With an executive order this week, President Trump is delivering on his campaign promise to shut down the federal Department of Education and return education authority to the states.
Good riddance.
The Education Department was not created to help students learn, but to deliver on a political deal between President Jimmy Carter and the teachers unions who helped him get elected.
In four and half decades, the department squandered $3 trillion and imposed mandates that created hidden costs for state and local taxpayers, all while failing to raise student achievement.
The nation’s reading scores reached new lows last year, despite an extra $190 billion in federal largesse, while teachers report worsening morale.
Americans are ready for a new direction. The latest Gallup survey of public views on 31 aspects of the country found public education ranked 29th—worse than crime, taxes or immigration.
Nearly three in four Americans are dissatisfied with the state of public education, and they know improvements won’t come from Washington.
In just a few weeks, Linda McMahon has shown why she was uniquely qualified to serve as the nation’s last Education Secretary.
She used her corporate restructuring experience to root out redundant departments, like six separate offices of strategic communications.
But she also shined a light on a deeper problem. Only a fraction of the department’s more than 4,300 employees were performing essential functions required to fulfill its legal obligations.
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In other words, the department wasn’t helping teachers teach or students learn. It was running a jobs program for highly-paid government employees.
Tellingly, protests of the department’s downsizing have been far louder in Washington and from union bosses than among parents, teachers or school leaders across the country.
McMahon and her team have handled the much-needed downsizing with compassion.
They have been clear about their intentions since they took charge. And they offered employees multiple opportunities to leave their jobs with severance packages far more generous than private sector workers could ever expect.
As the department winds down, we will soon discover the education department’s most important work can be performed more effectively by others.
Student loans will be better managed by private sector lenders who know how to deliver efficient customer service.
Civil rights enforcement will be stronger—and less politicized—if it's backed by the full weight of the Justice Department and focused on protecting students, rather than turning schools and universities into culture war battlefields.
And state leaders are in a better position than Washington bureaucrats to decide where to spend the money that federal law sets aside for low-income and special needs students.
If President Trump manages to roll back a political deal that created an agency that’s accomplished little over half a century besides slowing students’ progress and wasting taxpayer money, it will be an important cornerstone of his legacy.
Next up: the capstone.
Pushing education authority out of Washington and back to the states is an important first step. But the ultimate authority in education lies with parents.
That means helping states repurpose their federal funding to ensure all families have school choice. And it means urging Congress to pass a tax credit that will make school choice available in all 50 states.
Just a few months back in office, Donald Trump is well on his way to cementing his status as America’s school choice president.
Erika Donalds is the Chair of America First Policy Institute Center for Education Opportunity.
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