The Department of Education (ED) has long been the subject of heated debate. Since its creation, ED has been weaponized by activist bureaucrats and policymakers alike, who use ED’s regulatory labyrinth to weaponize funds and transform the now-dependent states and local educational agencies (LEAs) into tools of progressive activism.
Some have even called for the dismantling of the ED, citing the overreach of power and pervasive corruption within the department and its arms. Should ED be dismantled permanently? It is one solution.
For more context, ED funds—as originally intended by Congress, and still to a considerable extent in practice—were meant to fund states, LEAs, postsecondary students, and postsecondary institutions as they made their own decisions about how to use them. To the extent that ED simply channels money to Americans, who then can make their own more local decisions about how to use those funds, ED funds can serve good purposes.
However, ED adds to these funding streams an ever-growing number of grant programs that, overall, divert taxpayer money either to no effect or to impose progressive political goals. While these programs only add some tens of billions annually to ED expenditures, ED also holds its larger disbursements hostage to compliance with its regulations and its lawsuits. Above all, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has steadily redefined the nature of Title IX and civil rights law, so that states and LEAs must either impose progressive political goals and create bureaucracies to implement them or be found to have violated Title IX or civil rights law.
For these reasons and more, the National Association of Scholars has drafted a detailed new report, Waste Land: The Education Department’s Profligacy, Mediocrity, and Radicalism, to shed light on the history of ED, its abuses of policy, and recommendations for a path forward. Our report’s evidence, and the long-term political dispositions of America’s citizenry, supports the reform of ED, but not its elimination.
This event features Peter W. Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars; David Randall, Research Director at the National Association of Scholars; and Teresa R. Manning, Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars.
Photo by Beck & Stone
