Guest Commentary written by
Lance Christensen
Lance Christensen is the vice president of government affairs and education policy at the California Policy Center. He has spent two decades working in and around the Capitol, and ran for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2022.
A lot of Democrats are upset about the increasing chatter from President-elect Donald Trump and the incoming administration about eliminating the U.S. Department of Education.
For example, California’s state superintendent of schools, Tony Thurmond, responded by saying, “To tear down and abolish an organization that provides protections for our students is a threat to the well-being of our students and our families and of Americans.”
Much of the progressive attachment to the department is misplaced.
Rather than engage the proposal, Thurmond’s response seems like a projection of how he uses his own state-level Department of Education as leverage against districts he detests. It also ignores the fact that most education spending comes from local and state resources, and a significant chunk of federal funds don’t get to the classroom — or students themselves — because of the number of middlemen who take their cut first, particularly from grants.
Putting aside arguments by conservatives that the department itself is unconstitutional, it makes no sense why liberals are so possessive of a program that is disconnected from their own constituents: teachers. Why are Democrats so content in keeping scarce funds out of the grasp of their own school districts’ bargaining units? Are they really concerned about the jobs of 4,400 staffers, most of which are ensconced in Washington?
Trump’s announcement of businesswoman Linda McMahon as education secretary suggests that dissolution will be near the top of the congressional agenda after Inauguration Day on Monday.
For those who recoil at the prospect of fewer pencil-pushers doing jobs that could easily be done better, easier and faster in local venues, can anyone name a single thing the federal bureaucracy does better? Academic outcomes certainly aren’t better since the Education Department began operating in 1980.
If improving test scores is the goal, wouldn’t it make more sense for school funds to be directly controlled by state and district leaders, closer to the students and teachers they serve?
There’s no real reason that redistributing a $241.7 billion annual budget needs to happen at the nation’s capital when it could easily be done in block grants to the respective departments of education in each state. A simple calculation would reduce the army of local compliance officers needed to fashion grant and federal aid applications and could go straight into teacher coffers.
Moreover, why do Democratic-leaning donor states — like California, New York and Massachusetts — relinquish billions in federal tax dollars, only to see a fraction of that money returned for education. This imbalance means that blue states subsidize red states’ schools.
This reason alone should be reason enough for California Democrats to support the elimination of a federal department.
The devil is always in the details, but as Trump’s plan unfolds, liberals will need to evaluate the necessity of a centralized Education Department thousands of miles away and controlled by the opposition party. Democrats can still fund special education and poverty programs with fewer strings attached and with the money states save when it is not routed through D.C.
Some scholars worry that removing the department will mean that specific funds can no longer be leveraged to maintain fidelity to federal laws like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, for example. Aside from the fact that the Department of Education has done little to shield families from radical ideologues, there’s no reason that these programs can’t be housed in another department at a fraction of the administrative cost.
Even so, states are better equipped to protect student privacy and respond to families’ needs directly.
In 2025, does the Department of Education serve any purpose that state education departments cannot fulfill?
Democrat should stop reacting to Trump and instead consider how they might benefit by not begging the federal government for table scraps shipped off to Republican majority states. Avoid the partisan budget games that will only be exacerbated by the culture wars in D.C.
We can figure out the best way to deliver on promises made to our students without the need to beg thousands of nameless bureaucrats thousands of miles away, fiscal threats or not.