In what appears to be a real-world version of “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump has told 1,300 people working for the U.S. Education Department, “You’re fired.”
The president followed up those abrupt layoffs by issuing an executive order to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”
I don’t claim to be an expert on the ins and outs of the Education Department, and maybe some of those 1,300 jobs were expendable, but taking a hatchet to the department seems designed to maximize the drama by painting the federal education bureaucracy as a scapegoat for all the shortcomings in U.S. schools and universities.
But the case put forth to justify the action has been less than persuasive. The Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution says the executive order seeking to shut down the Education “is misleading and omits important context.”
The executive order asserts that the department has been “controlling American education through federal programs and dollars.” But the Brown Center points out that the federal role in education is narrowly defined—"namely providing funding, enforcing federal civil rights law, and facilitating research and development.”
“Federal law explicitly prohibits the federal government from exerting control over school curriculum, operations, or staffing,” the Brown Center says.
The executive order describes the department as an entrenched bureaucracy that has “sought to convince America that federal control over education is beneficial.”
But the Brown Center notes that the overwhelming majority of K-12 education functions are controlled by state and local agencies.
“Except for schools operated by the Department of Defense or Bureau of Indian Education, all other K-12 public school teachers are employees of state agencies or authorized affiliates,” the Brown Center says. The Education Department “does not set teacher licensure requirements, staffing levels, or compensation schedules; rather, these are state and local functions.”
The executive order also contends that “closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.”
But the Brown Center argues that the order “takes liberties to present U.S. student performance in a particularly (and misleadingly) negative light.”
It notes that test data show gains in student performance, across multiple grades and subjects, from the 1970s until the present day (despite concerning declines over the last few years).
In any case, connecting student performance to the Education Department’s functions is a stretch.
“It would be extremely difficult to identify the effects of the U.S. Department of Education, itself, on student learning,” the Brown Center says. “We don’t know of any rigorous studies that claim to do so.”
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About the Author
Mike Kennedy
Senior Editor
Mike Kennedy has been writing about education for American School & University since 1999. He also has reported on schools and other topics for The Chicago Tribune, The Kansas City Star, The Kansas City Times and City News Bureau of Chicago. He is a graduate of Michigan State University.