The Education Department will move multiple parts of the agency to other federal departments, reports The Washington Post. It’s going to disappear into other agencies like USAID.
This is through sources and is probably lacking in some accuracy.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March seeking to close the department and asked Education Secretary Linda McMahon to work with Congress to do so. The agency, which was created in 1979, has long been derided by conservatives as unnecessary and ineffective. But Congress has not acted on or seriously considered Trump’s request.
McMahon has acknowledged that only Congress can eliminate the department but vowed to do everything in her power to dismantle it from within.
The department has signed interagency agreements to outsource six programs to other agencies, including offices that administer $28 billion in grants to K-12 schools and $3.1 billion for programs that help students finish college.
The administration hopes this will lead to eliminating the department completely. Some argue it’s illegal and it’s more efficient to have all departments in one place.
However, centralizing it helps build its bureaucratic power.
The Education Department was Jimmy Carter’s gift to the teacher’s union. It receives a lot of money that is doled out to partisan allies while passing unfunded mandates to school districts in a dictatorial manner.
Offices that could be moved out of the agency include the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates allegations of discrimination on the basis of race, sex and disability; the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which administers the $15 billion Individuals with Disabilities Act program and the Indian Education program; the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers K-12 grant programs; and the Office of Postsecondary Education.
Federal law directs that these programs be housed in the Education Department. The Trump administration is employing a work-around, the people briefed on the matter said, whereby other government agencies would run the Education programs under a contract with the Education Department. The groundwork was laid out earlier this year.
McMahon: “It’s Not Working”
“The Department of Education was set up in 1980 — and since that time, we have spent almost almost a trillion dollars and we have watched our performance scores continue to go down,” says Education Secretary-designate Linda McMahon. “It’s not working.”
As a school administrator, I found it took the tax money and the obstructed success.
More broadly, McMahon has argued that the recently ended government shutdown showed how unnecessary her agency is.
“Students kept going to class. Teachers continued to get paid. There were no disruptions in sports seasons or bus routes,” she wrote. “The shutdown proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.
I don’t know if the shutdown proved it, but the department is worse than useless.
Men will not heed! Yet were I not prepared with better refuge for them, tongue of mine should ne’er reveal how blank their dwelling is; I would sit down in silence with the rest. ― Paracelsus. One could hope that they would consider reorganizing what resources they do have and using them for practical real life education as a means… Read more »