Featured Article: “Scholars Applaud Department of Education Break Up”

The news that the United States Department of Education (ED) has announced a six-agency partnership to break up the federal bureaucracy plaguing American education has sparked some pre-holiday joy for those of us at the National Association of Scholars (NAS).
 

NAS has worked tirelessly over the years to combat the spread of bureaucracy into our education system. Our efforts to restore merit, accountability, and intellectual freedom, and to promote virtuous citizenship—all things that American education should prioritize, but on the whole does not—have not gone unnoticed. 
 

The announcement last week out of the ED seems like a step in the right direction with the creation of six interagency agreements (IAAs) between four agencies—the Department of Labor (DOL), Department of the Interior (DOI), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Department of State—to oversee key ED operations. The purpose of this decision? As the ED puts it, to “streamline federal education activities on the legally required programs, reduce administrative burdens, and refocus programs and activities to better serve students and grantees,” with the ultimate goal of returning education to the states. To give a quick breakdown of the new system:
 

• The DOL will oversee elementary, secondary, and postsecondary operations via partnership with the ED.
• The ED and DOI will establish the Indian Education Partnership, in an effort to improve Native American education.
• HHS and the ED will establish the Foreign Medical Accreditation Partnership and the Child Care Access Means Parents in School, which are both self-explanatory.
• And, the ED and State Department will establish the International Education and Foreign Language Studies Partnership, specifically to streamline efficiency for “programs administered under the Fulbright-Hays grant.”

Note that while these reform efforts by the ED span across K-12 and higher education, two key areas of ED operations do not appear to have been placed in an IAA and will need to be addressed—i.e., Federal Student Aid and Special Education programs. 
 

While it cannot be said for certain if the Trump administration took inspiration to break up the ED under IAAs from any one source, it is worth noting, as our recent statement says, that “the transfer of these operations to parts of the federal government better suited to their management was a major theme of our report, Waste Land: The Education Department's Profligacy, Mediocrity, and Radicalism"—which we published in February of this year. In Waste Land, the report authors recommend eliminating or transferring the ED’s 200-plus programs into simpler and more accountable forms—much like what the ED is currently doing. See the Roadmap to Reform and Policy Recommendations sections of the report for more details. 
 

It is likely that the administration will receive pushback on the decision to begin splitting up the ED via IAAs—likely through federal injunctions, possible non-cooperation from state education authorities, or even legislative vetoes. The ED’s work is not done, nor is that of education reformers. The government should “now focus on the long haul of rescinding each individual ED program.” As we always say, for measures like this to stick, they must pass through Congress as legislation and be enacted into law. Or perhaps the Trump administration should take former ED official Adam Kissel’s recommendations to heart: detailing much of the ED’s legal and accounting staff to the new agencies to make it difficult for future administrations to extricate said staff back into a broken ED system; and expanding contracts with private contractors to do ED’s business. “When public-private partnerships are designed well, they can give private contractors the right incentives to maximize quality and efficiency and minimize principal–agent problems,” says Kissel.
 

In any case, dismantling or outsourcing ED programs and personnel is getting the ball rolling to fully dismantle the Department of Education and give education back to the states. 
 

Given the time of year, there are other recent education reform wins that we are grateful for. The Archimedes Standards, NAS and Freedom in Education’s Model PreK-12 State Mathematics Standards, were used to inform South Dakota’s proposed new Mathematics Standards. NAS urges South Dakota’s citizens and policymakers to enact this legislation in an effort to revitalize the state’s mathematics program for students. Additionally, Florida’s Department of Education has announced new K-12 History of Communism Social Studies Standards, which were informed by NAS and the Civics Alliance’s History of Communism Standards. This was first and foremost made possible by the state’s legislature and Governor DeSantis signing into law Senate Bill 1264, which established the Standards. 
 

We are always pleased to discover that our work informs, directly or indirectly, other education reform efforts around the nation—this is why we do what we do.
 

I’ll sign off by saying, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! We at NAS hope you have a joyous and restful holiday weekend with loved ones, reflecting on what you are grateful for in your life. 
 

Until next week.

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