(CNSNews.com) -- House Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has re-introduced a bill to abolish the federal Department of Education, a goal that many conservatives have tried to achieve ever since the department was created in 1979 under then-President Jimmy Carter. 

Massie's bill, HR899, simply states, "The Department of Education shall terminate on Dec. 31, 2023." He first introduced the legislation in February 2017 and then again in 2021.

In a statement from 2021, Massie said, "Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development."

"States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students," he said. "Schools should be accountable. Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational opportunity for their children, including home school, public school, or private school."

In the statement, Massie quoted President Ronald Reagan from September 1981 when he said, "There's only one way to shrink the size and cost of big government, and that is by eliminating agencies that are not needed and are getting in the way of a solution. Now, we don't need an Energy Department to solve our basic energy problem. As long as we let the forces of the marketplace work without undue interference, the ingenuity of consumers, business, producers, and inventors will do that for us."

"Similarly, education is the principal responsibility of local school systems, teachers, parents, citizen boards, and State governments," said Reagan.  "By eliminating the Department of Education less than two years after it was created, we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”

Today, the Department of Education employs approximately 4,400 people and has an annual budget of $68 billion. 

According to a Pew Research Center report from 2017, for 15-year-old students, the U.S. placed "an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science."

"Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science," reported Pew. 

In another test for math and science, "10 countries (out of 48 total) had statistically higher average fourth-grade math scores than the U.S., while seven countries had higher average science scores," said Pew. "In the eighth-grade tests, seven out of 37 countries had statistically higher average math scores than the U.S., and seven had higher science scores."

In mathematics, the U.S. ranked 38th, below such countries as Singapore, Taiwan, Estonia, Canada, Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Slovenia, Poland, Vietnam, Russia, Iceland, Latvia, Malta, and Hungary. (See chart below.)