Define Liberty: Abolish U.S. Department of Education

The U.S. Department of Education, officially established as a Cabinet-level agency by Congress in 1979, was created under President Jimmy Carter by the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88). It began operating on May 16, 1980.

Despite its extensive intentions to, according to the Department of Education:

establish policies on federal financial aid for education;

collect data on America's schools, and disseminate the research;

focus national attention on key educational issues; 

prohibit discrimination and ensure equal access to education

the Department was not necessarily created with the interest of education in mind. Mona Charen of the National Review argues:

The Department of Education was created as a straight political payoff to the teachers' union by Pres. Jimmy Carter (in return for their 1976 endorsement).

The Wall Street Journal confirmed the teachers' union influence, reporting that one House Democrat said in 1979:

The idea of an Education Department is a really bad one. But it's National Education Association's top priority. There are school teachers in every congressional district and most of us simply don't need the aggravation of taking them on.

Some even suspect the National Education Association wanted the Department of Education because of its potential to secure a large budget. Chester Finn, who served as assistant secretary of education from 1985 to 1988, observed:

Make no mistake about it, the principal reason the NEA and the administration wanted to elevate the Office of Education to a full-fledge department was to give it the political power and prestige to seek bigger budget increases for federal education programs.

The validity of the existence of a federal agency, such as the U.S. Department of Education, should be determined based on three criteria: cost, results, and constitutionality.

COST

The U.S. Department of Education's budget for 2011 was $69.9 billion (Budget Office). The budget in 2008 was approximately the same, at around $70 billion, having increased nearly five-hundred percent since 1980, when the budget was 14 billion.

Source: Department of Education, Project America

The Department of Education has also never produced budget savings nor a streamlining of federal education programs. The Cato Institute observed:

The department's budget has continually increased, from $14.5 billion in 1979 to $47.6 billion in 2002. [...] After its creation, federal spending increased at twice the rate it had before.

The U.S. Department of Education's budget for 2012 is $77.4 billion, an increase in $7.5 billion from the 2011 budget (Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Summary, U.S. Department of Education). And, with $3.729 trillion in outlays for 2012 (Wikipedia.org), the Department of Education's budget represents approximately 1.8% of the total federal budget. 

$77.4 billion represents a substantial share of taxpayer revenues. For example, Walmart reported total shareholders' equity of $68.5 billion in 2011, nearly nine billion dollars less than the Department's 2012 budget. 

Even if the Department costs billions of dollars per year, if it also creates an equivalent amount in social and educational value, the activities Department could remain defensible.

RESULTS

The Cato Institute reported:

The Department of Education and its nearly 5,000 employees have had virtually no positive effect on the performance of schools or the academic gains of school children. 

The Cato continued to point at the example:

The department's own national history report card issued in May 2002 found that only 43 percent of the nation's 12th graders had at least a basic understanding of U.S. history, unchanged from 1994, the last time the test was given.

For one group of students -- nine-year-olds, to be specific -- average student performance in reading did not practically increase from 1980 to 1999, despite annual budgets ranging from $15-20 billion.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics

In another case, the National Review observes:

All of this spending has done nothing to improve American education. Between 1973 and 2004, a period in which federal spending on education more than quadrupled, mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose just 1 percent for American 17-year-olds. Between 1971 and 2004, reading scores remained completely flat.

Source: Cato Institute, National Assessment of Education Progress

Even if the Department of Education were extremely effective, though, its existence would not be unconditionally valid. Former secretaries of education Lamar Alexander and William Bennett argue:

[The department has] an irresistible and uncontrollable impulse to stick its nose into areas where it has no proper business. Most of what it does today is no legitimate affair of the federal government. The Education Department operates from the deeply erroneous belief that American parents, teacher, communities and states are too stupid to raise their own children, run their own schools and make their own decisions.

The ultimate authority lies with the United States Constitution. 

CONSTITUTIONALITY

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People, United States Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on December 15, 1791, is considered a truism, a claim that is so obvious or self-evident that it is hardly worth mentioning. The Constitution was, after all, written to -- in and of itself -- provide a written account of the powers delegated to the federal government. In fact, in United States vs. Sprague (1931), the Supreme Court insisted the amendment "added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified."

The Constitution does not even mention education. Freedom Works notes:

The truth is that the federal government only has about thirty enumerated powers delegated to it in the Constitution. Education is not specifically listed in the document.

Therefore, according to the Tenth Amendment, this power is reserved to the States or to the people. According to the Cato Institute:  

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress no authority whatsoever to collect taxes for, fund, or operate schools. Therefore, under the Tenth Amendment, education should be entirely a state and local matter.

Roger Pilon, an American libertarian legal theorist, adds that the Framers of the Constitution never envisioned that the federal government would become involved in the funding of schools or mandating classroom policy. He writes:

From beginning to end the [Constitution] never mentioned the word 'education.' The people, in 1787 or since, have never given the federal government any power over the subject -- despite a concern for education that surely predates the Constitution.

Bottom line: "Congress should take the enlightened view, consistent with that of the nation's Founders, and draw a line in the sand that won't be crossed. Education is a matter reserved to the states, period." (Cato Institute) 
 
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