How To Invest In Education And Get Rid Of The Department Of Education

By Chuck Warren

The Trump administration is working to trim down the Department of Education to eventually dissolve it. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said that her department is preparing for “its final mission.” This has been a part of the Republican platform since 1980, but it has become even more important in recent years.

First, here are some facts about the growth of the department.

The department has about 4,000 employees, and it spends over $600 million on employee compensation. The average employee’s salary and benefits amount to about $150,000 a year. The median income in Washington, D.C., is $70,000, making them very well compensated.

The Department of Education spent $14 billion in its first year in 1980 ($53 billion if you adjust by inflation). In 2019 (the last pre-Covid budget and the baseline for what Biden inherited), it received $71 billion. In 2024, Biden’s last year, the department received $80 billion, and Biden’s proposal for this year was $83 billion.

So during five years, the budget increased by 13%. And if Biden had gotten his way, it would have increased by 17%. Overall, it has increased 56% when adjusted by inflation.

In the meantime, the number of children in K-12 schools has increased from 41 million to 52 million. So our student body size has increased by 29%, and the budget has increased by more than half.

The OECD is essentially an organization of 38 liberal democracies, from the U.S. and Canada to Chile to most of Europe to Japan and Australia. So we are talking about rich nations, most of them large welfare states, which Democrats want to model us after.

We keep hearing from Democrats that we need to invest more in education. They keep pointing to the terrible conditions of our schools, especially in inner cities. Depending on the year, the United States spends the most or, at worst, fifth most per K-12 student.

I actually agree in part with the Democrats—that our school conditions are awful. Reading and math scores for 13-year-olds in 2024 dropped to a record low. Here are some official figures from the Department of Education:

9-Year-Old Reading
1980: 215
2022: 215

13-Year-Old Reading
1980: 255
2023: 256

17-Year-Old Reading
1980: 285
2012 (Last Available Data): 287

9-Year-Old Math
1978: 219
2021: 234

13-Year-Old Math
1978: 264
2023: 271

17-Year-Old Math
1978: 304
2012 (Last Available Data): 306

According to the Department of Education’s own assessments, after 45 years and trillions of dollars, some scores have improved a bit, and some have gotten a bit worse. But really, we spent this much time and money, and very little changed.

This is a dual embarrassment. Most importantly, we are letting our children down. But also, we are letting the taxpayers down because we spend more than everybody else and the results haven’t changed.

According to USA Facts, the Department of Education spent $268 billion in 2024. This is because the department has a separate trust that it gets to use, mostly without any Congressional say. $124 billion—nearly half—goes into higher education student loans and grants.

As higher education has become half of what the department does, it has made college less affordable. Since the expansion of the student loan program in 1992, college tuition has more than tripled when adjusted for inflation.

The Department of Education was created in large part as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. Following the integration of schools, test scores dropped because we began to test black children too, not just white students. In other words, it was not because integration made our kids stupid, but because it gave us the full picture of the state of America’s children.

The department was created so all students, especially minorities, could have equal opportunity and access to education. Fair enough! They had been neglected literally for centuries. It later was expanded to make college affordable. But here’s the problem: Today, it’s an obstacle to its objectives.

Most parents, including 70% of Black parents, prefer to send their children to charter schools. The student loan program has made college much more expensive—one key reason Americans have fewer children now.

It is also operating largely outside of Congressional appropriations by using its own trust fund.

The Department of Education currently serves as a subsidy for universities to hire a lot of administrators by charging a ridiculous amount for tuition. Then, if it has time, it will waste a lot of money on failing schools—much of which will go to teachers’ unions instead of into the classroom. Again, we spend more than almost any other country per student, yet many teachers report that they still pay out of pocket for classroom materials.

Something that was a problem has become a deeply broken system since we created the Department of Education.

The department should be abolished. We should continue to invest in education—including through the federal government. But rather than controlling it from Washington, D.C., we should send the money directly to states and localities in the form of block grants. This way, they can decide for themselves, with democratic accountability, how to spend it.

Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.