New York, NY; February 11, 2025—The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has launched a new report, Waste Land—The Education Department’s Profligacy, Mediocrity, and Radicalism. The report details the Department of Education’s (ED) long and controversial history, its weaponization by bureaucrats and policymakers over the years, and its current state of affairs. A key question explored in this report is one asked by many—what does ED actually do?
“ED has grown like mold on the walls of a flood-ravaged house,” said NAS President Peter W. Wood. “With each new administration, with each new Congress, more and more responsibilities were heaped upon it. As the directives have heaped upon each other, rarely has anyone stopped to sort through the damage and take account of what should remain, what should go, and plan for a much-needed renovation.”
ED has grown exponentially, much to its detriment. From its beginnings under the Carter administration to today’s bloated department, ED has shown it cannot fulfill its primary purpose—disbursing funds to students and local education agencies. The four primary areas of ED responsibility include handling Title I funds for disadvantaged K-12 students, distributing special education funds for mentally and physically disabled students, disbursing Pell Grants to disadvantaged postsecondary students, and granting direct student loans to postsecondary students.
“This sounds all well and good, but these funds rarely make it to students, states, and postsecondary institutions without steep subtractions. Much of the money disappears into red tape or arrives with socially engineered directives,” said NAS Director of Policy Teresa Manning. “ED has created an ever-growing number of grant programs that divert taxpayer funds to the imposition of progressive political agendas.”
Can ED be reformed? Or must it be abolished? Waste Land proposes reforming ED in the short term, splitting off some functions to other federal agencies, and setting the stage for its eventual abolition.
NAS began its work on this report in Spring 2024 to help the American people fix ED. The report builds on nearly a decade of NAS work on the numerous flaws, defects, and transgressions built into the department. In the past, NAS critiqued the misapplication of Title IX; examined the Department’s advocacy of gender ideology, DEI, Common Core, and racial preferences; and scrutinized student financial aid, accreditation, and foreign influence. In general, ED has been captured by the educational establishment, teachers unions, and special interests on campus, and has been prey to faddish nostrums and an impulse to confuse education with therapy.
“As we launch this report, the new administration has begun vigorous efforts to overhaul the federal government, including the Education Department,” Wood declared. “NAS is delighted to see the attention the new administration is paying to education. We hope that Waste Land will assist the reformers in what we might call their seek and destroy mission, but in any case their effort to restore sanity to the federal role in education.”
Waste Land reviews hundreds of programs and provides recommendations for each. Many programs ought to be eliminated. Others ought to be merged or migrated to Health and Human Services or other departments better suited to the task. These recommendations can be accomplished by administrative action, or better yet, legislative initiative.
The report also asks, “How do ED’s initiatives affect ordinary schools and the students who attend those schools?” To answer this question, report authors Neetu Arnold, Mason Goad, and Teresa R. Manning visited school districts in urban Philadelphia, suburban Virginia, and rural Ohio. These three case studies found that in each district, ED’s policies make the work of educating harder and force progressive ideology on students and teachers.
“ED is so sprawling and complex that no casual observer—or educational reporter—can tell what it is doing or whether it does its job well,” noted NAS Director of Research David Randall. “Our recommendations aim to simplify its operations so that it can become transparent and accountable to citizens and policymakers.”
Wood concluded, “The Department of Education has been a costly burden on the American people, not merely in its outrageous expense but also in its 45 years of diversion from and destruction of sound educational principles.”
NAS is a network of scholars and citizens united by a commitment to academic freedom, disinterested scholarship, and excellence in American higher education. Membership in NAS is open to all who share a commitment to these broad principles. NAS publishes a journal and has state and regional affiliates. Visit NAS at www.nas.org.
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If you would like more information about this issue, please contact Chance Layton at [email protected].
Photo by Beck & Stone
