The National Association of Scholars (NAS) endorses the U.S. Education Department’s (ED) announcement that it will transfer some of its key operations to other federal departments. Six new interagency agreements (IAAs) will place programs under the administration of the Departments of Labor, State, Interior, and Health and Human Services.
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. We are glad to see that, after due deliberation, the Trump administration has chosen exactly that path.
We note, of course, that many voices in the education establishment have been raised in opposition to these transfers. They warn of dire consequences if the operations and the funding are plucked out ED bureaucracy and planted somewhere else. Let’s allow that any such restructuring is bound to cause some short-term delays. But the real worry for the critics is that the comfortable relationship between laidback ED staffers and recipients of federal funds will be replaced by more mindful guardians of the public trust.
NAS, by contrast, welcomes the prospect of such vigilance. It is long overdue.
We do, however, recognize the limits of the Trump administration’s initiative. First, it is sure to encounter the usual lawfare waged by Trump’s opponents, who know precisely which federal judges will be likely to issue injunctions against the transfers. Second, we can expect a high degree of non-cooperation from state education authorities, school districts, unions, and other agencies seeking to impede the reforms. Third, these reforms might encounter legislative vetoes. Members of Congress are much more vulnerable to pressures from the education establishment than is the President and the Secretary of Education.
For these reforms to stick, ultimately Congress will have to enact them into law.
Fourth, and perhaps most important, transferring programs from ED to another department leaves standing dozens of programs that should be abolished entirely. That’s because they are authorized by statute and can be ended only by new legislation. Putting them in a new departmental home can make them less wasteful, but it can’t eliminate them.
We understand that the Trump administration is doing what it can to cure a deep-rooted problem. We applaud the steps it has taken, but greater work lies ahead.
Fifth, the interagency Agreements don’t appear to affect two major portions of the ED’s remit—Federal Student Aid and Special Education. These enormous and politically sensitive programs remain untouched. This caution is sensible—but effective education reform, and certainly education reform that seeks to disband the ED, will have to address these programs as well.
Again, we endorse the Trump administration’s initiative to disband much of the ED through interagency agreements. But we encourage the administration to keep going. It should now focus on the long haul of rescinding each individual ED program.
Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash
