing Department of Education budget, reading scores on the NAEP have hardly budged for fifty years. The NAEP defines each corresponding to a numerical cutoff score on the NAEP. “Basic” indicates partial mastery of the subject. “Proficient” level indicates “solid academic performance and competency,” and “Advanced” is anything beyond this. In 2024, 69 percent of fourth graders and 62 percent of eighth graders performed below “Proficient” and 40 percent of fourth graders and 33 percent of eighth graders performed below the NAEP “Basic” level of reading. The grade level averages in reading (graphed above) have never risen beyond the “Basic” level in the history of the NAEP.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) provides data on the performance of students worldwide. In 2019, the United States spent 38 percent more per student than the average of other participating countries, yet PISA reading scores for the US are very similar to the average of other countries and have not changed significantly since 2000. In 2022, the United States spent roughly twice the amount per student compared to Japan, yet Japan’s PISA results far surpass our own. The percentage of our government spending dedicated to education is also roughly twice that of Japan’s.

Chart created using data from the OECD

The poor performance on literacy tests has not gone unnoticed by the federal government. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), passed in 2001, appropriated more funding for districts and schools whose NAEP performance was significantly lower than the US average. NCLB increased federal funding for education by about 25 percent, or about $13 billion. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was passed in 2015, appropriating more federal money for education and requiring all states to submit annual education goals and plans to the Department of Education. These are just a few of the acts Congress has passed over the last fifty years to address concerns about the status of education in the United States. Clearly, they are not working.

Closing the Department Is Not Enough

Closing the Department of Education won’t be enough. Organizations like the NEA do not want it to happen. Even if it does happen, they will lobby it back into existence just as they did before. The NEA sued the government this year for what they claim is an unconstitutional executive order.

In 1983, Congressman John Ashbrook explained the NEA’s deep interest in federal funding for education:

An integral part of the NEA design is to siphon ever more control of public education from the grass roots to Washington, closer to its own powerful lobbying influence, farther from the parents and taxpayers who elect the school boards and pay the bills.

The NEA, originally intended to be an organization for teachers to discuss education, is now a lobbying powerhouse. In 1920, the headquarters were moved to Washington, DC and a “Representative Assembly” for discussing policy issues was attached to the annual meeting. With the NEA Legislative Program, the political influence that this organization wields will pose a challenge to the free education of American citizens, even if the federal Department of Education is dismantled. The NEA also advises all three million of its members on various bills in the Congress. The NEA, like the Department of Education, also provides grants to individuals and schools. Many of the grants provided to individuals are to occupy positions in local politics. Last year, when Trump announced his intention to appoint Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education, NEA voiced strong disapproval. The NEA is concerned that power will be returned to the states and the people.

The Trump administration has demonstrated an emphasis on federalism, moving power and authority from the federal government to local control. In 2016, Gerard Robinson, in an article for the American Enterprise Institute, suggested a federalist “encouragement philosophy” to guide the role of federal involvement in education. In 2020, Lindsey Burke and Jonathan Butcher wrote a policy report for the Heritage Foundation, suggesting the dissolution of the Department of Education. But if action is limited to the political sphere, the public education system will not improve.

Work needs to be done in the private sector to eradicate organizations like the NEA that exercise such enormous lobbying power and sway members’ political activism. Rachel Greszler and James Sherck of the Heritage Foundation have written about how large unions like the NEA frequently fail to serve the needs of workers, instead focusing on political lobbying. Nevertheless, the suppression of a union like the NEA by the federal government would be unnecessarily authoritarian, not to mention a violation of the constitution.

The laws of our beautiful nation provide for and facilitate a grass-roots effort to dismantle bloated unions like the NEA. Legally dismantling the NEA would require a “decertification election.” A union can be decertified if, after 30 percent of its members petition the National Labor Regulations Board for a decertification election, a majority of union members vote in favor of decertification. The National Right To Work Committee has explained that the purpose of a decertification election is to remove a union as the “exclusive representative” of the workers. The NEA is the largest labor union in the country with 3 million members. In 2016, roughly 70 percent of all public school teachers in the US were members of the NEA, the same percentage of teachers nationwide that were members of unions. The NEA does have exclusive representation for teachers, and it should be decertified.

For long-term success in protecting local control of public education, the National Education Association must go.

Image by Tada Images and licensed via Adobe Stock.