Jimmy Carter Is Gone; Let's Hope the Department of Education Ends With Him

The Department of Education (DOE) is part of the late President Jimmy Carter’s legacy. Its mission is supposedly “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

Instead, the DOE’s decades-long effects have resulted in excessive student loan debt, failing schools, and, more pointedly, failing students. One education-focused publication laments this failure but still misses the point, concluding that with more money, these issues could be fixed.

The Department of Education’s 2024 Budget was in the billions. However, the agency had the unmitigated gall to request four percent more (3.1 billion) be added to that for 2025.

Overall, the fiscal year 2025 Budget requests $82.4 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Education, including a change in mandatory program (CHIMP) and rescissions. This Request reflects a $3.1 billion or 4.0 percent increase from the fiscal year 2024 annualized CR level.  

The U.S. Department of Education: spending $1 billion a year to promote practices at odds with the Constitution https://t.co/DGIBwYM8bD

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) December 27, 2024

Sure, Jan.

Thirty countries now outperform the United States in mathematics at the high school level. Many are ahead in science, too. ACooperation and Development, the millennials in our workforce tied for last on tests of mathematics and problem solving among the millennials in the workforces of all the industrial countries tested. We now have the worst-educated workforce in the industrialized world. Because our workers are among the most highly paid in the world, that makes a lot of Americans uncompetitive in the global economy. And uncompetitive against increasingly smart machines. It is a formula for a grim future.

The idea of significantly boosting the achievement of the average American high school graduate and making American workers once again the best educated in the world, coming from the bottom of the pack, seems like a pipe dream. After all, there has been no improvement in high school math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress after more than 40 years of trying every “proven practice” we can think of.

Yet, over the last several years, and even more pronounced during the pandemic, the DOE/NEA focus has been on indoctrination, not education. A huge part of that billion-dollar budget has been spent on revising Title IX standards to “gender identity” rather than biological sex, and fighting lawsuits against states who have pushed back. 

Money well spent.

It is amazing how all this failure occurred after Carter created the DOE. But it is even more amazing how little blame is placed in his lap. Particularly, now that his presidential and personal legacy is being burnished after his death.

In honor of Jimmy Carter passing away, so should the Department of Education and national teachers unions.

— TimOnPoint (@TimOnPoint) December 29, 2024

Carter campaigned on the promise to nationalize education.

As a presidential candidate in 1976, Carter promised the National Education Association that he would push for a separate education department, a goal the NEA had sought for a century. In return, the nation’s largest teachers’ union made the first presidential endorsement in its then-117-year history.

And he kept his promise, encouraging Congress to create the bill called the “Department of Education Organization Act.” Both houses of Congress were finagled into passing it “for the children.” This deceptive rallying cry has been used by Democrats for decades, and this law was where it gained its deepest entrenchment.

Then-President Jimmy Carter signed the bill into law on October 17, 1979, splitting the functions of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two cabinet-level arms: the Department of Education (DOE) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While he was roundly defeated by Reagan in 1980, the damage was done. So far, no Republican president has bothered to touch it since. One could say that Republican President George W. Bush made it even worse with his “No Child Left Behind” nonsense. 

No Child Left Behind did more to hinder education. AP classes were discontinued. STEM was not promoted. Mediocrity was achieved.

— theoiler 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@PebvVan) December 27, 2024

But, as the years rolled on, the DOE increased its budget and did little to improve education.

As the tributes roll in before America bids farewell to Jimmy Carter, current global turbulence provides fresh reminders that the decisions the late 39th president made in office continue to impact the world four decades later and present both challenges and opportunities for the man about to assume the White House for a second term.

Many of the issues confronting President-elect Donald Trump – Iran, the Panama Canal, the Education Department and appeasement diplomacy – have their roots in the Carter presidency, a reality that can’t be erased by the significant humanitarian achievements the former president aggregated after he left office or the widely recognized kindness of the God-fearing, Navy-serving peanut farmer who lived to be 100.

“I don’t think there’s anyone that would say a bad thing about him, personally,” said Nicholas Giordano, a political science professor at Suffolk Community College and a popular podcaster. “He was genuinely a good and decent human being.

“But it shows you that sometimes being good and decent isn’t necessarily equating to success as president,” he added. 

Many are trying to gloss over that unsuccessful presidency by touting Carter’s “decency” and humanitarian efforts and thinking they should outweigh the barnacles and poisonous policy he created that is still destroying America and American lives. 

With impeachments and Russia nonsense, President Donald Trump 1.0 could do little to try and reform the DOE. However, President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated in 20 days. In the Trump Presidency 2.0, the President-elect has made a Day One promise to abolish Carter’s DOE.

WATCH:

Washington bureaucrats have had their chance, and they’ve failed. It’s time to let states lead the way.

Local control means better schools, less red tape, and more opportunities for our kids.

Eliminating the Department of Education is a step toward empowering states and… pic.twitter.com/ClaoElFnRA

— Dawn Buckingham (@DrBuckinghamTX) December 29, 2024

Washington bureaucrats have had their chance, and they’ve failed. It’s time to let states lead the way.  Local control means better schools, less red tape, and more opportunities for our kids.  Eliminating the Department of Education is a step toward empowering states and communities to decide what’s best for their students.

And with the recent social media throw-down over H1-B visas and America’s lack of educational prowess being the reason why we need to import foreign workers, it’s pretty apparent the abolishment of the Department of Education could not come soon enough.

Jimmy Carter – R.I.P. 2024
Department of Education – R.I.P. 2025

— Robert Bortins (@TheRobertBshow) December 31, 2024