U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds has introduced a bill to abolish the U.S. Department of Education he’s calling the “Returning Education to Our States Act.”
The South Dakota Republican’s bill, S.5384, was read twice in the Senate on Thursday and has been referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Sen. Rounds’ bill recently faced criticism from the South Dakota Education Association, which represents more than 6,000 teachers across the state. SDEA President Loren Paul said Friday that the legislation would have severe and lasting negative effects on South Dakota’s schools and students.
Rounds’ bill was also criticized by South Dakota Democratic Party executive director Dan Ahlers, who ran against Rounds in 2020 for his seat in the Senate but lost. Ahlers called the bill “reckless” and said it “jeopardizes the educational opportunities for all of South Dakota’s children.”
But Rounds brushed off the criticism in an interview Tuesday with the Argus Leader, and said his bill would keep local control in education and bring districts the federal funding they rely on with fewer strings attached.
“Look, they’re complaining, but that’s what they do best. We’re used to it,” Rounds said. “They don’t have much else they can do, because they have such a minimal amount of impact at the state level here today.”
Rounds said he’s visited with educators in South Dakota during the last year-and-a-half about “some of the frustrations that they have expressed trying to deal with the federal bureaucracy in the distribution of the funds, and the one-size-fits-all rules that come out of the Department in order to get the funding that the state and local governments and tribes are expecting.”
He said those frustrations have included whether the right type of report was delivered on a yearly basis; guidelines changing from year to year; lagging test scores; and, “the DEI component,” or diversity, equity and inclusion, Rounds said, but wouldn’t specify which policies educators he spoke with opposed in that “component.”
What’s in S.5384?
Rounds’ bill would eliminate the Education Department (ED) and redistribute its work to other departments. For example, the Department of State would oversee the Fulbright-Hays Program.
The Department of the Interior would take over Native American-Serving Institutions Programs, Alaska Native Education Equity Program, American Indian Vocational Rehabilitation Services Program, Indian Education Formula Grants and National Activities, Native American and Alaska Native Children in School Program, Native Hawaiian Education, Special Programs for Indian Children, Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Career and Technical Education Program, and Impact Aid Programs.
The Department of the Treasury would take over William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program, Federal Family Education Loan Program, Federal Perkins Loan Program, Federal Pell Grant Program, Health Education Assistance Loan Program and the Education Sciences Reform Act.
The Department of Health and Human Services would take over the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, American Printing House for the Blind, Helen Keller Center for Deaf/Blind Youth and Adults, Federal Real Property Assistance Program, and Special Education Grants. Rounds also said Title I funding would be in HHS.
The Department of Labor would take over all Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education programs, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, the Randolph Sheppard Vending Facility Program and Vocational Rehabilitation State Grants.
The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice shall be responsible for receiving complaints and otherwise enforcing and carrying out federal civil rights laws, including section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Title IX, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights will fall under the Department of Justice.
Rounds said he hopes to utilize block grants “back to the states as an alternative to trying to do a case-by-case authorization for funding that a bureaucrat in Washington D.C. would decide to send to a particular state agency or a particular Indian tribe,” and said the total amount of federal funding to education in South Dakota wouldn’t decrease with this plan.
Can he pass it?
Bills proposing to eliminate the ED have been introduced in previous sessions. Rounds said in a press release that removing the ED was something he’s worked toward “for years,” and told the Argus Leader on Tuesday that he knew he’d have to have a Republican in office as president to get it done.
Rounds said under former President Donald Trump’s first term, “it looked like they were working in the direction of eliminating a lot of the one-size-fits-all regulations that had occurred” in the ED, he said.
His introduction of the bill follows suit with Trump’s campaign promise to end the ED. Rounds said he knows there’s a desire to eliminate the ED, and said his bill “may very well show a pathway to get the important items that the Department did do into other areas” so it could be more easily eliminated in the future, he explained.
While it’s been widely reported that eliminating an entire federal government department like the ED would take 60 votes in the Senate to become a reality, Rounds said he believes he can pass the bill with 50 votes through reconciliation, which is a way for Congress to enact legislation on taxes and spending with only a majority, not the 60-vote supermajority.
“If you can show a savings of some of the administrative overhead costs, you can redirect where some of these items are going to be,” Rounds said. “In doing so, you can reduce the size of the Department of Education. While you may not end up with everything actually abolished, you can significantly reduce its impact by redistributing these to other areas where they don’t have the rule-making on a one-size-fits-all basis.”
He at least has the support of his colleague, U.S. Sen. John Thune. The fellow South Dakota Republican and the Senate Majority Leader-Elect said as much Tuesday afternoon Brandon at a Q&A that Rounds’ bill deserves consideration.
“I frankly think that we always ought to be looking at how we can shift power, control, decision-making and money out of Washington and back closer to the people,” Thune said. “I’m a big believer in decentralized, distributed power. I think you get better outcomes and results when you have people making decision that are closer to the issues and the people they represent.”
However, Democrats and Democrat-aligned Independents who oppose eliminating the agency still control the Senate and White House this session. It could be reintroduced next term but would still require 60 votes to pass the Senate.
Dismantling the ED next term would require support from those Democrats who vehemently oppose the idea. Some in the GOP have said the ED would be better left intact because it could play a pivotal role in enacting Trump’s policy agenda.
Trump’s education policy agenda includes cutting federal funding for schools teaching “critical race theory,” “gender ideology” or “other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children,” according to his plan.
He also wants to increase funding for schools that adopt a “Parental Bill of Rights that includes complete curriculum transparency, and a form of universal school choice;” get rid of “teacher tenure” for grades K-12 and adopt “merit pay;” have parents elect school principals; and, cut down on school administrators.
But basing funding decisions on district-level policy choices would require federal oversight.
