We got by just fine without one until Jimmy Carter paid back the teachers unions for their support by creating the U.S. Department of Education in 1979. Since then, it has done nothing to improve education. Its numerous diktats have actually made things worse in schools and colleges. Ronald Reagan talked about abolishing it, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

This year, calls for the elimination of the department have arisen again. And that prompted Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan to attack the idea of getting rid of it as “absurd” and “dangerous.” In a strong counterattack, Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey argues here that the Department is worse than useless.

A slice:

Finally, just think of how fed ed works: The federal government takes money from taxpayers either today or in the future, hires thousands of people to tie rules and regulations to it— including some advancing highly controversial, values-laden policies—then returns what is left of the money with the rules and regs attached. That is hardly an efficient, or pluralism-respecting, way to deliver education.

The Department of Education is another of the many levers that statists use to increase government control and decrease our freedom. As McCluskey points out, the Constitution gives the federal government no role at all in education. We ought to start moving back to that point right now.