For a nation that is quick to proudly claim global superiority, the United States’ education system falls short of its peers on an international scale. A common benchmark for scholarly performance is the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures the performance of 15-year-old students in reading and mathematics. The United States had the second-lowest average score on the assessment of the twenty nations with the largest economies.

  The struggles on the international level are indicative of deeper domestic failures. Many Americans have supported abolishing the Department of Education, in hopes that returning control to state and local governments will solve the nation’s education crisis. Abolishing the Department of Education will only exacerbate the issues within the current system by increasing disparities in funding, eliminating federal standards, and fostering a national sense that education is not important (nces.ed.gov).

   The largest issue within America’s public school system is funding disparities, an issue that will only be made worse by abolishing the Department of Education. According to the Education Data Initiative, Mississippi K-12 schools, the most reliant on federal funding, each year spend about 12,400 dollars per pupil, 23 percent of which is received from federal funding. On the contrary, only 7 percent of the 33,000 dollars New York spends per pupil is received from federal funding (educationdata.org). While the difference from state to state is most easily illustrated, the difference between high-income areas and low-income areas will also be affected. The federal department is responsible for allocating Title I funding, which is over 18 billion dollars a year, to schools with a majority of low-income students. Abolishing the Department of Education will disproportionately affect those most reliant on federal support, notably the underserved and underprivileged.

   The mission of the Department of Education is to “promote student achievement… by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access” (ed.gov). One of the main ways the department ensures equal access is by enforcing civil rights laws. The abolishment of the Department of Education would directly put vulnerable and marginalized student groups at risk. According to a 2024 NBC News report, “At least 22 Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration over its new rules to protect LGBTQ students from discrimination in federally funded schools. The Education Department’s expansion of Title IX federal civil rights rules is set to now include anti-discrimination protections for students on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity” (nbcnews.com). These federal guidelines are crucial for preventing the alienation and systemic discrimination of at-risk student populations; abolishing them would open the door to widespread mistreatment and inequality.

   The largest issue with abolishing the Department of Education cannot be measured with a statistic or a test score, and that is the message it sends to the American people. In nations around the world, the education of the youth is a top priority; however, here in the United States, it is not. Principal Mike Paredes shared this same sentiment. “It [abolishing the Department of Education] is scary. There seems to be a shift in how important education is in recent years. It started with the appointment of department heads with no educational background being selected to lead the Department of Education. And now trying to get the Department abolished, it really worries me about the future of education in this country,” said Paredes. If the United States continues to devalue education, our students will suffer, as well as our nation.

   Many people in support of eliminating the Department of Education believe it is ineffective and an unnecessary element of federal bureaucracy. While there is strong evidence to suggest that the Department of Education is currently ineffective, there is no evidence to suggest that removing it would be a viable solution. Instead, however, stricter federal standards should be set in place to ensure that students and their educations are being protected nationwide.

Implementing a more widespread curriculum and standardized testing would allow the nation to accurately identify struggling populations and effectively support those students.  A revamping of the Department of Education would be beneficial and set America’s future up for success, as opposed to the abolishment of the department, which would worsen the nation’s education crisis.