History Review

The Department of Education has been failing for decades:

In 2023, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report said there had been no return on investment in the Department of Education between 1980 and 2022, as the agency’s budget grew to $80 billion and reading and math scores across the nation declined. Moreover, the report said, 41 percent of its funding went to state education agencies instead of classrooms. A “shadow department” of 48,000 workers at the state level—or 10 times more workers than the federal agency employs—were employed to keep up with the paperwork burden imposed by federal mandates. The report also criticized the Democrats’ “disparate impact” policy that prioritized racial parity for school discipline and discouraged the use of detentions, suspensions, and expulsions. “Getting the federal government out of the business of dictating school district policy is a good start,” Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, wrote. Poor test scores in the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress report, coupled with disappointing results in international standardized assessments for high school students, further ignited the Republican flame for eliminating the Department of Education. .... Democrats today have not attempted to refute Republican arguments about stagnant or decreasing academic performance, despite massive federal spending since 1980. However, they maintain that the agency has provided critical services, protections, and a pathway to college for special needs students and those from low-income communities who would be further marginalized without its assistance. Robinson said while the Department of Education has yet to show a return on investment, he believes that it is not a total failure, filling a need as a “one-stop shop in D.C. and a place to call with questions.” “It was never meant to increase student achievement,” he said. “It didn’t fail on something it was not created to do.”

It was an honest failure...