Dismantling the Department of Education: Why Returning Power to the States Is the Path Forward

When States Led, Students Learned

Before the DOE’s creation, American education rested primarily in the hands of states, local districts, and communities. Academic standards were shaped locally. Curriculum reflected regional values and the practical needs of students. Teachers had more autonomy. Parents had more influence. And the United States consistently ranked among the world’s academic leaders.Federal involvement existed, but it was limited. After 1979, that balance shifted. Federal mandates grew, testing regimens expanded, and billions in funding became tethered to compliance rather than creativity. The distance between policymakers in Washington and the realities of local classrooms widened year by year — and academic results followed that downward trajectory.

The Testing Era and the Fracturing of Real Learning

When No Child Left Behind (NCLB) launched in 2001, it ushered in an era of federally enforced high-stakes testing. Schools were rewarded or punished based on standardized scores, a system that distorted the very purpose of education. Teachers taught to the test, not to the child. Creativity was replaced by compliance. Genuine academic inquiry collapsed under the pressure of metrics.The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) softened some penalties but kept the same top-down logic: measure, standardize, and centralize. Years later, the results are clear. Test scores did not meaningfully improve. The nation’s overall competitiveness declined. And we lost critical time that could have been spent strengthening essential skills and modernizing learning for the real world.

The Ideological Drift of a Captured System

As federal mandates expanded, the DOE’s influence moved far beyond reading and math. It increasingly shaped curriculum, teacher training, and school culture in ways that often reflected ideological priorities rather than academic substance. Parents began to realize that classrooms were changing, not organically but through bureaucratic decree.Communities across the country — left, right, and independent — now question how much of the school day is dedicated to actual learning versus ideological programming. When a federal agency gains the authority to define how children understand themselves, their history, and their world, it stops being a neutral institution. It becomes a political one.That shift did tremendous damage to trust. And trust, once broken, rarely returns.

The Tech Mirage: Billions Spent for Little to No Benefit

As federal education grants expanded, so did an enormous push for technology adoption. Screens, tablets, laptops, apps, and digital curriculum were rolled out at scale, often because federal incentives made them appealing for districts. But according to international research, large-scale tech deployment rarely improves learning — and frequently harms it.Attention spans shorten. Reading comprehension drops. Deep learning erodes. Students scroll, click, and memorize at the surface level but struggle to think critically or retain information. Meanwhile, ed-tech companies surged in profitability, not because their products worked, but because schools were required or pressured to adopt them.Technology became a shortcut — and shortcuts rarely lead to mastery.

Where Did All the Money Go? A Necessary Question

Why Returning Education to the States Is the Only Practical Solution