The article discusses a bill introduced by U.S. Senator Mike Rounds R-S.D. that aims to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, an initiative supported by President-elect Donald Trump.
The bill, called the Returning Education to Our States Act, proposes redistributing key federal education programs to other government departments, such as the Departments of Interior, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Labor, and State.
Rounds argues that the Department of Education, created in 1979, has become an oversized bureaucracy that has not improved the quality of education despite significant funding increases. He criticizes the department for spending large sums per student with little improvement in standardized test scores.
According to Rounds, local control over education, rather than federal oversight, would better serve students.
Under the bill, various programs currently managed by the Department of Education would be shifted to the aforementioned departments. For example, Native American education programs would move to the Department of the Interior, federal student loan programs to the Department of the Treasury, and special education programs to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Department of Labor would oversee vocational education programs, while the Department of State would handle the Fulbright-Hays Program.
Critics of the bill argue that eliminating the Department of Education could complicate access to federal student aid and potentially threaten schools that rely heavily on federal funding. Nonetheless, Rounds is optimistic that this legislation will be passed with the support of Republican majorities in Congress, aiming to end what he sees as the detrimental impact of the federal education bureaucracy.