The conversation around the future of the U.S. Department of Education has skyrocketed in recent weeks. Anne Wicks, the George W. Bush Institute's Don Evans Family Managing Director of Opportunity and Democracy explains what role the federal government has and should continue to have in education.
There’s a big national debate happening about the future of the U.S. Department of Education.
Should it exist? Should it be broken apart? Should it be farmed out to other agencies?
While ultimately Congress and the new administration will determine what the U.S. Department of Ed looks like going forward, it’s important to clarify a couple of things from questions we’ve heard from you all, about what the Department does.
Number one, it’s important to know that most decision making actually happens at the state and local level. The federal government is not dictating what curriculum districts should buy, or what’s taught in classrooms, all that happens in the state and local level.
The second thing that’s important to know is that 13% of all the money that’s spent on education in this country, public dollars, comes from the federal government. So that’s sent down in big grants to the states, that is typically spent on Title I grants, which go to the students, our lowest socioeconomic status students, to help support them and their school experience. It also goes to students with disabilities, a whole range of disabilities, to make sure we support those students specifically.
And another bucket goes to help the schools that are low performing schools, to help them improve their practice and ultimately improve outcomes for students. So, that’s typically what the federal government is doing. There are some really key federal functions, no matter what the agency ultimately looks like, but at the Bush Institute we think are really important. One of those is the federal requirement for all states to give a state assessment and have an accountability system, so when you think about it, all that money, the billions of dollars the federal government is sending down to states, that state test and the accountability system gives us transparency into how well the state and districts are teaching our kids.
How well are those kids learning? Those outcomes are really important for us to understand, and that federal requirement to have the state tests and to have an accountability system gives us really important transparency in how well those funds are being used and how well our kids are being served. We also think it’s really important that the federal government collects data about what’s happening for kids and funds important research to help us understand how kids learn best and what we should be doing to ensure kids can be successful. If you’ve heard about the science of reading, that is a really important body of research that has helped us understand how well kids can read and the best way to teach them. That comes from things that are funded through the federal Department of Education. That research funding is critical.
The next thing that we think about is the national assessment for education progress, which is a national test that’s given to samples of kids in every state, that really gives us a great apples to apples picture of how well kids are learning around this country, even though they’re experience in Virginia might look wildly different than their experience in California or Alaska or Iowa. That‘s really important data, we’ve been giving that test for decades, and it’s an incredible tool for policy makers and researchers.
And finally, the federal government provides student loans. That pile of money has been a really important way for millions of Americans to access a college degree and that’s a federal function. So whatever happens to the agency, whatever it looks like, it’s important to keep in mind that there will always be an important federal role in some way, for education in this country.
