Education

Neal McCluskey | From the December 2024 issue

Love or hate the Project 2025 blueprint for the next conservative president, it has done at least one good thing: revive discussion of ending the U.S. Department of Education. That department has no constitutional business existing. But eliminating the programs it administers, many of which predate the department, is just as important.

In the early 1970s, the National Education Association transformed from a professional association to a labor union and offered its endorsement to a presidential candidate who would support a stand-alone education department. Democrat Jimmy Carter made the promise and was elected in 1976.

The idea was controversial, including on the left. Joseph Califano, Carter's secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), objected to taking education programs from under the broader welfare roof and saw a standalone department as a threat to higher education's independence. Albert Shanker—the president of the other........

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