In the more than four decades since the Department of Education was created in 1979, it has spent literally TRILLIONS of dollars, presumably to make America’s youth smarter and more competitive.
But what’s been the result?
Well, just take a look at the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) long-term reading and mathematics assessments for 13-year-old students.
In 1980— the Department of Education’s first year operating— reading scores averaged 258. The most recent data, from 2023, shows scores average 256. So test scores declined.
And it’s even worse among the lower-level students; the bottom 10% had an even steeper decline, from a score of 208 to 202.
So despite trillions in spending, the actual performance of students has fallen according to the Department’s own metrics. That’s a pretty abysmal result for an organization whose mission is to “improve the quality of education”.
Let’s also look at university tuition: back in the mid-1960s, the average annual cost of tuition and fees at private four-year institutions was approximately $1,000, according to the National Center for Education statistics. That’s roughly $9,800 today after adjusting for inflation.
Around the same time, the federal government began handing out financial aid for college— a function that was taken over by the Department of Education in 1979.
So, again, you’d think that the Department would have been successful in keeping higher education cheap. Yet instead, the average cost today has ballooned to $35,000— over 3x higher even when adjusted for inflation.
So in short, the Department of Education has spent trillions of dollars only to see test scores decline and university tuition become unaffordable.
Meanwhile other developed nations have seen the opposite trend: their students’ performance has improved and even eclipsed that of US students, and their costs for university education are still reasonable.
It’s hard to make up this level of incompetence. No wonder there’s a growing movement to shut down the Department.
But standing in opposition is Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), i.e. the largest and most powerful teachers’ union in the country.
Weingarten has been a top union executive for nearly three decades, since 1997 when she was just 29 years old. And you may have heard of her: she was Queen of the Lockdowns during the pandemic— easily one of the loudest voices insisting that schools remain closed.
Children fell far behind in their studies as a result and many may never recover scholastically.
But even excluding the pandemic, during Weingarten’s tenure, student test scores have declined by an average 3 points in reading, and 5 points in math. So if Weingarten’s mission is to help the children, she’s done a terrible job.
But, hey, let’s forget about the children. Weingarten certainly has. After all, her job as a union boss is to serve teachers, not students. But even at that she’s been horrible.
Since 1996, the year before Weingarten became a major union executive, average weekly wages of public school teachers have increased by a mere $29 when adjusted for inflation.
Yet over the same period, inflation-adjusted weekly wages of other college graduates rose by $445, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
This is known as the “teacher pay penalty”, i.e. the average amount that comparable college graduates in other fields earn in excess to an average teacher salary. And under Weingarten’s tenure, this teacher pay penalty rose to a record high.
In other words, during Randi Weingarten’s 30+ years at the helm of America’s biggest teachers’ unions, her members are worse off. Students are worse off.
Who exactly is better off?
Well, Randi Weingarten is definitely better off. She rakes in over $500,000 per year in compensation, plus (despite not being a government employee) she is entitled to a fat pension courtesy of the taxpayer.
She’s also one of the most powerful people in politics, at least on the Left; Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would always make time for Randi Weingarten because she represents a massive voting block. No Leftist in Congress or the White House would refuse her call.
The teachers unions have incredible political clout and make or break state and local elections all the time; Chicago is a prime example of this rot.
So Weingarten has become wealthy and powerful, yet students and teachers are worse off. Meanwhile the Department of Education has become a bloated bureaucracy burning $80+ billion per year with absolutely nothing positive to show for it.
If that weren’t bad enough, we haven’t even mentioned how the Education Department has become a slush fund for the woke agenda.
Just last week (thanks in large part to DOGE) they canceled about $1 billion worth of contracts going to divisive ‘DEI’ training at schools across the country. And there is clearly a lot more than that.
We’ve written extensively that the US government has an extremely narrow window to get its fiscal house in order. The national debt is more than $36 trillion. Interest on the debt exceeds $1 trillion per year and is rising rapidly. If left unchecked, this can quickly spiral into a unprecedented economic crisis.
The only path forward is to dramatically cut spending (and slash regulations to boost productivity). And the Department of Education is a prime example of a useless, destructive force that should be eliminated.Their own miserable scorecard proves the point.
Yet unsurprisingly, the Left is now losing its collective hive mind over the prospect of the Department being shuttered… Weingarten included. They claim “the children” will be worse off as a result, when in fact they are the ones who have made the children worse off.
It’s pretty obvious the Left isn’t going down without a fight. So the outcome, whether cutting the Department of Education, or anything else for that matter, is far from certain.
And that’s why it still makes so much sense to have a Plan B.
