By Susan Ferrechio The Washington Times Tuesday, February 4, 2025

President Trump plans to shrink the size of government includes abolishing the Education Department, which spends $80 billion a year as student test scores plunge.

The department is under scrutiny following Mr. Trump’s campaign pledge to close the department and transfer some of its duties to other parts of the government. An executive order to diminish or shutter the department is in the works, although aides won’t provide details.

“The president plans to fulfill a campaign promise by reevaluating the future of the Department of Education,” a White House spokesperson said.

Critics say the department is riddled with redundancy and incompetence, and wastes hundreds of millions of dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion as well as initiatives that meddle with local autonomy over education.

President Carter created the department in 1979 in exchange for the endorsement of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union.

It passed Congress despite concerns that it would weaken local control of schools.

“The federal government is given only specific enumerated powers by the constitution. Education is not among them. So the federal government shouldn’t be involved in education, and it certainly shouldn’t have a Cabinet-level Department of Education,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Mr. McCluskey said the department doesn’t educate anyone.

“It mainly takes your money, burns some off in bureaucracy, then sends it back with strings attached,” he said.

The department has been the subject of intense criticism by congressional Republicans. At least two measures have been introduced to abolish it.

Without action by Congress, Mr. Trump can’t eliminate the department. He will likely move to strip some funding, grants and duties in a bid to weaken it and then demand lawmakers finish the job.

Mr. Trump called for a “virtual closure” of the department last month.

“We’re at the bottom of every list in terms of education, and we’re at the top of the list in terms of the cost per pupil,” Mr. Trump told Time Magazine in December. “We’ll spend half the money on a much better product.”

Education Department employees earn an average annual salary of about $113,000.

Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, authored the education section of Project 2025, a conservative policy initiative. She called for abolishing the Education Department and is glad Mr. Trump appears poised to try to do it.

“The fact is, it is a long-overdue push to downsize this agency, which has been wholly ineffective at achieving its stated mission,” Ms. Burke said.

The department’s rollout last year of a new federal student aid form was a glitch-filled disaster and left high school seniors facing unprecedented delays in finding out how much financial help they would receive to pay for college.

The department’s latest budget request, meanwhile, sought hundreds of millions of dollars for educational programs aimed at expanding DEI initiatives in public schools.

Mr. Trump, however, has ordered the removal of DEI programs from the entire federal government and the move has already sidelined dozens of Education Department employees.

Annual Education Department funding has hovered around $80 billion for the past several years.

In a 2021 report on staffing and salaries, officials said the department’s “programs and responsibilities have grown substantially over the past decade.” Much of it involves administering federal student aid and the $1.6 billion student loan program.

Federal funding made up about 8.5% of all primary and secondary school spending in 2021, which is the most recent year the department provided such data.

Federal spending on schools comes with red tape and special compliance rules. Local and state school officials spend millions of hours navigating federal requirements, and the Education Department subsequently spends millions of dollars on salary costs at state education departments for hiring employees needed to work with the federal Education Department.

“It’s almost like a parasitic relationship between the U.S. Department of Education and state education agencies,” Ms. Burke said.

Federal spending and intervention in education, meanwhile, hasn’t improved achievement. National Assessment of Education Progress testing in 2022 showed the largest decline ever in fourth- and eighth-grade math scores, while reading progress was stagnant. Only one-third of eighth graders nationally were found proficient in reading and math.

Many factors impact test scores outside of spending, but dismal student performance undercuts the argument that increasing federal spending at the Education Department has helped children learn.

“We are spending money and the scores have gone down,” Mr. McCluskey said.