South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds introduced the “Returning Education Back to Our States Act” on Thursday, signaling his commitment to follow through on President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to dismantle the Department of Education.
In a conservative move to return education to local control, Rounds said the legislation would “eliminate” the department while redistributing all critical federal programs to other agencies.
Rounds’ announcement was first reported by Fox News.
“For years, I have worked to eliminate the federal Department of Education,” the Republican senator wrote in a statement, adding, “I am pleased that President-elect Trump shares this vision, and I am excited to work with him and the Republican majorities in the Senate and House to make this a reality.” This is a road map for eliminating the federal Department of Education, reallocating these federal programs to their respective departments as we move into the critical year ahead.”
In his statement, Rounds said the United States spends too much on education to cause student test scores to lag behind other countries on standardized assessments. He called the DOE ineffective and transferred the department’s responsibilities to the Departments of the Interior, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Labor and State, according to the text of the bill.
The Law on Education for Persons with Disabilities (IDEA) and VIII. of the Law on Primary and Secondary Education. Title-based assistance programs will be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education’s Office of Indian Education will be transferred to the Department. Homeland Security, the Federal Pell Grant and other senior loan programs will be transferred to the Treasury Department.
Under the bill, the Treasury Department will award block grants to K-12 and postsecondary states. The Secretary of the Treasury also has the authority to withhold these funds if states mismanage them. The Department of Justice will oversee federal civil rights laws that came under Title VI.
Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky told ABC News Thursday morning that he would also introduce legislation to eliminate the DOE in the “early weeks” of the 119th Congress.
“There will be a sentence; the only thing that will change is the date: The Department of Education will end on December 31, 2026,” Massie told ABC News.
In this March 25, 2021 file photo, Senator Mike Rounds speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
Pool via Reuters, FILE
Massie has been pushing to eliminate the US Department of Education since early 2023 when he introduced HR 899. Massie’s bill was not voted on in the House last year.
However, Neal McCluskey, an education analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argued that Massie’s one-sentence bill was unrealistic.
“You have to figure out what to do with all the legislation that feeds into the Department of Education,” McCluskey said.
“If Congress were to pass that bill to eliminate the Department of Education, the department would technically be gone, but then you’d have all kinds of questions about, well, who’s going to administer or be the administrator of all these programs.” he said
In March 2023, Massie wrote an amendment to H. 124 in HR 5 to remove the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” – the House’s signature K-12 education policy – department. That amendment failed with all Democrats and 60 Republicans in the House voting against it.
Here are ways to breach the department
Even if Republicans hold majorities in both houses in the next Congress, the Senate usually needs 60 votes to get anything done, according to McCluskey. McCluskey said, “There’s no way it’s going to be 60 years old, so it’s going to be tough (to legislate the department).”
“The Department of Education administers a lot of laws, and then those laws need to be changed to make decisions about who administers student aid and student debt cancellation and who decides or who administers Title I and many of these other federal programs,” he said. McCluskey told ABC News.
“He (President-elect Trump) can certainly use the bully pulpit to drive a lot of this. He can issue legislative plans if he wants to. But ultimately this has to go through Congress,” McCluskey stressed.
Meanwhile, Augustus Mays, vice president of partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust, told ABC News that the president-elect may also ask Congress to eliminate federal programs like Title 1, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and others. , in the congressional budget request.
Public education, particularly in high-need districts, would absorb millions of dollars, according to Mays.
“It would really cripple the ability to function and support those students from an academic standpoint that they really need to be successful,” Mays said.
