If you listen to the education establishment, you would think that America’s education system is about to collapse now that the Supreme Court has confirmed the president’s authority to cut positions in agencies and departments he oversees, including the Department of Education.
You would think that this department was responsible for improving educational outcomes throughout the nation. In fact, this department has proven itself to be just a big wasteful bureaucracy that swallows taxpayer dollars into a black hole without raising student performance in the slightest.
President Trump and other critics in the past have maintained that the $250 billion-plus expended every year on bureaucrats in this department could be better allocated to the states or parents, allowing them the freedom to send their children to better-performing schools.
The department was created during the Carter administration as a political payoff to the teachers unions after they supported him. Over the years, that bureaucracy grew and grew, despite the fact that educational decisions and funding stem from the state and local governments.
Our tax dollars were used to feed over 4,000 employees at this agency, with very little to show for it. Over the decades since the department was created, funding to education has gone through the roof while student test scores have remained flat or actually declined.
The department sends some money to local schools, but overall it provides only about 10% of an average school’s funding. That money could be granted to the schools through block grants to the states, or, better yet, given to parents so that they can use that money to implement a true school choice program.
The establishment objecting to this redirecting of funds is not concerned about children; they’re concerned about maintaining their own power.