By: Scott Yenor
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan proposed dismantling the Department of Education, an agency barely two years old. This was not as radical a move for his administration as it may sound to modern ears. Americans were not accustomed to such a massive role for the federal government in education, which had always been a local and state function. Voters never approved of President Carter establishing the agency, and elected Reagan in a historic landslide to shrink the size of government— and eliminate ED.
The silent majority was emphatic that the federal government is ill-equipped to centrally plan the education of America’s children. As President Reagan put it when he proposed the elimination of the Department, “Education is the principal responsibility of local school systems, teachers, parents, citizen boards, and State governments.” Today, his words challenge us to reconsider whether federal micromanagement serves students or stands in their way.
Reagan’s vision wasn’t about abandoning education, but about trusting those closest to it. He argued that “by eliminating the Department of Education… we can not only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.” Setting aside the fiscal pragmatism that Reagan was famous for, perhaps more important was his conviction that the Soviet-style system of centralized control was simply unworkable for something as diverse and innovative as American education.
Ultimately, President Reagan abandoned his proposal to eliminate the Department in the face of political pressure, but he never abandoned his conviction that the federal government was doing more harm than good. As he told Seton Hall University students at their commencement in 1983, “The road to better education for all our people simply cannot be paved with more and more recycled tax dollars collected, redistributed, and overregulated by Washington bureaucrats.”
Reagan’s emphasis on a decentralized and diverse education system—with the states in charge—still holds true today.
Teachers see their students’ daily struggles and triumphs. Parents know their kids’ dreams. Local leadership understands local values and challenges. Why should a federal bureaucracy override these voices with one-size-fits-all rules? Federal mandates often bring a tangle of regulations—standardized tests, compliance reports, and rigid guidelines—that can sap time and energy from classrooms. Educators end up serving paperwork instead of students.
States impose standards, too, but they are more responsive and accountable to their resident families. School boards answer to parents who attend meetings, vote in elections, and see results firsthand. Federal oversight, however well-meaning, creates distance. Decisions made in Washington feel abstract to a parent in Florida.
The Reagan-era debate over the federal role in education is strikingly relevant to this new era of accountability and transparency in the federal government. Americans want to know what their tax dollars are being spent on, and they want their votes to matter in making those decisions. The days of runaway bureaucracy are coming to an end. The reckoning that Ronald Reagan sought to begin more than four decades ago has forcefully reemerged.
Scott Yenor is a Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. He is also a Washington Fellow at Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.
