The U.S. Department of Education
End it?
Or, with modest effort, leverage it into an epic K-12 student performance asset?
During President Kennedy’s abbreviated time in office, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) did not yet exist to confirm the extent of devastated K–12 student performance across the states.
But the devastation was not a secret—just as the devastation today, revealed by NAEP, is no secret.
Moreover, during his presidency, the U.S. Department of Education (herein, the DOE) did not yet exist. Instead, education functions were housed within the Office of Education, a subdivision of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Kennedy may have discovered that the founding legislation for the Office of Education did not focus on—or even address—K–12 student performance; instead, it listed other obligations.
Kennedy understood that the Constitution grants the states authority over K–12 education. He also understood that the states’ alarming K–12 student performance results needed to be transformed.
Both could be accommodated. But his death came before he could formally request a central federal oversight hub that would bring a singular focus to K–12 student performance nationwide while not infringing on state control.
This explainer site advances two linked objectives: to redefine the federal role with a clear focus on K–12 student performance—and to provide the means to achieve it through the HSe4Metrics platform.
The DOE was created 17 years after his assassination, but like the Office of Education, it did not address K–12 student performance.
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In a mega organization, a central coordination hub is vital
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 a new Congress established the U.S. Department of Education, a central management hub for education-related matters, was in the image of the Office of Education. Unfortunately, like in the Office of Education it replaced, Kennedy’s overarching K-12 student performance concern was not mentioned—arguably, based on NAEP assessments, millions of K-12 graduates have been forfeited every year since.
Despite the high-stakes nature of U.S. K–12 student performance, the newly established DOE hub’s founding legislation created catch-all for assorted education programs—important in themselves, but distractions from a singular mission to elevate nationwide K–12 results.
Compounding the issue, the role of Secretary of Education—potentially the most critical position in the United States for elevating K-12 student performance, was left to perfunctory political appointment by incoming U.S. Presidents—perhaps awarded as a political favor.
In a Congressional remake of the DOE, should the Secretary of Education position be performance-based?
The final arbiter of DOE performance is national-scale K-12 student performance, which hinges on both federal and state leadership–and K-12 hard-number metrics verification.
At the federal level, possible DOE-performance based considerations in a Congressional rewrite of the DOE’s underlying legislation–where the purpose of the rewrite is to make the DOE an unparalleled asset for the nation’s K-12 student performance–include the following:
- Consider legislating the DOE’s K-12 student performance mission to affirmatively pursue sustained, cumulative, and dramatic gains in K–12 student performance nationwide—with hard-number metrics verification.
- Consider removing all distractions from a DOE K-12 student performance mission–removing the DOE’s expansive list of program-based functions, perhaps returning those programs to the federal agencies in which they were originally housed. And return state-level administrative responsibilities to the states, consistent with constitutional authority.
- Consider designating a specialized target agency to receive and administer all education federal level programs-based currently in the DOE–leaving only K-12 student performance in the DOE.
- Consider codifying the leadership mission of the Secretary of Education to align with the preeminent mission of the DOE to achieve significant, hard-number gains in nationwide K–12 student performance. The Secretary would have full discretion—including innovation—to accomplish the DOE’s mission.
- Consider making the position of Secretary of Education performance-based.
- As part of relegislating the DOE, consider creating a third-party evaluation panel outside the DOE to evaluate DOE performance and its leadership based on whatever criteria the Panel chooses, doing so at its sole discretion and with no legislated guidelines. The Panel would hire the Secretary, continue to regularly interview replacement Secretaries, replace Secretaries at the Panel’s discretion (and even rehire Secretaries as DOE strategies and efforts evolve), all as the Panel considers national K-12 student performance.
- Consider a method of selecting Selectors to appoint Panel members. Consider making the Panel members subject to replacement by the Selectors at the sole discretion of the Selectors with DOE performance as a guiding determinant.
DOE at a crossroads—abolish it, relegislate, or do nothing
The states have failed. That is, collectively, a decade before Congress created the flawed DOE, K–12 student performance across the states left many students unable to meet even the NAEP Basic achievement level or their own state standards. The creation of the DOE—as legislated—had no effect on this failure.
Thus, the choice: abolish the DOE, relegislate it, or do nothing.
Doing 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 relegislate 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, write, 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—and top schools.)
The elephant in the room—and top schools
Some states consistently outperform others in K–12 education. While state leaders may credit their policies, the reality is that high-performing states may reflect populations with a disproportionately stronger cultural emphasis on education. Less mentioned is that low-performing schools, too, may persist in high-performing K-12 states.
For U.S. student performance to be globally competitive, every high-performing K–12 school must achieve substantially better results than it does today—and every low-performing school must rapidly improve until its outcomes begin to overlap (and increasingly overlap) with those of higher-performing schools.
The 65-year review. Time for a bipartisan finish
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.)
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 (NAPE). 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, write, 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 reflecting the overwhelming bipartisan sentiment in the United States Congress—recognizes that the U.S. Department of Education, having remained largely unchanged for decades, has left NAEP outcomes in disarray (with quality-of-life consequences that may persist for generations).
At the same time, Congress recognizes that the federal government must not impinge on state control of K–12 education.
The almost boringly simple solution
With a nod to two presidents, the solution is so simple—and so noncontroversial—that it is almost boring: Congress could relegislate 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: relegislate the U.S. Department of Education.
(Alternatively—a momentary patch—the DOE could be left in place as legislated. U.S. Presidents could then use executive orders to implement short-term efforts. 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.)
With the DOE relegislated, innovate
Once the DOE is relegislated, be prepared to innovate by funding the HSe4Metrics platform.
Note: For purposes of this website, and at the writer’s discretion, the commonly recognized but unofficial abbreviation “DOE” is used to refer to the U.S. Department of Education rather than the official “ED,” notwithstanding that “DOE” is also the standard abbreviation for the Department of Energy.
Key code 178, 179, 188