Does Team Trump have what it takes to flunk the Department of Education bully? Donald Trump has yet to be sworn in as the next president, but his administration — in addition to the work of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy through the Department of Government Efficiency — is already working to transform the status quo in Washington politics.

As Musk and Ramaswamy wrote last month in The Wall Street Journal, “The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.”

They have their work cut out for them. Republicans have promised to reduce government waste and bureaucracy for decades, only to make government larger and the bureaucracy less accountable to the people and their elected officials.

In 1982, for example, President Ronald Reagan called for eliminating the Department of Education, which his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had created. Reagan’s bold call to action sparked some debate, but the effort to return education policymaking to the states, unfortunately, ran out of steam.

In fiscal 2024, the Department of Education’s budget exceeded $241 billion, with nearly $180 billion of that amount directed toward the Federal Student Aid program. Today, American college students are saddled with nearly $2 trillion in debt, often now being paid for by taxpayers, many of whom never went to college.

Still, when politicians discuss closing the DOE, Americans don’t think about the college loan program. Instead, millions of parents believe their schools will run out of books and supplies, teachers will not be paid, and the process of teaching and learning will end.

Those who want the DOE shut down have pointed to various statistics over the years showing how American education has suffered since its inception. Leftists, on the other hand, claim it has unassailable merit.

A recent post on Instagram claiming America went from first to 24th in education after Carter created the Department of Education was retweeted by Elon Musk and nearly 100,000 others. USA Today “fact-checked” the claim and reported, “There isn’t a definitive way to rank a country’s education quality, but multiple studies show results contrary to the trend claimed in the post.”

Similarly, after looking at ranking claims from both sides, Snopes concluded, “There is no definitive source to confirm the U.S.‘s current standing. It is also unclear what effect the existence of the Department of Education has had on the standing of U.S. education relative to other countries.”

National studies don’t tell the whole story. It’s hard to find anyone proud of the quality of education in America’s schools, either K-12 or higher education. DOE funding of public schools and colleges comes with strings attached. These include a top-down approach emphasizing woke ideology, jumping on costly education fads like open classrooms or the whole language movement, taking local power away from schools and parents, and the disastrous No Child Left Behind Act.

It’s no wonder that a Pew Research study conducted in 2023 revealed that 51% of U.S. adults believe American education is moving in the wrong direction, with only 16% thinking it’s on the right path.

According to Pew, there are three major reasons for the negative perception of education:

+Schools not spending enough time on core academic subjects, like reading, math, science and social studies (69%)

+Teachers bringing their personal political and social views into the classroom (54%)

+Schools not having the funding and resources they need (52%)

Meanwhile, the National Center for Education Statistics published results from the School Pulse Panel survey, which revealed that 40% of public school students were behind grade level at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.

In reality, most public school funding comes from local and state sources, not the federal government. And, to be fair, most of the problems in our public schools are not tied solely to the Department of Education. The extent to which any school succeeds or fails to educate its children is mainly dependent upon the quality of teaching, the role of parenting, and the local and state education boards that dictate curriculum and policies.

Case in point: DOGE is looking into eliminating the Department of Education because its nearly $250 billion budget isn’t necessary for the functioning of American schools. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray wrote in 2012, “The long, intrusive, expensive role of the federal government in K-12 education does not have any credible evidence for a positive effect on American education.” That’s no different today, certainly not after the COVID debacle.

In some ways, though, the department has realized its objectives.

Professor Jay Greene writes, “The Department of Education has performed wonderfully once you understand what its true purpose has always been. The department is designed to provide material and political benefits to the teachers’ unions, not to improve student outcomes. In achieving this goal, the Department of Education has been a smashing success.”

As with any other bold initiative, bringing about genuine reform requires a fundamental change in the perception of these federal departments. Americans must understand that eliminating the Department of Education means removing something unhelpful or even harmful. It does not mean handicapping kids by taking away something good.