Education is one of the most important things we do as a country, but it only works when it’s directed by parents, local communities, and states — not by the federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.
President Donald Trump is taking bold action to turn education back to where it belongs: with the people and the representatives closest to them.
The Department of Education isn’t in the Constitution. In fact, it’s a few years younger than the Rubik’s Cube. But over its 45-year existence, education in America has not gotten better. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows stagnation in reading and math performance by students overall since 1986. We can, and must, do better.
People clearly want their government to run more like a business, where results are everything. I built a business for 37 years, and if a department wasn’t getting results, it was time to try a new approach.
By allowing states to have full freedom over how they spend their education funding from the federal government, we would have 50 laboratories for innovation rather than one top-down government bureaucracy.
Indiana has been leading the way.
Where we had previously been in the middle of the pack on the “Nation’s Report Card,” we are now sixth in the nation in reading, with promising math progress as well.
I assure you that our parents, teachers, and local and state elected officials know what Hoosier students need better than anyone in Washington, D.C.
The closer a government is to the people it serves, the more accountable it is. I learned this when I served on my local school board for 10 years: if you were doing something wrong, you’d hear about it. Someone would be waiting for you after church or find you in the bleachers to tell you about it. That’s the way it should be.
As more and more power over education became concentrated in Washington, the more federal bureaucrats came to believe they were the ones who were really in charge of our children’s education.
When I served in the Senate, I had the opportunity to question Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in the committee overseeing education. I had one question for him: Are parents the primary stakeholder in their own children’s education?
He couldn’t answer it. He told me parents are one important stakeholder in their children’s education, along with the government.
And here I thought that was an easy question.
We should be clear: Parents are in charge of their children’s education. And the closer the decisions that affect education are to the parents, the better off we will be.
By centralizing so much power of education in the federal government, we’ve made our children’s education into yet another political weapon for entrenched special interests to wield against their enemies.
In my inaugural address as governor, I said that as Trump shrank the size of the federal government, states should reassert their proper, central role in public life.
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Washington has simply become too big and too powerful in our lives, and voters sent a clear message by electing Trump as their president: They want that to end.
By fully empowering the states to decide how their federal education dollars are spent and winding down the unnecessary, ineffective, and politicized Department of Education, Trump is putting parents in the driver’s seat and our children first.
Mike Braun is the 52nd governor of Indiana. Previously, he owned a business in his hometown and served as a U.S. senator.