What Does the Department of Education Actually Do?
What Does the Department of Education Actually Do?
With the help of Congress, a president could get rid of the agency. Getting rid of the programs it runs and the money it spends would be a different matter.
Paywalled.
firefox and noscript (both absolute nusthaves, imho) will get you the article.
the atlantic is usually a reasonable read. subscribe if you can, bypass if you must.
edit:
the meaty part of answer to the headline
Contrary to what some attacks on the department say or imply, it doesn’t determine curricula. Those are set at the state and local levels, though the federal government does sometimes set guidelines or attach strings to funding in exchange for meeting metrics. During the Obama administration, Tea Party activists railed against “Common Core” standards, which they said were federal overreach. In fact, Common Core was neither created nor mandated by the federal government. The Obama years actually saw the federal government step back from control by ending No Child Left Behind, a controversial George W. Bush initiative.
One of the Education Department’s biggest footprints nationally is as a distributor of federal funds. Drawing from its roughly $80 billion budget, it sends billions to state and local school systems every year, especially to poorer districts, via the Title I program, which aims to provide equal education through teacher training, instructional material, and enrichment programs. The department also provides billions in financial aid—both through programs like Pell Grants and, since 2010, by making student loans directly to borrowers—and it runs FAFSA, the widely used mechanism for student financial-aid requests. (Less than 5 percent of the federal budget goes to education.)
The Education Department also enforces rules around civil rights—most notably through Title IX, which prevents discrimination in federally funded education on the basis of sex and has been interpreted to govern issues including equality in athletics programs and how schools handle sexual harassment and sexual violence. President Joe Biden also expanded protections for transgender students by issuing rules through the department banning discrimination “based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics in federally funded education programs.” These powers have made the department a major target for conservatives. (The Trump administration promptly withdrew Biden’s rules.)