By: Jim Blew, Co-founder of the Protection of Freedom Institute
Over its 45-year historical past, the U.S. Division of Training has persistently elevated its energy over American Ok-12 training. Then, on March 20, 2025, President Trump ordered the tip of Training Division dominance, issuing an government order entitled “Bettering Training Outcomes by Empowering Mother and father, States, and Communities.” As Secretary McMahon has mentioned, it’s time for the Division to start its closing mission and shift energy again to states, native communities, and households.
Many People have expressed concern that eliminating the cabinet-level forms will strand Ok-12 lecturers and college students with out assets or help. However these worries are based mostly on misunderstandings about what the Division truly does for Ok-12 training, and what it doesn’t do. Because the forms will get dismantled, it’s price unpacking the Division’s function—and why American training might be higher off when it’s gone.
The Division Doesn’t Management College Curriculum
One widespread misunderstanding is that the federal Division determines tutorial requirements, curriculum, and instruction in public colleges. That isn’t the case. These are state and native obligations. Actually, federal regulation explicitly prohibits the Division from any “route, supervision, or management” of curriculum or instruction.
People would possibly understandably assume the Division does set curriculum, as a result of they bear in mind how the Obama Administration nudged states to undertake the Frequent Core State Requirements utilizing monetary and regulatory incentives. These requirements regrettably led many districts to undertake unpopular curriculum and tutorial strategies. The ensuing outcry led Congress to bolster its prohibitions towards the Division influencing curriculum.
Whereas the Division doesn’t affect curriculum and instruction, it does complement the cash spent on native colleges, focusing on economically deprived college students and college students with disabilities. Even after Congress eliminates the Division, it would actually proceed to applicable funds for these college students.
The Division Doesn’t Recruit or Pay Academics
One other false impression: instructor shortages are the federal authorities’s fault. However the federal Division performs no function in certifying lecturers, hiring them, or setting their salaries and advantages. All of that’s finished by states and native districts; they make the on a regular basis guidelines for Ok-12 educators and employees.
Congress has requested the Division to handle one program aimed toward elevating instructor high quality and effectiveness, costing about $2 billion yearly. Most of this ESEA Title II-A cash has gone towards typical skilled growth applications, though Congress does permit districts to make use of the funds in different methods. Sadly, Title II-A applications haven’t improved instructor effectiveness a lot, if in any respect.
If Congress needs to get higher outcomes for its Title II appropriation, they may roll it right into a block grant and let states use the funds to enhance pupil outcomes as they assume finest. Or, in the event that they need to proceed sequestering some funds for addressing instructor effectiveness, Congress may divide the quantity amongst each instructor within the nation as a stipend and, treating them like professionals, allow them to determine for themselves the best way to put money into skilled growth. We don’t want an Training Division forms for both of these approaches.
It Doesn’t Mandate Vaccines
A persistent misunderstanding is that the Division of Training mandates well being insurance policies reminiscent of vaccines for college students and educators. Lately, for instance, CNN’s Dana Bash, in an interview of Secretary McMahon, implied that the Secretary was one way or the other answerable for whether or not colleges and schools require sure vaccines for college students with particular wants.
Vaccine necessities are a state and county matter and are set by boards of well being, not the Division of Training. Different federal companies do present recommendation to state and native governments, however they depend on these native companies to handle well being responses. That is good apply, each governmentally and epidemiologically, on condition that native context issues and ailments can influence numerous areas otherwise.
Once more, prior Division officers may need precipitated misunderstandings about their function in well being coverage. President Biden’s Secretary of Training Miguel Cardona, for instance, vocally advocated for state mandates compelling COVID-19 vaccines for all youngsters. His heavy-handed method mirrored President Biden’s sweeping government order on COVID-19 vaccines, which required 100 million People to get vaccinated, whereas he pressed governors to mandate vaccines for all lecturers. These aggressive ways sowed confusion concerning the statutory function of the Training Division.
If college students want a vaccine or different kind of well being intervention, native well being officers could make that willpower. It’s not, and shouldn’t be, the job of the Division of Training to set vaccine schedules.
Why Dismantle the Division?
Even once we make clear what the Division doesn’t do, we’re nonetheless left with the query of what it does do, and whether or not it’s wanted or useful.
Like most training reformers, I used to be as soon as hopeful {that a} muscular federal Division would possibly assist enhance American training. I clung to that hope by means of Democrat and Republican administrations. However none of my hopes ended up enhancing pupil efficiency or life outcomes. No matter hope I had for a constructive federal function vanished because the Biden Administration weaponized the Division to pursue political targets—ones that had little or nothing to do with enhancing pupil outcomes or making ready college students for fulfilling careers.
On reflection, it’s simple to see why the Division grew to become a counter-productive pressure in Ok-12 training. Over time, Congress and the Division tied increasingly more strings to funding, burdening our various states, 14,000 college districts, and greater than 100,000 colleges.
These strings have turn into a expensive distraction from the core objective of training college students. States and districts employed extra non-instructional employees to fulfill the federal necessities, and the Division scaled as much as monitor states and districts. The underlying assumption was that district and college leaders can’t be trusted to make use of the funds as supposed.
As President Trump strikes towards dismantling the federal Division of Training, he’s expressing belief in states and native educators. The President, Secretary McMahon, and I imagine our native educators will do extra because the federal authorities does much less. Let’s give states and native communities the prospect to show it, for the sake of our college students.
Jim Blew is co-founder of the Protection of Freedom Institute, which promotes training freedom, civil rights, and a restricted federal function in training. He previously served as Assistant Secretary of Training for Planning, Analysis, and Coverage Growth.
