Over the past few months, many people have asked me what I think (or what they should think) about the Department of Education possibly shutting down.

Most people don’t know that I currently oversee a federal grant from the Department of Education. If the department shuts down, it will tangibly affect my job and even, perhaps, my salary, and yet I have not lost a single wink of sleep at night because I know that shutting down the Department of Education would be a very good thing for our country, even if I am personally affected in the short term. (Our country was founded by men and women who were willing to endure personal risk and hardship for the greater good of the country… I try to live up to their example.)

I have already read several excellent commentaries by conservative writers about how and why the Department of Education should cease to exist, but if you are new to the conversation or want my distinct view, I will offer a few more arguments to consider.

1. The Department of Education is relatively new. As with many political issues, it’s often the millennial and Gen X women who harp the loudest about conservative policies or any policy that is even loosely related to Donald Trump. If you only read liberal social media on the topic, you would think that ending the Department of Education would instantly result in racially segregated schools, starving children, and the elimination of all services for special needs students. Remember, the Department of Education was not created until 1980. For many parents reading this, the department has only been around for your lifetime. It didn’t exist before 1980, and people were educated before that time, some would argue better than they are now. If the Department of Education ceases to exist after 2025, people will continue to be educated. We can survive without the Department of Education, just as our nation did for 200 years.
   ​
2. Local is better. If you are a true conservative, one of your principal beliefs should be that all government should be as small, limited, and local as possible. We want to see federal power return to the states, state power return to the city or county, and so on. We also think that if the government doesn’t need to be involved, it shouldn’t be. There is no reason that Washington DC - a liberal, bureaucratic machine - needs to be meddling in the education of my children (or your children) 2000 miles away. If government is local, it’s easier for citizens to be involved and have a voice. I can attend a city council meeting or a school board meeting easily. I cannot conveniently show up to the Department of Education to state the needs of my family or my local community.
   ​
3. The functions of the Department of Education will not go away. While there is undoubtedly waste and bureaucratic bloat in the Department of Education that we need to eliminate, many federal education laws cannot be revoked except by an act of Congress. Civil rights laws (such as Title IX), disabilities laws (such as 504, ADA, and IDEA), and Title I funding for low-income schools are not suddenly going to disappear. They are federal laws and will move to different federal agencies and/or be handed back to individual states to carry out if the Department of Education closes. The IDEA Act, which ensures customized services for children with disabilities, became law in 1965, long before the Department of Education was created. The free and reduced lunch program in the US goes back to the National School Lunch Act of 1946. We don’t need a giant federal agency to carry out these laws that have been around for decades longer than the Department of Education itself.
   ​
4. Spending has not improved outcomes. One of the prevailing arguments against the Department of Education is that we now spend $268 billion per year on a department that has not statistically improved education at all in its 45-year existence. Research shows that math and reading scores have not improved in the US since 1980. The cost of college has soared (and college curricula have been dumbed down.) The average Department of Education employee makes $112,000 per year, while the average teacher salary across the nation is $70,000. The bottom line is that the US spends more on education than any other country on earth, but our outcomes are declining. Someday in the future, I will write a tell-all about the bloat, overspending, and mismanagement I have seen in my brief tenure working adjacent to the Department of Education, but the moral of the story is that we spend a lot of federal money on education and have not received anything in return.
   ​
   ​Note: The is also a correlating factor to the poor educational outcomes in our country that most people don’t think about, or if they do, they are uncomfortable talking about it. Rampant mass immigration has also hurt our country's educational performance. This is not necessarily the fault of the Department of Education, though their policies have exacerbated it because we have allowed and even lauded immigration without assimilation in our schools. When we opened up immigration to Mexico, the Middle East, and Asia in the 1960s and let people flood into our country without requiring that they truly assimilate and embrace our language and our American values, we damaged our national educational performance and diminished school for our own children. Depending on where you live in the US, you probably know an overwhelmed, well-meaning, English-speaking teacher who is completely bewildered trying to educate a class where 90% of her students speak Spanish, Chinese, or Hindi as their first language, and then (surprise!) math and reading scores are low. Also, 47% of immigrant adults in the US have “limited English proficiency,” which means it’s nearly impossible for teachers to actively engage immigrant parents in their child’s education. This is not to degrade other ethnicities or languages, but simply to point out how mass immigration has made it difficult to maintain high-quality education in our schools, and it’s harmed native-born children in the process.
   ​
5. The Department of Education has increased, not decreased, the cost of college. One of the Department’s initial goals was to increase college access, but, ironically, the price of college increased most drastically in the 1980s right after the agency was created. In the decade of the 80s, tuition at public universities doubled, increasing by 213%, and private universities increased by 137% in the same time frame. Because when you inject subsidies (tax-payer money) into a system, costs will skyrocket. Back in the 60s and 70s, people could afford to pay for college out-of-pocket for a few hundred dollars per year, but now that idea is laughable.
   ​
   Here is one example: The cost to attend Arizona State University in the fall of 2025 will be $12,000 for in-state tuition. The oldest records I could find state that ASU tuition was $1,528 per year in 1992. Adjusted for inflation from 1992 until 2025, tuition should be $3,326 today, but it’s not. Again, it’s now $12,000! Research shows that today’s college students (and their parents), more than ever before, expect college to be free. And with so much state and federal funding available, it often is. But “free” isn’t free, of course. The Pell Grants, work-study, federal and state funding, and fake loans that are "forgiven" fall on the shoulders of the taxpayers. If ASU were to cost a reasonable $3,326 in 2025, many families would be able to save and pay cash for college, or students could feasibly work their way through college like the good ol’ days. But thanks, in part, to the Department of Education, everyone has been told they “must” go to college, and no one can afford it. Now American citizens are taxed to death so that everyone can get their free ride to college.

At the end of the day, despite the whining of your liberal friends, there are two main points to remember:

One, President Trump cannot end the Department of Education without a vote from Congress. The Department of Education is a cabinet-level federal agency established by law under the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979. Its existence and core functions are protected by federal statutes, meaning any attempt to dismantle it would require Congressional approval. Trump can minimize the department, eliminate some of its programs, or transfer some of its powers to the state level, but he cannot get rid of it completely unless Congress votes for it. Sadly, he will probably not be able to entirely eradicate the agency in the next four years.

Two, this entire debate about the Department of Education begs an entirely different question that few people are talking about…

Is it the job of the federal government to educate children?

Christians and conservatives should answer with a resounding NO.

Some random federal agent in Washington DC does not and should not have any authority over my children and what I choose to teach them. Education falls within the realm of the family, and it's up to parents to educate their children either at home or by vetting and hiring teachers within the local community (more akin to the one-room schoolhouse model).

We live in a big government, postmodern era, and we have come to accept state-mandated, compulsory, secular education as a way of life. Keep in mind that mandatory public schooling has only been around for the past 100 years. Before that, education stemmed from the home under the authority of the parents.

Both the Bible and the American Founders agree with me on this.

Parents are commanded by God to raise up and train their children in the ways of the Lord (Prov. 22:6, Deut. 6;7). The role of the government is to oversee justice and punish wrongdoers (Romans 13:4). It has zero authority to educate children.

And the American Founders concurred, which is why the Constitution does not once mention education. The federal government was never expected or required to be involved in education. The idea that we need a Department of Education is a figment of the postmodern, humanist, secular imagination, and the sooner we rip education out of Washington DC’s grasp, the better we will all be.

​