The Constitution gives the federal government no role in education and we managed very well without a federal Department of Education from the nation’s Founding until Jimmy Carter got Congress to create it. The Department mostly interferes with our schools and colleges by imposing education-blob notions and DEI policies on them.

Ronald Reagan said he wanted to eliminate the Department, but did not. Donald Trump has also said that he wants to eliminate it. Should he? That’s the question David Randall addresses in today’s Martin Center article.

He writes,

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) recommends in Waste Land: The Education Department’s Profligacy, Mediocrity, and Radicalism that education reformers enact comprehensive reform to simplify and depoliticize ED’s higher-education spending and regulations. This strategy will make ED transparent and accountable to the public and to policymakers. Reformers shouldn’t jeopardize real reform by a hasty attempt to eliminate ED entirely — which might be ineffective and certainly would alienate large swathes of the American public.

Randall details the harmful spending and programs that should be axed but recommends keeping some that are popular and seemingly beneficial. Crucially, the Department must be kept from acting as a conduit for toxic DEI ideology into our schools and colleges.

His conclusion: “This policy agenda should not be the end of federal postsecondary-education policy reform. But these practical goals will establish a solid foundation for even more ambitious education reform in the future.”

This would leave in place the blunder of federal financial aid, but maybe it’s best to whittle away at that in the future.