When John F. Kennedy became President, many states were failing in terms of K–12 student performance—and the full number of states confronting this problem remained unknown. There was no national yardstick.

Just six years after Kennedy’s death, an extraordinary national measurement tool was introduced: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP Basic achievement level, however, would not be introduced until much later.

Nearly 17 years after Kennedy’s death, the U.S. Department of Education—referred to here as the DOE—began operating. However, its founding legislation did not make nationwide K–12 student performance a paramount national imperative for the Department, nor did it isolate and establish that imperative as the DOE’s central mission. Instead, the Department appears to have been conceived largely as an administrative and coordinating body, with its founding legislation enumerating numerous programs and functions to administer.

Whether intentional or simply the result of poorly drafted legislation, that omission was a catastrophic strategic mistake.

Alternatively, if one assumes that the DOE had an obligation to elevate nationwide K–12 student performance, then decades of NAEP results suggest that, when judged by that standard, the DOE has been—and remains—an abject failure.

Thus, with respect to K–12 student performance, Congress faces three choices today: abolish the DOE, re-legislate it, or do nothing.

Regarding K–12 student performance, the default option is to leave the DOE as it is, rely on the states to do the best they can, and wait for a future Congress to re-legislate the Department. However, the downside is that during this waiting period roughly 50% of the nation’s K–12 students may graduate unable to read or perform math at minimum proficiency.

The consequence is profound. A demographic loss of this magnitude—arguably even greater—weakens every sector of the nation, including the skilled trades, higher education, and large-scale industrial production, including advanced mega-factories.

An aside: Be cautious of the assumption that higher-performing NAEP states have discovered the secret to educational success. While they outperform lower-performing states, some benefit from demographic and cultural advantages. (Next title: The elephant in the room.)

Some states consistently outperform others in K–12 education. While state leaders may credit their policies, the reality may be that high-performing states reflect populations with a disproportionately stronger cultural emphasis on education.

Less often acknowledged is that low-performing schools may persist even within high-performing states—and that low-performing states may still contain high-performing schools.

For U.S. student performance to become globally competitive, every high-performing K–12 school must achieve substantially better results than it does today—and every low-performing school must improve rapidly until its outcomes begin to overlap, and increasingly overlap, with those of higher-performing schools.

A temporary phenomenon that at first appears permanent

Traditionally lower-performing K–12 states have at times shown improved performance as students and teachers respond to the heightened attention surrounding a newly introduced initiative—regardless of the initiative itself. For example, a highly publicized effort accompanied by sustained media attention could temporarily increase engagement even if the underlying intervention is relatively modest.

The Hawthorne effect is the term commonly used to describe this phenomenon. The concept originated from studies conducted during the 1920s and 1930s at Hawthorne Works, a factory operated by Western Electric near Chicago, in which worker output appeared to increase in response to heightened observation and attention directed toward employees and their work environment. Once the added attention diminished, output often returned toward prior levels.

The implication for K–12 education is that gains following a new initiative may not necessarily represent lasting structural improvement. Accordingly, there must be ongoing hard-number testing and performance assessment.

For any complex system to excel, there must be a dedicated central hub, indispensable for sharing strategy, monitoring performance, and sharing a common direction and accountability.

Kennedy’s death came before he could formally request the establishment of a non-intrusive, central federal hub with the mission to monitor and independently help shape K–12 student performance within the states.

Nearly 17 years after Kennedy’s assassination, Congress established the U.S. Department of Education—putatively a central management hub for education-related matters. However, it largely mirrored the structure of the Office of Education it replaced.

Unfortunately, as had been true of the Office of Education, Kennedy’s overarching concern—K–12 student performance—was not explicitly addressed in the mandate of the newly created U.S. Department of Education. Arguably, this omission has contributed to the effective forfeiture of the potential of millions of K–12 students who graduate each year below NAEP proficiency.

Instead—despite the high-stakes nature of U.S. K–12 student performance—the newly established DOE’s founding legislation made the Department a catch-all for assorted education programs. Although important in their own right, those programs became distractions from a singular mission: elevating nationwide K–12 student-performance results.

Compounding the issue, the position of Secretary of Education—potentially the nation’s most critical federal position for elevating K–12 student performance—was left to selection by an incoming U.S. President, subject to Senate confirmation. Alternatively, Congress should consider the independent Panel described below as a mechanism for selecting, monitoring, and evaluating the Secretary.

To transform the DOE into an unparalleled national asset for U.S. K–12 student performance, a Congressional rewrite of the DOE’s governing framework could consider the following K-12 student performance-based concepts:

• DOE mission. Congress could legislate the DOE mission as the express K–12 student performance objective of achieving substantial, sustained, cumulative, and measurable gains in student outcomes nationwide—verified through hard-number metrics.
• DOE structure. Congress could legislate that the DOE perform no functions unrelated to its express K–12 student-performance mission, thereby reducing potential distractions from that mission. All other federal education programs could be returned to their original agencies or reassigned to other appropriate agencies, while state-level administrative responsibilities could be redirected to the states.

• Alternatively, Congress could establish a fully separate DOE division dedicated exclusively to the K–12 student-performance mission rather than transferring the Department’s other functions elsewhere. However, this approach would carry the long-term risk of mission creep and the gradual commingling of functions.

• Secretary of Education. Rather than continuing the current process under which an incoming U.S. President appoints the Secretary, Congress could authorize an independent Panel outside the DOE to select the Secretary of Education. Panel members would not hold political office.
• The Panel. Subject to authorities and safeguards established by Congress, the Panel would be empowered to appoint, review, replace, and potentially reappoint Secretaries as strategic priorities, performance outcomes, and broad innovation efforts evolve. The Panel’s evaluation would include nationwide K–12 student-performance results verified through hard-number metrics.
• Panel Members—No Favored Background. A hypothetical Panel member such as Rene Haas need not come from any preferred discipline, credential, or career path. Panel members could bring transformational perspectives to their oversight of the Secretary of Education position.

Moreover, Congress could codify a culture of innovation in the DOE’s governing legislation.

With a nod to two presidents, the solution is so simple—and so noncontroversial—that it is almost boring: Congress could re-legislate the Department of Education into an entity that both Donald J. Trump might be willing to accept and John F. Kennedy might have embraced—by giving the agency a singular, overriding, all-but-exclusive focus on K–12 student performance, while making separate administrative arrangements for all other education-related programs, which remain important in their own right.

Both major political parties—neither more than the other—champion national K–12 success. By working together, and only by working together, today’s Members of Congress can do what no previous Congress has done: re-legislate the U.S. Department of Education with a singular K-12 student performance focus.

Alternatively, the DOE could be left in place as currently legislated. U.S. Presidents could then use executive orders to implement short-term initiatives. However, governing by executive order carries inherent instability, with policy reversals that may ultimately come at the expense of sustained nationwide K–12 student performance improvement.

John F. Kennedy (president from 1961 until his assassination on November 22, 1963) advocated a rigorous, top-priority focus on K–12 student performance, while control of K–12 education remained with the states. (Many of his proposals, however, were voted down or slow-walked by Congress.)

65 years from his inauguration until today:

No national priority focus on K–12 student performance. When John F. Kennedy took office—and despite his efforts throughout his presidency—the United States lacked both a serious central management hub for K–12 student performance (only the Office of Education existed) and any national standard for K–12 education. Although some states maintained their own benchmarks, those standards varied widely, leaving the nation without a unified framework for measuring K–12 student achievement.

Then came the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Six years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, NAEP, in 1969, was first administered nationwide to provide a consistent benchmark of student performance across all 50 states.

NAEP results confirmed widespread K–12 failure nationwide. Viewed collectively across the states, a significant portion of U.S. human capital was being lost, with students graduating from K–12 unable to read or do math at minimum proficiency.

The reason is structural. The U.S. Department of Education was not established with a focus on K–12 student performance.

Nearly 17 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—and thus without his voice—Congress enacted the Department of Education Organization Act.

Jimmy Carter (in office from 1977 to 1981) signed the Act into law on October 17, 1979. This legislation formally established the U.S. Department of Education as the nation’s central coordination hub for education.

However, the legislation bore little resemblance to Kennedy’s vision of giving top-priority focus to K–12 student performance. Far from Kennedy’s urgent concern, the Carter-signed legislation did not even mention national K–12 student performance. (Instead, the newly created Department was structured primarily as an aggregator and administrator of education programs.)

Remarkably, this flawed 1979 DOE structure has remained in place for decades, despite NAEP alarms.

Ronald Reagan (president from 1981 to 1989) campaigned on eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. Upon taking office, he attempted to terminate it; Congress rejected the effort.

George W. Bush (President from 2001 to 2009) did not articulate a clear position on the U.S. Department of Education or its founding legislation. However, on January 8, 2002, he signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law—ushering in a disruptive period for K–12 education that yielded no sustained improvement in NAEP results and resulted in a lost decade for many students.

Barack Obama (president from 2009 to 2017) likewise did not articulate an actionable position on the structure or purpose of the Department of Education. However, on December 10, 2015, he signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law, replacing the failed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) framework. (ESSA, in turn, was followed by a decade of essentially flat NAEP performance, during which tens of millions of students continued to founder in the K–12 pipeline.)

Donald J. Trump, likely mirroring the same broad bipartisan frustration within the United States Congress, recognizes that the United States Department of Education—having remained largely unchanged for decades—has presided over persistently poor NAEP K–12 student performance outcomes, leading Trump to advocate eliminating the Department.

Thus, the question is: If Congress were to re-legislate the DOE along the lines outlined above to expressly elevate K–12 student performance—lines Kennedy might have supported—would Trump sign the bill?