Throughout this week, the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America project will feature its latest series titled “Reforming the Deep State: Reining in the Federal Bureaucracy.” We invited some of the best policy minds in the conservative movement to speak to the issues of what waste, fraud, abuse, and unaccountability exist throughout the federal government and what still needs to be done. To read more from this series, click here.
The deep state has been described as the “secretive illuminati of bureaucrats determined to sabotage the Trump agenda.” But in education, this illuminati doesn’t just threaten a political agenda: It threatens the success of millions of students in school and in life.
Can Secretary Linda McMahon upend the Education Department’s bureaucratic deep state? She’s already doing it.
Last month, McMahon launched a 50-state tour, not to tout the successes of the new White House, but to talk with teachers and parents about returning education authority to state and local educators. Education is a state priority, embedded in the constitutions of each of our nation’s laboratories of democracy, and McMahon is right to hit the road to meet with state education officials.
Critics seek an explanation for how limiting the federal footprint in education would help students. They want examples of the ways McMahon can downsize Washington’s role in education.
But McMahon has answers. For example, researchers on both sides of the ideological divide have cited the failure of federal spending programs to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed.
Left-of-center education interests say federal taxpayer spending goes to children in low-income areas through what is known as Title I, arguing that a smaller education agency would neglect these students. In 2015, however, Brookings Institution researchers found that many school principals report using Title I money for teacher preparation programs — ones that have not demonstrated effectiveness in actually helping teachers in the classroom. “Teachers do not find [this training] valuable,” the researchers wrote.
Heritage Foundation research has also pointed to Title I’s failures, namely that it has done nothing to close the achievement gap between wealthier students and their peers.
Special interests who want the Education Department to expand, not contract, must answer for the persistent failings of this spending program to improve math and reading scores.
The critics of McMahon’s efforts to downsize the Education Department also say the agency has crucial responsibilities to enforce civil rights laws. Conservatives agree that enforcing civil rights is an important function of the federal government — but there’s a department for this. The Justice Department already engages in education-related cases, such as issuing statements of interest to clarify the law when colleges infringe on students’ free speech rights.
McMahon is collaborating with the Justice Department, not ignoring civil rights. The Education Department recently opened investigations into discrimination in school districts such as Baltimore City in Maryland and Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia, to name a few.
These same critics of a smaller federal role in education also say children with disabilities will suffer. But the federal law governing education for children with special needs predates the Education Department, and White House officials have said they are not ending programs for these children — instead, they intend to move operations to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The secretary is proving that such a transfer can be done. Recently, her office entered into an interagency agreement with the Labor Department to shift adult education programs from the Education Department to this office.
McMahon isn’t just talking about giving parents and educators more decision-making power — she’s actually doing it. She sent letters to state commissioners of education asking them to seek waivers from federal law, with her office even calling Washington’s regulations “burdensome.”
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Under her leadership, the Education Department has approved an application from Missouri asking for more flexibility with student academic testing. It’s also reminded state education officials that they can use provisions already in federal law to create more education choice for students.
There’s no better way to give families and students hope in education than empowering them to choose quality learning options. Likewise, there’s no better way to eviscerate the deep state than for Washington to give authority back to state and local policymakers. This Education Department is actively doing both.
Jonathan Butcher is the acting director for the Center for Education Policy and the Will Skillman senior research fellow in education policy at the Heritage Foundation.