The Department of Education building on Aug. 21, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)
"Federal government efforts to improve education have been dismal," Lindsey Burke, director of the right-leaning think tank the Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Policy, wrote of the current education system amid years of low test scores. "Even if there were a constitutional basis for its involvement – which there isn’t – the federal government is simply ill-positioned to determine what education policies will best serve the diverse local communities across our vast nation."
It has been argued that having such a department allows people with the right expertise to make decisions as it relates to funding.
Clare McCann, the managing director of policy and operations at the Postsecondary Equity & Economics Research (PEER) Center, told ABC News in November: "There's a reason the Department of Education was created, and it was to have this kind of in-house expertise and policy background on these [education] issues.
"The civil servants who work at the Department of Education are true experts in the field."
Average test scores among students have fallen significantly since the Department of Education was created more than 40 years ago.
Both math and reading scores among 13-year-old students are at their lowest levels in decades, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the 2022–2023 school year.
A new report found at least $1 billion has been spent on DEI grants for public schools by the Biden administration. (iStock)
However, under President Biden, the Department of Education has seen funds spent on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in K-12 schools across the country – an initiative critics say diverts funding away from core educational objectives.
TRUMP WOULD NEED CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL TO DISSOLVE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, EXPERTS SAY
A recent study found that Biden's Department of Education spent $1 billion on grants advancing DEI in hiring, Fox News Digital reported.
Since 2021, the Biden administration spent $489,883,797 on grants for race-based hiring; $343,337,286 on general DEI programming; and $169,301,221 on DEI-based mental health training and programming, totaling $1,002,522,304.81, according to Parents Defending Education, a right-leaning nonprofit.
Rethinking the department could be as simple as giving states the funding and then allowing its leaders to decide how it is dished out, Neal McCluskey, an education analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute public policy think tank, told ABC News in November.
In the 1970-1971 school year, high school graduation rates were at 78%.
But those rates fell, dropping to a 72.9% average graduation rate in 1982, shortly after the Department of Education was established.
Rates remained in the low 70th percentiles until the early 2000s, data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows.
Third-graders play a math-related computer game on laptops at St. John Paul II Catholic Academy in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital recently reported on an elementary school in the New York City suburbs that was teaching a "gender curriculum" to elementary-level children in an effort to promote "inclusion" in school.
Meanwhile, in 2016, the Washington Office (OSPI) set health education standards for all public schools, requiring children in kindergarten and first grade to learn that "there are many ways to express gender."
In Oregon, the state board of education adopted health education standards, also in 2016, requiring kindergartners and first-graders to "recognize that there are many ways to express gender," while third-graders in the state have been expected to be able to "define sexual orientation," Fox reported in 2022.
Opponents of the Department of Education, such as Trump, have used such examples of controversial curriculum to argue that parents should be granted more power in their child's learning.
President-elect Trump has said he is going to abolish the Department of Education when he takes office. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)
"To make real change, you have to do it in ways that benefit people's lives, and so if you just drop the hammer overnight you are going to cause pain for people [who] are dependent. So you're going to have to come up with pathways to make changes," Clark told Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer turned school principal and host of the "Lost Debate" podcast.
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Trump would need congressional approval in order to make any changes to the Education Department.
Republicans currently have the majority in both the House and the Senate, meaning lawmakers could pass new legislation addressing the laws establishing and sanctioning the department.
Fox News' Kristine Parks and Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.
Aubrie Spady is a Writer for Fox News Digital.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/department-education-look-long-term-trends-pitiful-student-performance