The U.S. Department of Education doesn't educate anyone, writes Betsy DeVoss on The Free Press. It takes in taxpayers' money, "adds unnecessary requirements and political agendas," and passes some of it to the states.
"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 it," DeVos writes.
Last year, the department was allocated nearly $80 billion, she write. It keeps some to pay the bureaucrats and sends the rest to state education agencies, which keep some for themselves, and send the rest to the schools. (Federal funding makes up about 10 percent of school budgets.) "The schools must then pay first for administrators to manage all the requirements that have been added along the way," she writes. What's left goes to help students learn, "maybe."
Achievement gaps are widening in K-12 schools, DeVos writes. Higher education isn't doing much better. Federal management of student financial aid and loans has been a disaster.
Devos has a proposal. Congress would send education funding to states and schools as a no-strings block grant, and offer education funding directly to families who want a choice of schools.
That means the federal government couldn't order schools to teach patriotism, or deny funding to schools that teach critical race or gender theory. Those decisions would be up to the states -- or to parents who use school choice to exit the system.
"The responsibility for enforcing civil rights law" — from preventing discrimination to protecting students with disabilities — should go to the Department of Justice, she writes.
Finally, she writes, "put the student loan program in the hands of bankers, not education bureaucrats, ideally at actual financial institutions, or at minimum, under the purview of the Department of Treasury." Without the perception of "free government money," colleges wouldn't have an incentive to keep raising tuition.
Adam Ellwanger proposes a radical solution: Get the government out of the student loan business, and require students to score in the top third on a national competency exam to be eligible for a government-subsidized college loan. Others could use federally subsidized vocational programs.
It would cause chaos, writes Ellwanger, a rhetoric and writing professor at the University of Houston -- Downtown. Colleges would close. He thinks it would be worth it.
Update: Nativists, including the KKK, led the drive for federal control of education in the early 20th century, writes Phillip Hamburger in the Wall Street Journal.
They wanted to teach American and Protestant values to Catholic immigrants, writes Stephanie Slade in Reason. "We will grind out Americans like meat out of a grinder," KKK leader Hiram Evans said in 1923.
It makes no sense to claim that poor students would benefit from doing away with Pell Grants and Title I funding of school districts with low property values and poor students.
Funny how the "fascists" keep trying to make government smaller. It's as if the whole definition of fascist was twisted around to meet political necessity rather than being genuine. Hard to wrap your head around, really.