An American Education Revolution

A Historic Opportunity to Move Beyond Centralization Toward Parental Freedom, Federalism, and Competition

Milton Friedman once said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” For a long time now, policymakers and leaders have judged the U.S. Department of Education in this foolish way, allowing its ever-growing list of objectives to increase the scope of its authority. But now at last it seems the Department will have to give an answer for its poor outcomes.

Since its establishment, the Education Department (ED) has vastly expanded into a sprawling bureaucracy with increasing influence over what happens in America’s classrooms. For decades, policymakers and education experts have debated its proper role. Today, that conversation has reached a new peak, with the strongest momentum since President Ronald Reagan first called for the Department’s elimination. In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at scaling back the Education Department’s authority and returning power to states and local communities.

With this move, the Trump administration is giving classical liberals a historic opportunity to engage in conversations about the role of the federal government in education and spur the nation toward a return to the founding principles of American education: federalism, parental empowerment, and healthy competition between schools.

Does the Department of Education Have Some Important Roles?

With a bill signed into law by then-President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the Department of Education was born. At its founding, it took on certain federal responsibilities like distributing federal aid, enforcing civil rights laws, and collecting data to help inform education policy. Since then, the mission creep has been astronomical, with the DE’s influence spanning vastly beyond these roles.

Despite this overreach, some of these federal roles are necessary. For example, the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws is vital to ensuring every kid, regardless of race or sex, has access to a high-quality education. This is foundational to America’s founding ideals, like the right to self determination and equal creation. Additionally, the data the ED collects and disseminates, particularly through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), is indispensable for understanding the direction and health of American education. This enables parents to make informed decisions on where and how to educate their kids, and helps state and local educators and policymakers assess the effectiveness of certain methods and district policies.

Does this justify the existence of the Department of Education? It is likely that most, if not all, of its legitimate functions could be readily absorbed by a mix of other federal agencies. Nevertheless, whether or not a stand-alone cabinet level agency is the driver for carrying them out, the federal government can and must continue to fulfill these duties. Still, over the years, the Department has expanded its reach, garnering authority beyond its statutory limits under the guise of “improving student outcomes,” a task once relegated to educators and parents.

Money Can’t Buy You Improved Student Outcomes

Adjusted for inflation, from 1980 to 2024, the DE’s budget has ballooned from $56.9 billion to about $188.6 billion. When not considering direct loans for college students, that figure is about $97 billion. Yet, over the same period, student achievement, as measured by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), has shown stagnation or even decline.

According to NAEP, the average reading scores for 13-year-olds from 1971 (the earliest available) to 2023 was, “not statistically different from the average score in 1971.” 2023’s scores are two points lower than in 1980 and four points lower than in 2020 on its 500-point scale. In 2023, math scores have modestly increased since 1973 by five points, increasing by two points since 1982 (1980 was not available), but decreasing by 9 points since 2020.

Despite its increasing budget and influence, the Department has failed to produce meaningful improvement in student achievement. This shouldn’t be surprising: Being so far removed from families and communities, a centralized federal agency is ill-suited for delivering on this objective.

Judging by its results, clearly the ED should not be responsible for student outcomes beyond simply reporting and recording what they are. Local stakeholders — largely parents — should have a greater hand in solving that problem.

Hey Uncle Sam, Leave Them Kids Alone

Achievement is not the only area into which the Department has insinuated itself. By law, the Department of Education is barred from controlling curriculum for K-12 education, as it states in Section 103(b) of the Department of Education Organizing Act (1979):

“No provision of a program administered by the Secretary or by any other officer of the Department shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any such officer to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system…”

This has not stopped the Department from exerting influence over curricula through various loopholes, most prominently in how it manages grants, funding incentives, and accountability measures.

For example, under President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, a competitive grant program, states were rewarded for adopting certain policy recommendations, like rigorous standards, revamped data systems, dramatic school turnarounds, and teacher evaluation through test scores. According to an evaluation by the Center for Public Impact, “by 2014, winning states had adopted, on average, 88 percent of the policies, compared to 68 percent among losing states, and 56 percent among states that never applied.”

Similarly, President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program included conditional funding. If schools missed annual achievement targets for two or more years, sanctions could be imposed and be increased in severity. The impact of these programs is a different conversation, but it is undeniable that under them, the ED was used to influence K-12 curricula. And as manifested by anemic NAEP scores above over the same period, there is not much to show for this federal involvement.

What Does a Better Education System Look Like?

The shifting conversation and policy about the federal government’s role in education is a historic move to further decentralize our education system in favor of empowering states, parents, and healthy competition.

This is in line with the education choice movement that’s caught on in the states in recent years; more states than ever are enacting or expanding broadly available programs like education savings accounts, vouchers, or refundable tax credits. Today, 15 states offer ESA, voucher, or refundable tax credit programs with universal eligibility, up from zero in 2021. This year, even more states are still likely to join the map.

This represents the most consequential reform to American education in a generation, and it is being done in the spirit of federalism. Reducing federal involvement in K-12 education policy is an incentive for states to continue on this path, empowering parents and localities, and encouraging healthy competition between schools to drive the direction of American education over central planning. And there is a plethora of data showing positive effects for rethinking education in line with a system where the money follows the child, not the system.

School Choice Is Good For Everyone

One of the most prominent analyses on the impact of private school choice programs is a meta-analysis of randomized control trials (RCTs). The analysis found positive effects on voucher student reading and math test scores.

There is evidence to suggest that private school choice programs improve outcomes for public school students, too. According to The 123s of School Choice, an EdChoice report summarizing the 188 empirical studies on private school choice, of the 29 empirical studies conducted on the impact of private school choice on public school test scores, 26 found positive effects, suggesting the introduction of competition in the education system improves student achievement.

The Education Department has grown well beyond its roots. While it continues to carry out several critical roles, it is worth asking whether a standalone cabinet-level agency is the most effective, necessary, or constitutional method for fulfilling them. The critical roles the department does play should not serve as a shield for its shortcomings elsewhere. Today’s momentum behind rethinking the federal government’s role is a prime opportunity for revolutionary education reform. The time is ripe for looking away from central planning and toward federalism, empowering parents with choice and healthy competition.

Ed Tarnowski is a Policy and Advocacy Director and Host of the State of Choice Podcast at EdChoice, the intellectual legacy of Milton and Rose Friedman, and a writer for Young Voices. His work has been published in National Review, The Washington Examiner, Fox News, RealClearPolitics, RealClearWorld, RealClearEducation, Education Next, New Hampshire Journal, and others. Follow him on X @edtarnowski.