The Roles of the Federal Government in Education
Why We Need the Feds Even When the Department of Education is Gutted
This week, the Trump Administration essentially gutted the Department of Education. Before my friends on the left totally lose their minds, remember that we had federal educational programs before the Department of Education was established in 1979 and many of these programs likely will continue to exist regardless of the status of this department. Like the more recently created Department of Homeland Security, these more recent government departments were not created from whole cloth; they were a consolidation of programs previously scattered across various government agencies. Coordination across these programs is supposed to produce efficiencies, although it seldom does, and raise the stature of these programs by having a cabinet level director as a direct report to the President.
For my friends on the right, the Department of Education has been a scapegoat for anything and everything disliked about our current educational system. Often, it is culture wars played out at the local level - e.g., which books to read, if and how sex education should be taught and to whom when, and if and how we prepare our children to respect those of different races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations - that results in concerns about children being indoctrinated in a cultural perspective different from their parents. I have concerns about the “don’t tell us what to teach our kids” perspective, but I am confident we will still hear that refrain even if the Department of Education is eliminated because we will continue to have disagreements about what to teach our children.
The long-standing mantra of the right is that education should be returned to the state and local level, even though it mostly is there already. And the right still wants the funding that the federal government provides, just as block grants with less strings attached. Notice that thus far, funds still flow as they have and that some programs such as student loans and support for educating physically and mentally challenged children have been moved to other departments, but for all of the angst and chaos thus far, nothing of substance has been returned to the states and localities that wasn’t there already.
That got me to wondering what are some of the core responsibilities of educating our nation that are best addressed by the federal government, not by states and localities, and that we should all want the federal government to do. Here’s my short list although there are probably more.
Research to optimize teaching and learning. It would be highly inefficient to have 50 states or well over 3000 school boards each conduct research on how best to teach children to read, write, solve math problems, and think critically. Retaining the programs of the Institute of Educational Sciences at the Department of Education provides these states and localities with research findings that can be applied as they see fit to the needs of their students.
Administer nationwide testing programs and collect educational data. States and localities already have more control over their schools than they think, but if we want states and localities to have even more control over their schools, they need to know if what they are doing is working. To do that, the federal government still needs to administer nationwide testing programs so states and localities can compare how well their schools are performing relative to other schools, learn from the ones that are performing well, and take corrective action on the ones that are not. While we’re on this point, a pet peeve of mine - comparing across schools only tells you where the more educated, more affluent school districts are; we want to compare the change in student achievement from the beginning to end of the school to determine how well schools actually advance the learning of their students, regardless of their baseline achievement levels.
Nationwide learning standards. The Department of Education doesn’t do this now, mostly because past efforts like Standards of Learning were met with loud protests of “you can’t tell us what to teach our children.” But I don’t know how you can have nationwide testing on what children are learning without some standards for what children should know at various grade levels. If we can’t seem to agree on civics, social studies, or history standards, we should at least be able to agree on some core reading, writing, and math standards by various grade levels. And while we’re at it, why not provide model curricula for these subjects based on best practices from research and from experiences of teachers across the country. States and localities wouldn’t be required to follow these curricula but many might find them useful.
Distributing educational funding to less affluent school districts. Localities fund education primarily through property taxes. In poorer school districts with lower property values, that means less funds available for teachers and schools. By focusing federal funding on the poorer school districts, the federal government can give these students a better chance to succeed in school. Since the right wants to shift educational funding to block grants, let’s do it, but with the caveat that the school districts with less taxable resources gets substantially more than school districts with high taxable property values and incomes.
Provide additional support to children with disabilities. Various federal laws require children with physical and mental challenges be educated as much as possible in the least restrictive environment. These laws were not meant to provide free rehab services, but they are intended to give these children and their parents the additional educational resources they need to achieve as much as they are able in school. These programs have been moved to the Department of Health and Human Services. Given that the current Secretary of Health and Human Services knows just enough to be dangerous, parents of these children are appropriately concerned. These federal programs for disabled children need to be strengthened, not weakened, regardless of which agency administers them.
Administer the student loan program. This is the program most in need of reform, but for all the pomp and circumstance of gutting the Department of Education, all the Trump administration did was move the same loan program that regularly gets college students over their heads in debt to the Small Business Administration. Here’s an alternative - provide an interest-free two year government loan that covers the average vocational or community college tuition and make it available to those under a specified family income and asset level. This would give students without the means to pursue education after high school the chance to do so without having so many students burdened by excessive debt.
Prevent school-based discrimination. The current administration considers
”diversity” a bad word, but I’m old enough to remember when my elementary school went from being segregated to integrated. Although we’ve made considerable progress in reducing discrimination in school systems, it would be naive to think that we don’t need federal oversight of states and localities to ensure that children, regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation, are given the same educational opportunities.
That’s my short list of what the federal government can do to support the states and localities providing education for our children. The Trump administration can move the deck chairs on the Titanic as much as they would like, but our educational system needs real reform, not chaotic reorganizations, and our states and localities, whether they know it or not, need the federal government to support their educational efforts.
Well Said! I hope they listen to you!!! You made good sense and that counts for alot these days!