Bill to Shut U.S. Education Department Introduced in Congress

I ran across this story when it was briefly mentioned in an article I was reading. So I did some more research. I found a site written by someone who supports the bill.

There are also practical reasons why shutting down the department is good policy. “Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” Massie observed. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable. Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational opportunity for their children, including home school, public school, or private school.”

This is what Trump has to say.

And indeed, Trump has long touted the idea of shutting down the whole operation. “A lot of people believe the Department of Education should just be eliminated — get rid of it,” Trump said in one of many similar statements on the campaign trail. “If we don't eliminate it completely, we certainly need to cut its power and reach.” The solution, he suggested, would be to go back to what the Constitution explicitly requires — absolutely no federal role in education.

The New American: Bill to Shut U.S. Education Department Introduced in Congress

Ronald Reagan also proposed dismantling the Department of Education in the 80's.

Former President Ronald Reagan proposed dismantling it in 1981 along with the Department of Energy. “Education is the principal responsibility of local school systems, teachers, parents, citizen boards and state governments,” Reagan said. “By eliminating the Department of Education less than two years after it was created, we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”

International Business Times

The Department of Education was first established in 1867 and then In 1953, the Federal Security Agency (as it was called) was upgraded to cabinet-level status as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. It wasn't until 1979 that it became its own cabinet position.

So what would happen if the Department of Education was dismantled?

"We wouldn’t have a federal department to administer Pell Grants to students, there wouldn’t be any oversight over states when they break civil rights laws, there wouldn’t be a department to check on rampant inequality between low-income school districts and wealthy districts, we would have inconsistent education data, as the quality of data would vary among the states, there would be more gender discrimination within schools,there would be no way to hold schools accountable for the funds they receive."

Click here to see a list of who would lose funding if the Department of Education were abolished. It includes students in poorer neighborhoods and students with disabilities. Eight million students would lose Pell grants every year and 490,000 teachers would lose their jobs. In addition, 1.3 trillion dollars in student loans would be "at risk" (not sure how, but it sounds like it means the feds wouldn't be involved with student loans anymore)

Is it a good thing to eliminate federal grants and loans that help poor students go to college? What would it be like to not have that kind of support? Would the Federal Government create new programs to continue the funding of student loans and grants? Lots of funding in general to be lost for the states though, for sure.

I was reading earlier how DeVos and her friends want to abolish the Department of Education and even drastically reduce funding for public schools, and they want religion to be brought back into the school system all throughout the country by strengthening religious institutions through vouchers. Devos is a huge supporter of vouchers, which would allow children to go to charter schools or religious institutions instead of public schools, taking more tax dollars away from the public school system. These two objectives together would hurt the public education system.

I just read up on supreme court cases here and it would be entirely legal to fund religious schools through the use of vouchers as long as there were some secular schools to choose from, too.

I'm inclined to agree with the states rights proposal, but in the long term if you want the country to function in the technological age you need to allow for federal oversight.


In about 20 years the unemployment rate due to technological advancement is going to be so bad across the West I fear for our futures.

The only option is to get everyone into engineering or toothbrush & toilet roll making.

There will always be a need for those at least.

a reply to: darkbake

“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,”

There's your FAKE NEWS, right there. The Department of Education neither imposes "intellectual" nor "morality" tests.

I can see it now. Working with an employee who believes the earth is 6000 yrs old and expecting good results.

So Betsy DeVos was installed as the person in charge of dismantling her own department?

a reply to: carewemust

Yes, the person Trump appointed to the Environmental Protection Agency is also a harsh critic of it. There is a bill before congress for dismantling the EPA, as well. That bill is expected to go nowhere, however. Both bills will probably go nowhere. But this is what Trump supporters believe. About the "fake news," yes one of the sites I sourced was to show what the alt-right's perspective on the Department of Education is, I definitely don't vouch for the accuracy of their statements.

originally posted by: carewemust
So Betsy DeVos was installed as the person in charge of dismantling her own department?

That's one way to get rid of her, I suppose.

I am not for shutting down the US Education Department entirely but I am for a big overhaul.

What this article does not tell you is the schools that need the funding from the government are not the ones that are getting it. The school districts still have to do all the necessary paperwork and stay in compliance to receive certain funding.

So, if you have a district that can afford to pay certain administrators to take advantage of every single government funded school program out there, and there are a lot, you get districts with a lot of extras.

I have said this before, when you have a nutrition services department that MAKES a million dollars for their district every year, there is an issue. That money does not flow down to teachers salaries or students.

Given the state of public education in the US, I think it is safe to say that the DOE has been an utter failure. I fail to see how we'd be any worse off with out it. No one would legitimately argue that kids prior to 1979 received inferior educations.

The money wasted going to the DOE would be better spent being distributed to the states directly.

If an individual state wants to create a massive bureaucracy to oversee their school systems, I have no issue with it. However, this stuff needs to be kept at the state level. Our federal government is trying to do way too much and instead of doing a few good things well, they wind up doing a lot of stuff poorly.

No they do not mandate certain buzz word items, but they certainly pick and choose what is encouraged...

Once upon a time there was Recess and PE, and a general set up that benefited boys in education... then when I was a kid we had the girls crisis, and the system was overhauled, not over night but say 10-15 years, and a system more beneficial to the way girls (remember we are talking averages, their are always exceptions) learn, and now we have a problem with boys graduating and getting a degree.

But god forbid you bring up... in 2003 according to an article from the New York Times, 72% of girls graduated high school compared to 65% of boys.

NY times

Nationwide, about 72 percent of the girls in the high school class of 2003 — but only 65 percent of the boys — earned diplomas, a gender gap that is far more pronounced among minorities, according to a report being released today by the Manhattan Institute. The report, "Leaving Boys Behind: Public High School Graduation Rates," found that 59 percent of African-American girls, but only 48 percent of African-American boys, earned their diplomas that year. Among Hispanics, the graduation rate was 58 percent for girls, but only 49 percent for boys. "It's a fairly large difference, particularly when you consider that unlike differences across racial and ethnic groups, boys and girls are raised in the same households, so it's not so easy to explain the differences by their community, or their income level," said Jay P. Greene, an author of the report.

Similar problems continue into the graduate area..

We fixed a problem by breaking something else, and the Department of Education does not care, the news does not care, the average person on the street does not care as long as it does not effect their children.

I do not know if a complete dismantle and place the burden on the state is required or a scaling back of its mission, or remove and replace it at the federal level with a more stream lined organization.

But there is a problem with the current system, even if many people want to pretend other wise.

Elections and gerrymandering have consequences. I hope they do shut it down. Then maybe people on the left will finally get motivated to vote in the same numbers as the right.

From what I have been reading it looks like the current admin is trying to 'reduce' the amount of Departments and incorporate them into others that are existing, or, take existing to combine into a new one.

There need to be changes to the current structure.

It seems that Dimwit and his followers think that education should only be for those that can afford it. In a way they are right how smart do you have to be to do a job that only requires the pushing of a few buttons? Besides somebody has to replace all of the illegals after they are gone so get that shovel and rake ready jobs are waiting.

dp

Down with the Department of Social Engineering.

originally posted by: Edumakated
Given the state of public education in the US, I think it is safe to say that the DOE has been an utter failure. I fail to see how we'd be any worse off with out it. No one would legitimately argue that kids prior to 1979 received inferior educations.

The money wasted going to the DOE would be better spent being distributed to the states directly.

If an individual state wants to create a massive bureaucracy to oversee their school systems, I have no issue with it. However, this stuff needs to be kept at the state level. Our federal government is trying to do way too much and instead of doing a few good things well, they wind up doing a lot of stuff poorly.

Education seems to be better since 1979. Test scores have gone up slightly, and schools today teach more indepth subject than they did in 1979. Maybe the improvement isn't fast enough, but on average we're doing pretty well. We even knocked it out of the park on the latest PISA test. Grade school education in the US has never been better than it is right now, despite the fact that some states and cities are getting it horribly, horribly, wrong... but that's just proof that central oversight is weak enough that these places have the freedom to get it wrong.

a reply to: darkbake

States have a vested interest in the success of their education programs. The Fed's use the Education Department like all their departments...politics and control.

I fully support giving more power to the states. The bloated Federal Government needs to trim the fat.

originally posted by: Metallicus
a reply to: darkbake

States have a vested interest in the success of their education programs. The Fed's use the Education Department like all their departments...politics and control.

I fully support giving more power to the states. The bloated Federal Government needs to trim the fat.

I don't know here. I fully understand the sentiment of not trusting the feds, but I distrust the states even more. States have less oversight, and less talent. Florida has test scores worse than some 3rd world nations, Texas is on the verge of losing accredation in their science programs, Illinois and Kansas have started cutting the school year pretty significantly because they can't afford to keep their schools open.

Most states haven't proven competent in the education department. North Dakota has proven average, Massachusetts and Connecticuit have proven they know how to do things right.

Do we want to devolve into 50 nations, where some states simply don't accept the other states degrees? Louisiana has a serious literacy problem, what if someone moves from Louisiana to a state with an actual future, only to learn they have to go to school all over again before they can even attend college? I just don't see how leaving things in the hands of the states actually has the potential to work out. Worse yet, you put it in the hands of cities (which is where most of it is now anyways), and you doom towns to mediocrity because they don't have the ability to teach what they need, or even the ability to recognize what they need.

The feds aren't much better, but they're at least in the position to take the best ideas from everyone and I say this as someone who doesn't like the DoE. What's the solution? Personally, I think it involves a mix of everything, city/state/fed because none of them have proven competent to run something on their own. Though my argument basically means... keep doing what we're already doing because we already have that mix. Yet some states are still dropping the ball.

a reply to: darkbake

They will awaken the parents and families of the disabled who are now in huge numbers.

They will regret killing the IDEA act. Idiots do t understand the law and so they casually disregard it.

They will know wrath.

a reply to: Edumakated
If you were to visit my disabled son's exemplary school, and the district that supports it, you would not see failure at all.

Reforms of large institutions can be beneficial, but there are reasons they exist.

They have no solutions other than destruction, it seems, so I am terrified for my son's future at their hands.