will we finally see the Department of Education disappear?

I'm all in favor of de-nationalizing education standards and letting the states decide for themselves how to handle a student's education: let school choice get "choicier." The net result probably won't be much different from whatever standards hold today; I'd assume a certain "law of averages" effect, but I can also assume that states with less money to devote to their education budget will use that as an excuse for their students' low performance on national and international standardized tests, even though there's little reason to believe there's a strong correlation between availability of funds and a student's level of education (however we define "level"). (You can use Google AI to argue both sides: Google "correlation between education funding and education quality" and "correlation between education funding and education quality counterargument." Then decide for yourself. And while you're at it, ask yourself: why do homeschooled students often demonstrate higher performance on tests?)

Headline (paywall):

The Push to Abolish Education Department Goes Back Decades
Seven presidents and trillions of dollars after the agency’s inception, the Trump administration has cut it in half and seeks to eliminate it.

Précis: The Department of Education in Washington on July 16, 2019. Established by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the agency has long faced criticism over federal involvement in local education. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon have cut its size in half and plan to eliminate it.

In 1866, Ohio congressman and future president James Garfield championed the creation of a federal Department of Education to address high illiteracy levels among former slaves and an influx of European immigrants.

As part of the post-Civil War Reconstruction effort, the former Confederate states were required to guarantee education for all in their rewritten constitutions. The new federal agency would monitor and enforce compliance, according to a brief history of the Department of Education published by The Conference Board think tank.

Garfield’s efforts led to President Andrew Johnson’s creation of the Department of Education in 1867. However, representatives from both northern and southern states complained about the federal government having control over local schools. They downgraded the agency to the Office of Education after just one year and placed it within the Department of the Interior.

In the decades that followed, Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt pressed for more federal involvement in public education, ahead of President Jimmy Carter’s successful campaign to establish the Department of Education as a Cabinet agency in 1980.

[ ... ]

In 2023, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report said there had been no return on investment in the Department of Education between 1980 and 2022, as the agency’s budget grew to $80 billion and reading and math scores across the nation declined.

Moreover, the report said, 41 percent of its funding went to state education agencies instead of classrooms. A “shadow department” of 48,000 workers at the state level—or 10 times more workers than the federal agency employs—were employed to keep up with the paperwork burden imposed by federal mandates.

The report also criticized the Democrats’ “disparate impact” policy that prioritized racial parity for school discipline and discouraged the use of detentions, suspensions, and expulsions.

“Getting the federal government out of the business of dictating school district policy is a good start,” Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, wrote.

Poor test scores in the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress report, coupled with disappointing results in international standardized assessments for high school students, further ignited the Republican flame for eliminating the Department of Education.

[ ... ]

Democrats today have not attempted to refute Republican arguments about stagnant or decreasing academic performance, despite massive federal spending since 1980. However, they maintain that the agency has provided critical services, protections, and a pathway to college for special needs students and those from low-income communities who would be further marginalized without its assistance.

[UVA professor Gerard] Robinson said while the Department of Education has yet to show a return on investment, he believes that it is not a total failure, filling a need as a “one-stop shop in D.C. and a place to call with questions.”

“It was never meant to increase student achievement,” he said. “It didn’t fail on something it was not created to do.”

Fair-minded reporting from the Epoch Times, which gave Prof. Robinson the final word. But return on investment is the kind of language Trump traffics in, and if something offers low to no return on investment, it should be cut out. Time to slay the dragon.