A Brief History of GOP Attempts to Kill the Education Dept.

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From the moment the Department of Education was born, critics — Republicans, almost exclusively — have sought to dismantle it.

The department, created under Jimmy Carter, began operating in May 1980. Ronald Reagan, then campaigning against Carter for the presidency, marked the occasion in blistering fashion. “At 11:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday,” he said, “President Jimmy Carter’s new bureaucratic boondoggle was born: the Department of Education.”

Reagan went on to lay out what has become one of the Republicans’ primary arguments against the agency: “Welfare and education are two functions that should be primarily carried out at the state and local levels.”

As president, Reagan said, he would seek to dismantle the department. His first education secretary, Terrel H. Bell, arrived with a mandate to do just that, and initially proposed recasting the agency as a foundation, according to Education Week. But Bell grew convinced of the department’s value. During his second term, Reagan replaced Bell with William J. Bennett, who had no such qualms about calling for the agency’s elimination.

Reagan and Bennett never got their wish. But the president succeeded in clipping the department’s wings. From 1981, when the Reagan-backed Education Consolidation and Improvement Act curtailed the department’s reach, to 1988, the agency’s budget declined by 11 percent in real dollars, according to “Making Democracy Work,” a history of federal reorganization published by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. The department’s regulatory authority was limited as well.

The Contract With America Years: ‘No Constitutional Authority’

As president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the main lobbying group for for-profit institutions, Steve Gunderson has pushed the Department of Education to roll back regulations seen as burdensome. In 1995, as a Republican representative from Wisconsin, he pushed for the department to be eliminated.

Gunderson’s plan would have merged the department with the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Supporters of the plan, including Newt Gingrich, the speaker of the House, said it would save the federal government $21 million, according to Ed Week. Two former education secretaries — Bennett and Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican who had served under George H.W. Bush, and who now heads the Senate’s education committee — expressed support for shuttering the agency.

But another former secretary — Terrel Bell — objected. “We talk about giving more responsibility to the states, and I think we should,” he told The New York Times. “But we shouldn’t do it because of their record in education. It’s been terrible.”

The 1996 Republican platform was unequivocal on the department: “The federal government,” it stated, “has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the marketplace. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education.” But with Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in office, Republican lawmakers failed to achieve that goal.

The Current GOP Stance: ‘Turn Off the Lights’

The idea of abolishing the Education Department was largely dormant for a stretch, but it never went away entirely. And in the Republican primaries for the 2012 presidential election, it resurfaced.

At a September 2011 debate in Orlando, Fla., a substitute teacher asked the crowded field of candidates: “What as president would you seriously do about what I consider a massive overreach of big government into the classroom?”

There was consensus among the candidates: Put the agency back in its place.

Gary Johnson: “I am going to promise to advocate the abolishment of the federal Department of Education.”

Gingrich: “You need to dramatically shrink the federal Department of Education, get rid of virtually all of its regulations.”

Michelle Bachmann: “I would go over to the Department of Education, I’d turn off the lights, I would lock the door, and I would send all the money back to the states and localities.”

By November, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas had listed the agency among three departments marked for death. “It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone,” said the presidential candidate at another debate. “Commerce, Education, and ….” He tailed off. “Um, what’s the third one there?” The gaffe helped sink his campaign; the department he forgot he wanted to kill — Energy — is the one he now leads.

The campaign ended, but eliminating the Education Department stayed on the Republican agenda. During the 2016 presidential primaries, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Donald J. Trump all called for the eradication of the agency. “I honestly think we don’t need a Department of Education,” Marco Rubio said. (Most Americans seemed to disagree: In a March 2016 Gallup poll, only 18 percent of respondents approved of Cruz’s plan to close the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development.)

On the campaign trail, politicians make shutting or downsizing the department sound simple. In reality, it’s anything but. That’s why the Trump administration, which now wants to merge the Education and Labor Departments, released a framework for doing so that runs 132 pages.

Still, many of the Education Department’s fiercest opponents don’t get too caught up in the fine print. In February 2017, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, introduced a bill offering his vision for the agency’s future. The full text of the bill:

“The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”

Dan Bauman is a reporter who investigates and writes about all things data in higher education. Tweet him at @danbauman77, or email him at dan.bauman@chronicle.com. Brock Read is assistant managing editor for daily news at The Chronicle. He directs a team of editors and reporters who cover policy, research, labor, and academic trends, among other things. Follow him on Twitter @bhread, or drop him a line at brock.read@chronicle.com.