Are you old enough to remember Ross Perot famously asking in 1992, “Can you hear that giant sucking sound? That’s the sound of job losses to Mexico if the U.S. ratifies NAFTA.”
Perot’s “sucking sound” doesn’t nearly compare to the tornadic sound of billions of dollars being whisked out of the taxpayers’ wallets into the Department of Education’s (ED) coffers. Apparently, President Donald Trump has heard that sound too.
“We’re ranked number one in cost per pupil, so we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we’re ranked at the bottom of the list,” Trump said. “We’re ranked very badly. And what I want to do is let the states run schools.”
So, should Trump and his minions take a wrecking ball to the Deptartment of Education, or is the ED sacrosanct having served us reasonably well since its inception? I suggest a brief cost/benefit analysis may help answer the question: Should the ED be in charge of our dough?
Founded by a congressional act in 1979, the ED began with a modest budget of 14.2 billion that swelled to $268.35 billion in 2024. Presently, that’s 4% of the federal budget. Combined with each state’s financial contributions, average expenditure per student comes in around $20,000 each year.
That’s the cost; so, what are the benefits?
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the most common metric for evaluating student progress, reported that based on 2024 reading scores 33% of eighth-graders scored below basic-reading (remember, this is “basic,” not “proficiency”), the largest percentage of failures since 1969 when this exam was first introduced. Fourth-graders didn’t do much better: roughly 40% were below basic, the lowest scores in 20 years.
Perhaps mathematics is a brighter spot? Not really. Fourth-graders improved slightly from 35% proficiency in 2022 to 39% proficiency in 2024. However, eighth-graders remained “intellectually uninvolved,” by stagnating at 27% proficiency in 2024. It’s safe to say we don’t have a bumper crop of rocket scientists or physicists coming up.
Clearly, the costs of public education have provided few, if any benefits. Even homeschoolers, whose parents generally have no formal theory of education training, score better than public school students.
Critics who call for dismantling the ED point to a bloated bureaucracy that wastes money on administrative costs, political favoritism, duplication of programs, corruption, funding used to promote ideologies such as CRT, DEI, and social emotional learning, and, to a great extent, incompetency. Each of these areas needs a serious DOGE examination.
So, do we completely dismantle the Department of Education? Or perhaps a better solution is to follow what the new ED director, Linda McMahon, suggested in her testimony before Congress:
“It is not the president’s goal to defund the programs, it’s only to have it operate more efficiently,’’ and “return education to the states.”
Not to do so, I believe, would be like asking Planned Parenthood to host a baby shower.
Barry Nowlin is a retired English professor from the University of South Alabama. He presently works as an Uber driver for his two grandkids.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.
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