This afternoon the Trump administration announced its latest move to dismantle the US Department of Education. As I have explained for decades, the department is unconstitutional, unhelpful, and needs to go. How close does today’s action get us to where we need to go?
It goes in the right direction. Basically, it sends day-to-day work in six areas out of the Education Department and puts it in other agencies:
- Elementary and Secondary Education to the Department of Labor
- Postsecondary Education to Labor
- Indian Education to the Department of the Interior
- Foreign Medical Accreditation to the Department of Health and Human Services
- Child Care Access Means Parents in School to Health and Human Services
- International Education and Foreign Language Studies to the State Department
This is a hot take because each one of these moves has more details than the basic transfer, details I still have to dive into. But the idea of moving Education Department functions elsewhere makes sense, especially things like Indian education to the Interior Department, which already houses the Bureau of Indian Education.
The moves also appear to adhere to the Constitution and the law. There is, of course, an argument that the department is unconstitutional and, hence, the president could refuse to operate it. But the administration has not made that argument, saying that ultimately Congress, which is the legislative body, created the department, gave it many of its jobs, and must act to eliminate it. With that in mind, the administration is not flat-out eliminating functions but is creating interagency agreements that leave the Education Department in charge but give regular operations to other agencies. No doubt the legality of this will be tested—there will almost certainly be lawsuits—but there does seem to be substantial leeway for the Secretary of Education to enter into partnerships with other executive departments.
Of course, this is not the same as ending the Department of Education or federal education intervention. The Education Department still retains many functions, most notably administering college student aid, and is still officially responsible for all of the operations that it is, essentially, contracting out. So bureaucracy will remain, and the Constitution will continue to be violated.
There is much more work to be done.