If the Education Department Can’t Be Closed, at Least Fix It by Breaking It Up - Commentary

Mark Schneider, a nonresident senior scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a Doris Duke distinguished visiting scholar at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, writes: 

Closing the U.S. Department of Education is an evergreen goal for conservatives. Created in 1979 as a payoff to teachers unions for their support of Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, the department is by far the smallest Cabinet-level agency and has accumulated a grab bag of functions that could — and should — be handled by others at the state and federal levels. In 2018, the Trump administration proposed reorganizing the department out of existence. That effort failed, showing that even under a Republican administration, dissolving the Department of Education is difficult. But it’s not impossible. A reform-minded, results-oriented executive could begin by rerouting many of the department’s functions to other agencies rather than abolishing it wholesale. I use years of personal experience in the Department of Education, leading both the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and its parent Institute of Education Sciences (IES), to show how a conservative president could achieve some first steps — and why they’re needed.