February 7, 2025

BETSY DEVOS: Shut Down the Department of Education.

I can understand how that idea, which President Donald Trump is committed to advancing, might sound a bit radical. But having spent four years on the inside as secretary of education, struggling to get the department’s bureaucracy to make even the smallest changes to put the needs of students first, I can say conclusively that American students will be better off without.

Nothing could be more important to our success as a nation than having well-educated citizens. But don’t be fooled by the name: the Department of Education has almost nothing to do with actually educating anyone.

The Department of Education does not run a single school. It does not employ any teachers in a single classroom. It doesn’t set academic standards or curriculum. It isn’t even the primary funder of education—quite the opposite. In most states, the federal government represents less than 10 percent of K–12 public education funding.

So what does it do? It shuffles money around; adds unnecessary requirements and political agendas via its grants; and then passes the buck when it comes time to assess if any of that adds value.

Here’s how it works: Congress appropriates funding for education; last year, it totaled nearly $80 billion. The department’s bureaucrats take in those billions, add strings and red tape, peel off a percentage to pay for themselves, and then send it down to state education agencies. Many of them do a version of the same and then send it to our schools. The schools must then pay first for administrators to manage all the requirements that have been added along the way. After all that, the money makes it to the classroom to help a student learn—maybe.

In other words, the Department of Education is functionally a middleman. And like most middlemen, it doesn’t add value. It merely adds cost and complexity.

The only certain benefactor of the DOE’s existence is its patron saint: the teachers unions. After all, it was the endorsement of President Jimmy Carter by the biggest teachers union—the National Education Association—that gave us a federal education department in the first place. That original sin explains much of what’s transpired since.

We all know how unacceptable the situation is in K–12. But the results aren’t much better in higher education.

Consider the colossal fiasco the Biden administration made of FAFSA, the college financial aid form. Every parent of a college-aged student is painfully aware of the mess this became—as a result of a congressional order in 2021 to simplify the form, no less. The prior administration screwed it up so badly that even Sen. Bernie Sanders was left with no choice but to criticize them.

Simultaneously, the agency focused on “canceling” student loans, despite being told explicitly by the Supreme Court that its schemes were plainly illegal. A department so brazenly willing to defy the rule of law and the separation of powers is one whose existence should most certainly be reevaluated.

These financial and operational calamities alone make the case to shutter the department. But closing down the DOE would also bring an end—at long last—to federal ideological intrusion.

Which is why, to revise and extend the remarks made by the honorable Gov. William J. Le Petomane, Democrats want to protect their phony-baloney jobs there at all costs: Dept of Ed to Maxine: I Hear You Knockin’ But You Can’t Come In; UPDATE: DOE Responds.

Hey, for once I agree with Maxine Waters! The federal bureaucracy has grown unresponsive and inaccessible. The only solution is to shut it all down now!

Wait … was Waters trying to defend the Department of Education with this stunt? What in the world …?

* * * * * * * *

In the first place, members of Congress are not law enforcement. They do not have the authority to demand someone’s ID. In this clip, it’s very clear that the ‘federal employee’ has already identified himself once for Waters’ stunt; what was the point of having other members of Congress — again, who have no authority to demand identification — to repeat that demand for each member there?

And for that matter, what’s the point of haranguing a low-level employee over administration policy?

“Are you making this decision to stand in front of the store on your own behalf, on behalf of the Department of Education, or were you told to come out here and block members of Congress,” Frost asked the stone-faced security guard to which he simply replied, “I’m doing my job.”

That’s practically a “Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s” moment. And besides, is it not the position of these House Democrats that they want to defend the rank and file of the Department of Education? They are claiming that Donald Trump is abusing his authority by terminating tens of thousands of bureaucrats, all of whom probably have more authority than this hapless security guard targeted by Waters for her rage.

Instead, all these Democrats did was paint that bureaucracy as unaccountable and unresponsive, even to elected officials. That is exactly what Republicans have argued all along, which is why Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling that bureaucracy. And the fact that Democrats really can’t do anything about it except rage for the cameras is clearly driving them crazy.

Which is why:

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, Tony Kinnett of the Daily Signal tweets. “Three years ago, Democrats wanted to hear NOTHING from parents concerned about their kids’ schools. They sent the FBI after parents. Now they’re claiming to represent them. Hilarious.”

As America’s Newspaper of Record notes: Country With Record Illiteracy Worried What Will Happen If Education System Reformed.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll