$\"education\"$ <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Trump administration is\u00a0 looking for federal spending<\/a> to cut, which seems pretty urgent given the nation\u2019s nearly $37 trillion<\/em> debt. The US Department of Education (US ED), which is neither\u00a0constitutional<\/a>, competent<\/a>, nor\u00a0 effective<\/a>, is home to numerous prime targets, including the Department itself.<\/p>\n

US ED spending constitutes a relatively small part of all education funding. In the 2021\u201322 school year (the latest with available data) all educational institutions in the United States spent\u00a0$1.64 trillion<\/a>, or $1.84 trillion in 2024 dollars.\u00a0 Appropriations for the US Department of Education<\/a> in fiscal year 2024 were about $188.6 billion, or 10.3 percent of the total. Remove new Direct Loans for college students, which are supposed to be repaid, and the US ED budget was $97.0 billion, or just 5.3 percent of the total. Looking at the latest available (2020\u201321 school year) public elementary and secondary school revenues by source of funds, federal dollars account for slightly over 10.6 percent of the total.<\/p>\n

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US ED Spending by Type<\/strong><\/p>\n
Department funding, excluding student loans, comes in roughly four types:<\/p>\n
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Formula grants<\/li>\n
Discretionary grants<\/li>\n
Direct funding<\/li>\n
Administrative funding<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The table below shows the number of programs, the mean appropriation per program, and the total amount appropriated under each type. Note that \u201cadministrative\u201d counts the number of administrative functions, not programs.<\/p>\n
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Formula grant programs<\/strong> are less numerous than discretionary but involve more money, largely because they include the primary funding under major laws, such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This includes $18.4 billion in grants to states through Title 1 of the ESEA and $14.2 billion in IDEA state grants. The biggest formula grant program is Pell Grants for college students, at $35.5 billion in FY 2024. The highly dubious\u00a021st Century Community Learning Centers<\/a> program, which garnered $1.3 billion, is also a formula program.<\/p>\n
Discretionary grant programs<\/strong> are typically much smaller than formula grants, have specific focuses, and would-be recipients apply for funding. These include Aid for Institutional Development programs geared to various minority-serving institutions of higher education, programs such as Upward Bound intended to help lower-income students get an academic leg up, several teacher-related programs, and the Javits Gifted and Talented program.<\/p>\n
Direct funding<\/strong> goes to several recipients, including Howard and Gallaudet universities and the Institute for Education Sciences, which, among other things, oversees the\u00a0National Assessment of Educational Progress<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Administrative costs<\/strong> cover the running of US ED, especially salaries for its roughly 4,200 employees.<\/p>\n
What Should We Cut?<\/strong><\/p>\n
What should we be looking to cut? What follows are three possibilities, from ideal to better than nothing.<\/p>\n
Everything<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
If all Department of Education functions ended, it would save taxpayers $97.0 billion<\/strong>. That\u2019s about seven times the\u00a0budget of the US Coast Guard<\/a>.<\/p>\n
All But What\u2019s Constitutional<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
Constitutionally, the federal government has no authority to govern in education, and it certainly has none for a cabinet-level department. US ED must be eliminated, but a handful of functions it oversees have some constitutional warrant:<\/p>\n
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Impact Aid:<\/strong> These programs compensate districts housing federal reservations, including military bases, for lost revenue resulting from Washington not paying property taxes. This can be justified under defense powers.<\/li>\n
Tribal education:\u00a0<\/strong>The federal government has a long and fraught history with Native Americans, and through treaty power has a constitutionally legitimate role in assisting with education on reservations.<\/li>\n
Office for Civil Rights:\u00a0<\/strong>The federal government has a constitutional responsibility to stop discrimination by state and local governments, though this should be moved to the Department of Justice.<\/li>\n
Gallaudet and Howard Universities:\u00a0<\/strong>These are in the District of Columbia, over which the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction.<\/li>\n
Military:<\/strong> The Department administers an Outward Bound program intended to help veterans prepare for higher education.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nIn FY 2024, the federal government appropriated a combined $2.4 billion<\/strong> for these programs. Eliminating everything else would yield savings of around $94.6 billion<\/strong>, which is more than the\u00a0fiscal year 2025 budget<\/a> of the State of Michigan.<\/p>\n
All But What\u2019s Formula Driven<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
Presumably, programs that fund recipients by formula are more important than discretionary. Everyone is supposed to benefit from the former but not the latter. That means discretionary programs should be eliminated before the formula if one is prioritizing cuts.<\/p>\n
As noted above, eliminating all discretionary programs would yield a savings of $5.3 billion<\/strong>. Add directly funded entities\u2014essentially single-recipient discretionary programs\u2014and the savings rise to $6.7 billion<\/strong>. Finally, assuming that the share of employees working on those programs is proportionate to the programs\u2019 share of total funding, cuts would achieve an additional $204.8 million<\/strong> in administrative savings, bringing the total to around $6.9 billion<\/strong>. That is roughly the cost of a new\u00a0Seawolf-class nuclear submarine<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n
Eliminating the US Department of Education and all that it does would produce major savings. But so would eliminating much of what it does short of full termination, especially if we keep only what is constitutional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Neal McCluskey The Trump administration is\u00a0looking for federal spending to cut, which seems pretty urgent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":53653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestlifeschedule.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}