Education Department Downsizing a ‘Good Step’ 

Federal Spending Sprees Have Benefited Big Labor, Not Students

In 1979, top bosses of the already-enormous National Education Association (NEA) teacher union pulled off one of the most remarkable power grabs of all time when they, in the words of journalist Steve Chapman, “almost single-handedly forced a Department of Education down Congress’s throat.” 

As Mr. Chapman pointed out in an article for the New Republic published a year later, then-President Jimmy Carter had secured the NEA hierarchy’s endorsement in 1976 largely by promising to push for a federal Department of Education (DoED). 

Even many normally pro-forced unionism politicians and pundits recognized and publicly acknowledged back then that this new federal bureaucracy would, to quote Mr. Chapman again, “serve no purpose but to give [unionized] teachers a bigger place at the federal trough.” 

Then-Right to Work Leader’s Warning About the DoED Has ‘Proven to Be Prescient’

Despite the fact that Big Labor Democrats’ control of Congress was near-absolute in 1979, the Carter-backed bill establishing the DoED barely squeaked through the House, 210-206. 

In the summer of 1980, then-National Right to Work Committee President Reed Larson warned that the recently-established DoED would only intensify the oppression of independent-minded educators by power-hungry government union bosses in state after state: 

“Compulsory unionism means the NEA doesn’t have to listen to its teacher-members. And now the Department of Education will only serve to multiply union officials’ coercive powers.” “Reed’s words have proven to be prescient,” noted current Committee Vice President Matthew Leen. 

“While only roughly 14% of the enormous amount of money that goes into K-12 government schools each year comes from federal taxpayers, DoED bureaucrats have expertly wielded federal purse strings to bully state and local education officials into running schools in accord with Beltway dictates.

“And, at least until very recently, permanent DoED bureaucrats in Democrat and Republican Administrations alike have been all too eager to wield their power to help teacher union bosses impose their agenda on states and localities nationwide.”

Trump DoED Secretary: ‘Bureaucracy in Washington’ Won’t Remedy Schools’ Woes

Mr. Leen continued: 

“Using the carrot of additional federal funding, Big Labor-allied DoED bureaucrats have swayed state and local school officials again and again to pad the payrolls of ineffective government schools with more unionized employees, instead of trying to offer parents and kids better options. 

“The Jimmy Carter-created DoED has thus proven to be a boon for the union hierarchies of the NEA empire and of the AFL-CIO-affiliated American Federation of Teachers [AFT]. 

“But schoolchildren obviously haven’t benefited from the educational bloat that the DoED has encouraged and facilitated. 

“For example, as Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab reported last year, from 2003 to 2023, nationwide government school funding doubled, outpacing inflation by nearly 50%. But students’ reading scores basically stagnated and math scores fell over that same period.” 

(See the chart on this page for more information.) 

The second Trump Administration is eager to take American education in a different direction. Education Sec. Linda McMahon put it this way in an April speech in San Diego: 

“Let’s shake it up. Let’s do something different. And it’s not through bureaucracy in Washington — that is not where it happens.”

Union Czar Worries States, Localities Will Stop Throwing Money Down a Rathole

As of early April, Ms. McMahon’s DoED had slashed its staff by roughly 50% and cancelled millions of dollars in contracts. 

She and the President agree that the goal should be to dismantle the DoED completely. But that cannot be done without Congress’s approval, which is far from certain. 

Regardless of whether the DoED is merely downsized, or abolished altogether, Mr. Trump and Ms. McMahon have made it clear that they do not favor any reduction in funding at all for Title 1, which furnishes federal aid to K-12 schools with an unusually high share of kids from low-income families. 

Nor would they support any reduction in federal funding for special ed or handicapped special-needs students. 

The break with the DoED past is that, from now on, federal money for such programs will be distributed through block grants to states and localities, which they will be free to spend as they choose.

That’s precisely why the DoED’s downsizing and its possible elimination infuriate union bigwigs like AFT President Randi Weingarten. 

In fact, Ms. Weingarten has publicly acknowledged that her primary beef with block grants is that more and more states will use federal money to help parents get their kids out of failing unionized government schools, rather than continue to use that money to expand those schools’ unionized payrolls!

State-Level Promotion of Union Monopoly Bargaining Is the Core Problem

“The Trump Administration’s downsizing of the DoED — and its support for this counterproductive bureaucracy’s complete elimination — are both commendable,” said Mr. Leen. 

“However, DoED or no DoED, the reality is that public education in the U.S. will continue to be in deep trouble as long as the vast majority of states continue to authorize and promote Big Labor monopoly-bargaining control over how teachers and other K-12 employees are compensated and managed. 

“State monopoly-bargaining laws, commonly and somewhat euphemistically referred to as ‘exclusive representation,’ effectively grant Big Labor the legal power to prevent K-12 school districts from rewarding educators according to their individual talents, efforts and achievements.

“Such laws, along with the inordinate political clout teacher union officials derive from them, also make it extremely difficult to terminate abusive and/or negligent teachers. 

“While the DoED downsizing is a good step, the principal battlegrounds for genuine school reform have been and will continue to be in the state capitals. 

“Over the past several years, the Committee has helped grassroots citizens in state after state to curtail and, in some cases, eliminate government union bosses’ monopoly-bargaining privileges. 

“Since 2017, for example, the Committee has helped local activists pass bans on automatic deduction of union dues from teachers’ and certain other public servants’ paychecks in West Virginia, Arkansas, Florida and Tennessee. 

“In 2021, the Committee helped Arkansans pass a ban on all monopolistic government unionism in courts, public schools and universities, and most state agencies. 

“And just this year, Committee staff helped Utahans adopt a ban on union monopoly bargaining over public servants who work at all levels and agencies of state and local government.”

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