Ending the Department of Education: Background

Ending the Department of Education: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (full series)
Background | The Good
The Bad | The Ugly

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Did I think I’d spend a few hours debating leftists about the Department of Education (ED) on TikTok? No—but hey, I guess there are worse ways to waste time.

Suddenly, the Department of Education is in the national spotlight because President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to work toward dismantling it. As usual, anything Trump proposes—good or bad—receives immediate and strong disapproval from most of the mainstream media, accompanied by fear-mongering campaigns about worst-case scenarios tied to his proposed reforms. Hence, my endless TikTok debates.

Despite all the drama, I’m grateful we’re having these conversations. When I was a public school teacher meeting with parents, I always approached those meetings with an “assumption of positive intent.” I believed every parent I met wanted the best for their child and loved them deeply. I’m choosing to extend that same assumption to the Left’s sudden, forceful defense of the Department of Education. I believe they care about our nation’s children just as much as I do, and their concerns about dismantling the ED stem from a genuine fear that it could harm our kids.

Like most large, complex, and bloated federal agencies, this isn’t a simple black and white issue of good versus bad. There is a lot of gray to unpack, and if we truly care about our nation’s children, we need to examine it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Background on the Department of Education

First, let’s look into a bit of history. Education in the United States was originally intended to be controlled solely by local and state governments. Our Founding Fathers firmly believed in a decentralized government. Power would be distributed among the states and local communities rather than concentrated at the federal level. They were weary of government overreach in all areas and feared it could lead to tyranny. These men were focused on giving themselves less power over the people rather than more. Imagine that.

It’s imperative to note that public education was not a main focus during the founding era. The Founders emphasized education as a means to grow an informed citizenry capable of sustaining a democratic republic. But they deliberately left the responsibility of organizing and funding schools to individual states and communities.

For example, Thomas Jefferson proposed a public education system in Virginia to ensure that citizens were literate and informed. However, this was not a mission to be completed by the federal government but rather a state-level proposal. Similarly, John Adams also pushed for universal education and again framed it as a community responsibility rather than a federal mandate.

The Founders undeniably valued the importance of an educated population. James Madison famously wrote, “A well-instructed people alone can be a permanently free people.” Likewise, George Washington, in his Farewell Address of 1796, stated: “Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion be enlightened.”

There was an emphasis on education as vital to the republic. Still, I want to emphasize again that the Founders envisioned this as a responsibility managed by states and local communities, not the federal government.

This decentralized approach to education persisted throughout most of American history, with states maintaining primary control over their public schools, academic standards, curricula, and funding until the mid-20th century, when national priorities began to shift. The most notable drivers of increased federal oversight included the push for civil rights, heightened economic competition during the Cold War, the need to ensure access to education for students with special needs, and the expansion of federal programs to fund higher education. These priorities significantly expanded the federal government’s role in education and ultimately led to the establishment of a powerful, well-funded, cabinet-level Department of Education, which describes itself in grand and sweeping terms:

The US Department of Education is the agency of the federal government that establishes policy for, administers, and coordinates most federal assistance to education. It assists the president in executing his education policies for the nation and implementing laws enacted by Congress.

Before this time of centralization and reform, what became the Department of Education aligned with our Founder’s vision of limited federal oversight of education. It had humble origins as a small federal agency established by President Andrew Johnson in 1867. Its primary purpose was to collect statistics and information about the health of the nation’s schools. It was even demoted the next year to an Office of Education, keeping the office at arm’s length from state-run schools, like a distant uncle who calls once a year to check on his nieces and nephews.

So for most of U.S. history, really before around the 1980s, the forerunners of the Department of Education were small and decentralized. Furthermore, other countries don’t have a strong and centralized education department, yet their students do just fine, like our neighbors to the north, Canada. So there’s no need to freak out about the possibility that the incoming Trump Administration will make some changes. But before we look at the changes, let’s review how we got to where we are today.

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In the next installment, federal involvement helped end segregation and racial discrimination in public schools.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/ending-the-department-of-education-part-1/