The Department of Education was created more than 40 years ago to improve the U.S. school system. But as incoming political leaders, including President-elect Trump, consider dismantling the agency, a Fox News Digital investigation examines trends in test scores, graduation rates and federal funding since its inception. Below are the results of those surveys.
In October 1979, while former President Jimmy Carter was in office, Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act, and the Department of Education was officially established in 1980.
The department was created to policy, administer and coordinate federal aid to educational institutions across the country, but since its creation it has faced opposition primarily from Republican lawmakers.
Trump asked whether the agency was important to educational development or whether schools would benefit from a more localized education system, and said he intended to disband the agency when he took office.
The modern education system appears to be very different from when this institution was founded. And as President Trump prepares to take office, a decades-old debate over whether states, rather than the federal government, should have more control over their local school systems is being reignited.
Biden Department of Education Spends More than $1 Billion on DEI Grants: Report
August 21, 2024, Department of Education building in Washington, DC (Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)
“The federal government’s efforts to improve education have been disastrous,” Lindsey Burke, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Education Policy Center, a right-wing think tank, wrote of the current education system, which has had years of low test scores. “Even if there was a constitutional basis for federal involvement (and there is not), the federal government would have to decide what education policies would best serve the diverse communities of our vast country. They are in a completely inferior position to make decisions.”
It is argued that such a department would enable people with appropriate expertise to make decisions related to financing.
Claire McCann, managing director of policy and operations at the Postsecondary Education Equity and Economics Research (PEER) Center, told ABC News in November: Expertise and policy background on these [education] problem.
“The civil servants who work in the Department of Education are true experts in their field.”
Decrease in test scores
Average student test scores have declined significantly since the College of Education was created more than 40 years ago.
According to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data for the 2022-2023 school year, 13-year-old student performance in math and reading are both at their lowest levels in decades.
A teacher in the 1980s was reading a book to a group of elementary school students. Average student test scores have declined significantly over the past 40 years. (H. Armstrong Roberts)
The Department of Education does not control student test scores, but is responsible for requiring schools to administer standardized tests in 2024, with schools reaching their lowest scores in decades, according to NAEP.
According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the average ACT composite score in the United States in the 1990s was approximately 20.8. But since then, standardized test scores have declined.
According to 2024 ACT data, Nevada has the lowest test scores in the nation with an average score of 17.2, followed by Oklahoma with the second-lowest average score of 17.6.
“The results are sobering,” Peggy G. Carr, director of the National Center for Education Statistics, told ABC News about today’s test scores.
While most schools moved to an all-online learning environment and reopened during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, Professor Kerr said: “This decline we’re seeing was also in 2015, so “We can’t blame the coronavirus.”
Average test scores in the United States are typically based on standardized test averages. Countries in Europe and East Asia that do not use ACT or SAT tests as required by the United States are typically ranked as having relatively high test scores.
funding
Supporters of dedicated educational institutions argue that federal involvement supports the system, while many critics say it is a waste of taxpayer money.
When the department was first established, the department adopted specific policies when allocating funds to schools, such as requiring institutions of higher education to provide on-campus drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs under the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, passed in 1989. requirements were set.
A new report finds that the Biden administration has spent at least $1 billion in DEI grants for public schools. (St. Petersburg)
But under President Biden, the Department of Education is spending money on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in K-12 schools across the country, and critics of the efforts , alleging that funds are being diverted from core educational purposes.
Experts say President Trump would need Congressional approval to dissolve the Department of Education.
A recent investigation found that Biden’s Education Department spent $1 billion in grants promoting DEI in employment, Fox News Digital reported.
Since 2021, the Biden administration has spent $489,883,797 in race-based employment grants. $343,337,286 for general DEI programming. According to Parents Defending Education, a right-wing nonprofit, $169,301,221 has gone toward DEI-based mental health training and programs, for a total of $1,002,522,304.81.
Neil McCluskey, an education analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy think tank, told ABC News in November that overhauling the department would simply give states money and let leaders decide how to allocate it. He said it was possible.
graduation rate
In the 1970-1971 school year, the high school graduation rate was 78 percent.
However, the rate declined, and by 1982, shortly after the Department of Education was established, the average graduation rate had fallen to 72.9%.
Until the early 2000s, the rate remained in the low 70th percentile, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Graduation rates in the United States have increased in recent years. (Keith Bedford/Reuters)
However, data for the 2021-2022 school year shows that the average graduation rate for public high school students was 87%, an increase of 7 percentage points from a decade ago.
curriculum
Advances in technology have led to student education, with typing often replacing cursive lessons, digital tools enhancing math instruction, and GPS technology reducing reliance on traditional map-reading skills. The environment has changed.
Today’s technology-driven workforce is also reshaping school systems, with classes in computers and artificial intelligence taking precedence over home economics like sewing and baking.
The Department of Education does not set curriculum requirements for schools, leaving them to the decisions of state and local boards of education.
However, curriculum change remains at the forefront of recent political debates, particularly as it relates to parents seeking involvement in their children’s classrooms. Parents across the country are protesting that their children’s curriculum includes certain topics (usually related to gender or sex) and that they were not informed about the content before it was shared in class. is increasing.
A third-grader plays a math-related computer game on his laptop at St. John Paul II Catholic Academy in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital recently reported on an elementary school in a New York City suburb that is teaching a “gender curriculum” to elementary-level children in an effort to promote “inclusion” in the school.
Meanwhile, in 2016, the Office of Washington, D.C. (OSPI) established health education standards for all public schools, teaching kindergarten and first grade students that there are many ways to express gender. It was mandatory.
In Oregon, also in 2016, the State Board of Education adopted health education standards that require kindergarteners and first graders to “recognize that there are many ways to express gender.” ‘s third-graders will be asked to “define their sexual orientation,” Fox reported in 2022.
Opponents of the Education Department, including Mr. Trump, have used examples of controversial curriculum like this to argue that parents should be given more power over their children’s learning.
Students on the campus of the University of Rochester in New York. (Libby March/Getty Images)
But the incoming Republican president wasn’t the first to propose the idea. Former President Ronald Reagan called for the department to be abolished because “local needs and preferences, not the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”
President Reagan said in 1981, “The only way to reduce the size and cost of big government is to eliminate government agencies that are unnecessary and get in the way of solutions.”
David Kanani, president of Los Angeles ORT College, a Jewish education nonprofit, suggested the department be wiped out, rather than eradicated entirely.
“The Department of Education is ensuring consistency and quality across schools, especially in STEM education, which is critical to national security and global competitiveness,” Kanani told Fox News Digital in January. “Rather than eliminating it, we should prioritize STEM as a national imperative and organize and reform the sector to work more effectively with state and local systems.”
Andrew Clark, president of advocacy group Yes. All Children, President Trump recently said we should establish a path to redesigning our education system instead of bulldozing the entire Department of Education.
President-elect Trump has said he will abolish the Department of Education once he takes office. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)
“To make real change, you have to make it in a way that benefits people’s lives. So if you just drop the hammer overnight, you’re going to hurt people.” [who] dependent. So we need to figure out a path to change,” Clark told Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer turned principal and host of the Lost Debate podcast.
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Any changes Trump makes to the Department of Education would require approval from Congress.
Republicans now hold majorities in both chambers, and lawmakers could pass new legislation addressing legislation to create and sanction the department.
FOX News’ Kristin Parks and Jessica Chasmer contributed to this report.
Aubrey Spady is a writer for Fox News Digital.
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