Theory 2 Action Podcast
Theory 2 Action Podcast
SPECIAL MM#372--Do We Need a Federal Dept. of Education?
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Could the future of American education hinge on historical insights and bold reforms?
Join us as we promise to unravel the complexities of federal education funding and the Department of Education's journey from its inception in 1867 to its establishment in 1980.
With a critical eye on the decline of teacher unions and the rise of alternatives such as charter and homeschooling, we chart a path forward for an educational system in need of urgent reform.
Key Points from the Episode:
- We scrutinize pivotal moments that shaped federal involvement in education, including the Cold War and the National Defense Education Act of 1958, underscoring education's role in national security.
- Explore the rise of teacher unions during the 1960s and 70s, examining their influence on collective bargaining, student learning, and significant strikes that reshaped the educational landscape.
- For history buffs, our discussion offers a compelling preview of our two-part series on the 16,000-Hour War, delving into these transformative events with depth and detail.
- As we transition to modern education reform, we challenge the status quo by examining the critiques posed by Thomas Sowell in "Inside the American Education System."
- We tackle contentious issues like teacher credentialing and tenure, which Sowell argues hinder teacher quality and accountability.
- Our exploration includes the potential of school choice, with examples like Oakland's Catholic schools offering cost-effective alternatives to public education.
- We confront the inefficiencies of federal oversight, arguing for increased local control and the necessity of active civic engagement in shaping educational policies.
Other resources:
LM#14--16,000 Hour War, part 1
LM#14--16,000 Hour War, part 2
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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome back to this special podcast episode. Yesterday we wished you a very happy Thanksgiving. We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones. And in yesterday's podcast we acted like a teacher and worked through a Facebook post and we opened why that can of worms? Why we don't need a federal Department of Education. We tried to give you the closest thing to the objective truth that we could in our research. We said on yesterday's podcast that we would come back today and answer and ask some more questions. So, in Socratic fashion, let us begin by asking several questions, shall we First? When was the Department of Education first started? Well, our research indicates the United States Department of Education, in its current form as a cabinet level department, began operations on May 4th 1980. As in the late, the late hemorrhaging of the Carter administration, emerging of the Carter Administration, and this was followed by the signing of the Department of Education Organization Act, signed by the aforementioned Mr President, jimmy Carter, on October 7, 1979.
Speaker 2:However, the history of federal involvement in education dates back much, much further. In 1867, president Andrew Johnson, horrible president, signed legislation creating the first Department of Education. That wasn't the only wrong thing he did during his presidency. And then, in 1868, due to concerns about federal control over local schools, it was demoted to an Office of Education. This is an important nugget of wisdom to remember. We need to learn about the United States after the Civil War to understand why there were severe apprehensions for federal control over local schools Over the next century. From 1868, this office operated under various titles and was housed in different agencies, including the Department of Interior, the Department of Health and Education and Welfare, and in the 1950s and 60s, federal funding for education expanded significantly due to various social and political factors. So what were these key factors for increasing federal funding? Well, several key factors happened and some of them were actually correct.
Speaker 2:The Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union was a major driver of increased federal education, or increased federal investment in education. The launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union in 1957 created a whole sense of urgency for the United States to improve science and technology education. It actually led to a passage of the National Defense Education Act, which is kind of a big deal in education circles, called the NDEA. That was passed in 1958. It marked a beginning of large-scale federal involvement in education and primarily, education was at that time viewed as essential for national security, for economic growth and for social mobility. The NDEA tried to improve American schools and promote post-secondary education. Its aim was to strengthen all levels of the American school system and encourage students to continue their education beyond high school. Now, this was all good and wonderful statements from the NDEA, but often the devil is in the details. So, along with this federal increase of funding for schools, there was many, many strings attached to them. For schools, there was many, many strings attached to them.
Speaker 2:The United States sees a vast expansion of teacher unions during the 1960s, after the signing of this NDEA. Now there was a growth continuing in the 1970s of teacher unions. This period marked a huge turning point for teacher organization and union membership. So our third question is did teacher unions begin to be a big thing and how did it really affect the students? Well, yes, it actually did become a big thing because at the onset the United Federation of Teachers, the UFT, in New York City, spearheaded their movement in 1960 with a successful strike that led to collective bargaining rights by 1963. That, in addition to the American Federation of Teachers, the AFT, a different union group all along, experienced rapid growth. They expanded from fewer than 60,000 members in 1960 to wait for it over 200,000 by the end of the decade, and furthermore there was over 300 teacher strikes occurred throughout the country during the 10 years following the teacher strike in New York City, united Federation of Teachers' initial walkout. So our fourth question is these unions just kept growing and growing and began to smother out exactly how they were helping students Essentially? Yes, how they were helping students Essentially, yes, there was inspiration for private sector unionism and civil rights activism, for teacher unions to collectively bargain and gather, which is certainly within their constitutional rights.
Speaker 2:The AFT's abandonment of its no-strike pledge emboldened many teachers nationwide to strike. There was a passage of the law in 1961, the Brown Act in California, which granted public employees the right to join employee organizations. And then there was increasing numbers of men entering the teaching profession, which was kind of unheard of at the time and that often brought heightened militancy and expectations for better wages for all teachers. So our fifth question is how big did these unions get and did they keep striking, which was prohibitive to student learning? Well, yes, the momentum continued in the 1970s for teacher union expansion. Between 1960 and June of 1974, the country experienced over 1,000 teacher strikes involving more than 823,000 teachers by the end of the 1970s. Collective bargaining agreements covered 72% of public school teachers. The surge in teacher unionism affected both major teacher organizations the AFT, which grew rapidly and became very militant, and then the National Education Association, which was traditionally more conservative, was forced to adopt union-like tactics to compete and eventually to become a full-fledged union themselves. To compete and eventually to become a full-fledged union themselves.
Speaker 2:Now, if you want to go deeper into what was happening in the 50s and 60s in the education field, please check out our two-part series Liberty, minute 14, the 16,000-Hour War all about what happened at the beginning of the century and how the education system, our federal Department of Education, has failed us at every decade throughout the whole 20th century and going into the 21st century. We'll put links in the show notes for that very long two-part series there. So back to our questions. What other factors played into federal funding of education and how do we get a federal Department of Education that was so large? Well, in 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed. It launched comprehensive programs, including Title I aid for disadvantaged children Good thing. And then the Higher Education Act of 1965 authorized assistance for post-secondary education, including financial aid for needy college students.
Speaker 2:Finally, in 1979, president Carter advocated and successfully established the Modern Department of Education as a cabinet-level agency, like we'd said before. Now, it's worth noting that while the department began with 3,000 employees in a $12 billion budget in 1980, it has since grown massively to as of 2024, it employs 4,400 people and it has a budget of an astounding $238 billion with a B. It's an annual budget, $238 billion with a B. So what is the answer? How do we conduct real reform of our education, all of our education, kindergarten through universities? Well, to answer that question, we're going to turn to our book of the day, and it's an old book. It's still an effective book, though, because the roots of all these problems were addressed, were pulled apart and completely addressed by the 1990s, were pulled apart and completely addressed by the 1990s.
Speaker 2:Ronald Reagan came in in 1981 with the sole goal of abolishing, on his domestic front, abolishing the Department of Education. They were never able to get it done. Many Senate Republicans balked at it and pushed back, and they simply did not have the votes. It took a lot of time and there was not a lot of bang for the buck, so to speak, in the Reagan administration to abolish that department. Bill Bennett, former education secretary under Reagan, details all of this in numerous books and podcasts.
Speaker 2:But our book of the day is going to be Thomas Sowell's Inside the American Education System, written back in 1993. But again, it's still effective today. It offers several critiques and suggestions for reforming the American education system. All have never been fully tried, but particularly there's two that would go a long way to reforming everything in our education system. They are teacher credentialing and tenure. So for our first quote of our day from the book of the day, rather, let's go to Inside American Education by Thomas Sowell, fantastic author.
Speaker 2:By their virtual monopoly on the credentialing process, schools and departments of education determine the caliber of people who enter the teaching profession, and the inadequacies of those people determine the upper limit of the quality of American education. Just as it is not the mere failure of education courses to provide adequate training that is crucial to the low intellectual quality of teachers, but rather the perverse filtering function these courses perform, so it is not the low academic skills of these teachers which are so damaging in the schools, but rather the historically demonstrable and pervasive tendencies of teachers and administrators alike to seek non-academic roles and functions for themselves and the schools. So these education departments at many of these universities. They have the monopoly on teacher credentialing and that system just fails to produce high-quality educators. I mean. Sol notes throughout the book merely meeting educational benchmarks set by states or district does not guarantee classroom success. But that monopoly is so restrictive that no one is able to offer any guidance on how to reform it. He advocates destroying the monopoly of education departments in teacher credentialing wholesale and I think that starts with abolishing the Department of Education. You're going to get much more success pushing out the years. If of those 50 states, let's say 10 or 15 have failing grades by any objective measure, that will be a greater plus, a greater advantage for the remaining 40 or 35 states. That is how bad the education system is nationwide.
Speaker 2:Let's go back to the book about abolishing tenure. What does Thomas Sowell say about that? The claim that tenure is essential to academic freedom is belied by the experience of think tanks staffed by scholars very similar to professors, people whose writings are at least as non-conformist and controversial as those of tenured faculty members. The belief that tenure simply cannot be gotten rid of is belied by the experience of Britain. Where it has been gotten rid of Stability of employment is not without its benefits to the institution as well as the individual. Other organizations recognize that with multi-year contracts or with customs which accomplish the same thing informally, there's no reason why colleges and universities could not extend their current practice of offering multi-year contracts from the junior faculty to the senior faculty, varying the length of these contracts according to the individual and their financial commitments of the institution. Many current faculty abuses, including the gross neglect of the students themselves, reflect an arrogance and an irresponsibility to which ironclad job security is the institutional foundation, and that institutional foundation needs to be destroyed.
Speaker 2:Ride on, ride on, thomas Sowell. Keep going, preach, baby, preach. I'm a soul. Keep going, preach, baby, preach. So again, soul strongly supports the elimination of tenure in these educational institutions. Often tenure protects underperforming teachers, leads to a huge lack of accountability. We've seen that for over 50 to 70 years. Soul states again as long as people are rewarded for just being alive a certain number of years, regardless of their performance, we cannot expect better quality outcomes. Absolutely right. He suggests that abolishing tenure would be a crucial step in improving the education system. Would be a crucial step in improving the education system. Now some other reforms in addition to addressing teacher credentialing and tenure. Soul proposes some other reforms implementing school choice to allow parents to remove their children from low-performing schools. Again, this book was written in 1993. This is probably the only place where we've made a lot of educational reform, despite what the educational establishment always said, and this starts back in the 1990s when I was in graduating from high school.
Speaker 2:Let's go to the book. All About School Choice, and what does Thomas Sowell say about that. All about school choice, and what does Thomas Sowell say about that? Finally, the most under-founded claim or unfounded claim rather, of all is that parental choice plans would be costlier than the present public school education. In reality, the average cost of educating students in private schools is less than the cost of educating them in public schools. The Catholic schools tend to be especially low cost. In Oakland, california, for example, the Catholic schools spend only about one-third as much per pupil as the public schools in the same city. I think that still holds true today. I was teaching CCD in the early 2000s, 2005-ish to 2010, and this stat was the same, at least in the Columbus Catholic schools.
Speaker 2:Back to the book. It has been commonplace for private schools to produce better education for less money. Yep, the opposition of the educational establishment to school choice proposals has not been limited to presenting arguments. They also have used their political muscle to get choice plans scaled back, underfinanced and encumbered with red tape where they have been unable to stop such plans completely. That is absolutely, without a doubt, true. For example, almost never do such plans for parental choice allow the student who transfers out of the system to take along as much money as the system spends per pupil. Having done as much as possible to cripple the choice actually offered to the parents, the educational establishment then points triumphantly to the fact that parents have not been as enthusiastic for the shriveled options presented to them as choice advocates have suggested when advocating a full-bodied set of options. A full-bodied set of options, moreover and here's where the national education system is just absolutely very, very bad they are not in the student's best interest.
Speaker 2:The National Education Association engages in tricky manipulation of statistics in order to understate how much use is made of parental choice. Although the whole point of allowing parental choice is to permit a selection among schools, the NEA measures the usage of such choice by how many transfers place out of the school district. Obviously, few parents are going to send their children great distances from home. But the NEA tricky statistics conceal how many transfers among schools and students actually happen within the district. So again, school choice has significantly expanded. In the 1990s and that's when this book was written More families were opting for alternatives to traditionally assigned public schools. The most increase in school choice has occurred within the public school system. Percentage of students attending their assigned public schools decreased from 80% in 1993 to 69% in 2016. It's a big drop. Conversely, enrollment in chosen public schools, including charter schools, increased from 11% in 1993 to 19% in 2016. These are outside statistics because again, the NEA likes to play tricky with the numbers.
Speaker 2:Charter schools, another alternative in the public school choice debate. They have seen remarkable growth. In fall of 2000, only 0.4 million students were enrolled in charter schools. By the fall of 2016, this number has surged to 3 million students, representing a seven-fold increase. Now other areas of educational choice have seen progress since the 1990s Voucher programs and educational savings accounts. Since the 1990s voucher programs and educational savings accounts the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program established in the 1990 was one of the first modern voucher programs and was really the first crack in this school choice fight. Throughout the 2000s and 2010, many states have implemented various school choice initiatives, including vouchers and tax credit scholarship programs. Recent years we've seen the creation of more expansive programs. West Virginia State Education Savings Account Program just passed in 2021.
Speaker 2:That, I'm hearing, is wonderful to get your kids out of the failing schools. And then private school enrollment has remained relatively stable. Many parents feel that private schools are doing a pretty good job. They're staying on task with providing good education. Homeschooling is where we have seen a lot of popularity. The percentage of homeschooled students increased from 2% in 1999 to 3% in 2016, but many more actual students are getting schooled at home. Um, so those numbers are kind of tricky. Just a mere 1% increase of the total number of students is substantial and frankly, I've taught many homeschool kids in religious education at my parish, like I said, from 2005 to 2010 when I was doing it, and frankly they were more prepared and better behaved than some of the other kids.
Speaker 2:Now, some other ways states could improve education at their level introducing merit pay, merit-based pay and rigorous evaluation systems for teachers. That's what I think we should go to. Re-evaluating union policies to balance teacher rights with accountability absolutely needs to be there, and just in the cursory review of just this book Inside American Education. I came across a review of the book and I just thought this was profound. This is from a former 36-year post-secondary teacher and here's what he writes. After reading Inside American Education, our book of the day, quote Dr Soule reveals what has been happening in the American classrooms since the 1960s. That's been happening in the American classrooms since the 1960s. After you read and understand his analysis, you don't have to wonder why American children are far behind the children of China, japan, south Korea, etc. In academic achievement and competence. He says I taught for 36 years in a post-secondary school. Taught for 36 years in a post-secondary school. The dramatic academic shortcomings of most of the high school graduates who came to our school were almost insurmountable. Insurmountable is what that former 36-year teacher says.
Speaker 2:Okay, two more questions. Back to our original question do we really need a federal department of education? I think the necessity of that education department, even though it's a topic of ongoing debate. I'm going to fall squarely into the Reagan camp on this one. Reagan, in his 1982 State of the Union address, called for the end of the department. He argued that the decisions regarding education should be made at the local level rather than the federal government. He thought it was a bureaucratic entity that interfered with more local control over educational matters, and I happen to agree with him. And despite, like I said, calls for abolition, congress ultimately did not support this move. Bob Dole was one of the proponents pushing back against Reagan. He was Senate Majority Leader at the time.
Speaker 2:Yes, the Reagan administration reduced the department's influence and its budget. It cut its funding and regulatory authority, but Reagan was unable to eliminate it entirely. Two reasons you could abolish this department. You could remove it as a cabinet level position and you could bend it into the Department of Health and Human Services, where it existed for most of the history of our country, at least since the 1870s. So then, that begs the question okay, could you just demote it to a much smaller department so the education funding stays in the states? Yes, you could.
Speaker 2:Two reasons for having a much, much smaller federal department of education instead of eliminating it altogether. If you can't eliminate it altogether, two reasons for having a much smaller department is number one you do need to account for civil rights enforcement. The department enforces civil rights laws in education, ensuring that schools do not discriminate based on race, gender or disability. This enforcement is vital because it maintains a quality of educational opportunities. It administers programs like Title I, like we said, and that involves a lot of disability education initiatives. So students with disabilities we would have to protect as a carve-out. But we don't need a whole federal department to do it. It could be part of another federal department and just have a much smaller scale. Number two the department is responsible for collecting and analyzing educational data which helps inform policy decisions at federal and state levels. I think this research could really be accomplished much more efficiently to help identify trends and challenges in education, help to guide the funding and help to guide program development, all at a state level. I think you could be much more efficient than just having us fund paper pushers in Washington DC. So most of this funding can be pushed back to the states as block grants or, frankly, just remain in the states. Grants or, frankly, just remain in the states.
Speaker 2:Okay, in terms of the final arguments, our 10th question what are the final arguments against the Federal Department of Education? Well, there's two, two major ones. There's a constitutional concern Education is not explicitly mentioned in the US Constitution, suggesting that the founders thought it should be managed at state or local level rather than federally. You know, I believe this goes along with the principle of subsidiarity. I'm a huge believer in that principle, where local governments should handle the issues and the education of their students much more effectively than Washington DC can.
Speaker 2:Number two bureaucracy and inefficiency. The education department creates unnecessary bureaucracy. They hinder educational innovation and responsiveness. That happens at local level. States are much better suited to address their unique educational needs without federal oversight. Just as an example, there's 512,000 principals and other administrators at elementary school and secondary schools. There's 97,000 administrators at child and daycare providers and there's 58,000 administrators at trade schools and other educational service providers. Again, it's another reason for the principle of subsidiarity. If your local school board or your local department of education the state level has too many administrators with no oversight, that's the fault of your local population. You're going to know these people. Frankly, you should be attending your local school boards and ask the questions that are relevant why does this person have this job and what is this position for? If they can't provide you an answer, then they should be criticized and possibly be run against in the next school board election. Local control of our government is why our country is still one of the main reasons this country has flourished and why we are a fantastic country, best in the history of the world.
Speaker 2:Now, the counterargument to this and it wasn't made great during the Reconstruction, when free blacks and former slaves and their children were not afforded educational opportunities. He's absolutely correct. There's no argument here for that. So that's when it does become a federal issue. But we don't need to have a permanent federal department in Washington DC making these decisions. We need correct oversight from Congress, who has the power to pressure to ensure there is no discrimination happening. Outside of that, very strong governors and strong state legislatures can weed out and expose that corruption for what it is. We don't need a federal department of education. We might. We may have needed it at the time from 1865, probably through the end of the century, if we were actually good, if we had a good Congress at the time, if we had strong leadership in the White House. But we didn't. We went through Reconstruction, we went through the Jim Crow South, which lasted another 100 years because of just weak leadership at a congressional and presidential level. So we have two bonus questions. First bonus question, and it has to be asked again what's the deal regarding teacher union membership? And it has to be asked again what's the deal regarding teacher union membership, most especially what happened since the 1960s, because something just seems wrong from the outside. And you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:Teacher union membership in the United States has significantly increased from the 1960s until now. Like we said before, the AFT grew from 60,000 members in 1960 to over 200,000 members by the end of the decade Now. Teacher union membership reached its peak in the late 2000s. By 2008, the combined membership of the AFT and the National Education Association approached $4 million, and they had annual revenues at all levels to be estimated at nearly $2 billion.
Speaker 2:Now, since the late 2000s, the percentage of public school teachers who are union members has dropped significantly. That is going in the right direction. Federal data shows that 85% of public school teachers were union members in 1990, falling to 79% in 1999, and then to 68% by 2020. Another good trend Now, despite the overall decline, teacher unions still represent a significant portion of the workforce, and that workforce is more militant now than they were as of 2024, approximately 20% of union members in the country are public school teachers.
Speaker 2:The NEA reported 2.4 million working members in 2021-2022 year. That's down 40,000 for the previous year, but still, while membership has decreased, teacher unions remain a very powerful force in education policy and labor activism. We've seen a resurgence in teacher strikes and increased public support for educator organization, and that's a bad thing. Now there's huge reasons in the last decade, and especially since COVID, for private schools, for charter schools or for homeschooling. We need to continue to push that. That's the competition we need Now. Our next bonus question, final bonus question have we ever abolished entire federal departments of anything before in the history of the United States?
Speaker 2:Yes we've abolished many entire federal departments before. In the history of the United States Don't let the major media lie to you there's been many instances where cabinet level positions or entire departments have been abolished or significantly restructured. Here's some examples the Agricultural Adjustment Administration the AAA, founded in 1933 to regulate agricultural production, it was abolished in 1942. The Civil Aeronautics Board, the CAB, established in 1938 to oversee civil aviation, it was abolished in 1985. Department of War Department of War existed from 1789. It was renamed the Department of the Army in 1947.
Speaker 2:The Healthcare Financing Administration HICFA. This agency managed Medicare and Medicaid. It was replaced by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare in 2001 and went through an overhaul. Immigration and Naturalization Service it was folded into and reorganized in 2003 as the Department of Homeland Security. The Office of Technology Assessment OTA. Office of Technology Assessment, ota. This agency provided technology assessments to Congress until it was abolished in 2004. Now the United States Information Agency it was established during the Cold War to promote public diplomacy and it was absorbed in the State Department in 1999. The Veterans Administration it was a cabinet-level department until 1988, and now it's the Department of Veteran Affairs.
Speaker 2:So there's been many changes and, frankly, the Department of Education was changed was formed in 1953 as a Department of Education and it was part of the Department of Health, education and Workfare, rather, and then it was spun off into its own department in 1979. So there's been many, many instances where we have abolished whole departments. So don't let anyone say that we've never done that before. Now, abolishing a federal department or agency in most cases requires an act of Congress, and often this faces significant political challenges, like our current era, where the current GOP has about as much spine as the old Whig Party. So we will see what will happen, but almost everything can be changed. What cannot be changed is the structure of our government. We will always have three branches of government.
Speaker 2:Americans cannot secede from the country, despite a lot of talk about doing so from the left and the right. Andrew Jackson said as much to South Carolina in the 1830s. He said you can't do that. And Abraham and Lincoln actually enforced that same message in 1861. And, frankly, the South started a civil war over that very question and in the process we resolve the original sin of slavery in the United States in the process of that war.
Speaker 2:So there are permanent things that will never be changed in the United States of America, but closing federal departments can and should be done from time to time. It's just like cleaning out your home closet or your garage. Sometimes you just need to take everything out and relook at everything you have once again, because there's a lot of trash that needs to be thrown out. So in today's special podcast on the need for a federal department of education, it would require much less effort and much less gnashing of teeth to fold this department into a department of health and human services, as we have done in prior Congresses, and especially when we're facing a $35 trillion debt. We might need a smaller, more robust Federal Department of Education, and that would be good for the whole federal government. We might need it to ensure we don't have discrimination and that all disadvantaged youth are getting their educational needs met. But the rest of the Department of Education monies can be block-granted back to the states or, frankly, just remain in the states.
Speaker 2:For my sake, I don't think we need a federal Department of Education. I'm all about abolishing it. I have faith in the people and the states blue and red to better care for the education of their citizens and for watchdog groups to monitor these states, their educational policies and those people with closer eyes on those specific states than the vast government bureaucracy in Washington DC. Frankly, I much prefer the competition between the states. We've seen that in other areas, notably in COVID, enforcement and pushback. Stronger governments and stronger state legislatures will provide much better leadership with better ideas, with better outcomes, with more effective government than Washington DC can, and that, folks, is how the founders of the country would have wanted it. Those closest to the problems are those best suited to fix the problems. So I thank you for listening and, as always, let's keep fighting the good fight.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at team mojo academycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.