WASHINGTON — Wisconsin’s Republicans in Congress are rallying behind President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate the Department of Education (DOE).
“How did we educate kids before 1979? We educated them very well without a federal Education Department. It's really unnecessary and redundant,” Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, said.
“I think that the funding should stay local,” Rep. Tony Wied, R-Green Bay, said.
Democrats, on the other hand, expressed concern.
“It's very frightening to think that the United States of America would seed hegemony in providing educational opportunity to other countries,” Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, said. "If we are not producing the intellectuals in the world, the people who are inventing Google or inventing the computer, what are we going to do? And if we step back from educating people, what are we going to do? That is what I think is very a lot more frightening than just the simple act of declaring that we're not going to have a Department of Education. You know, need a Department of Stupidity, I guess."
It won’t be so easy to eliminate a department with more than 4,000 employees and a $68 billion budget, with much of its aid funneled to state and local governments.
“So it would be Congress, both the House and the Senate, that would need to put forward a bill that would propose the abolishment of the Department of Education,” said Christopher Saldaña, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Though a majority of funding for public schools comes from local and state sources, about 10% of local education budgets come from the federal government.
The DOE has several functions, including providing funding to help low-income students and children with disabilities, guaranteeing the civil rights of students and administering federal financial aid for college students. Trump has not said what he would do with those programs.
“And if they were to propose the elimination of those programs, then they, I think, would run into opposition within their own party,” Saldaña said. “Because then these are individuals who have would have to go back to their communities and say, ‘Our local school districts are no longer going to receive funding for students with disabilities.’”
Mark Schneider, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he thinks federal student loan programs should be moved to the Treasury Department, even if DOE is not eliminated. He said there are economic and ethical concerns with the Biden administration canceling student loans for thousands of borrowers.
“So maybe it's naive, but if we took all that money and treated it as a bank, sitting someplace that regulates banks, hopefully it would be de-politicized,” Schneider said. “It would be run more efficiently.”
The DOE was created in 1979 through legislation signed by former President Jimmy Carter, who died last week.
"The question is, do we really need a separate department to do this work, as compared to trying to figure out how to better integrate functions with other, bigger agencies that are also involved in policies that affect students throughout the country?" Schneider asked.