What happens when a successful businessman and a successful businesswoman are tasked with fixing an expensive organization that has failed for more than 40 years by the very standard it sets for itself?
America is finding out right now, as President Trump and his new Education secretary, Linda McMahon, get straight to work returning education to states, school districts and families.
The Department of Education, established in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter, articulates its own mission as promoting “student achievement and preparation for global competition.” In the time since 1978, student performance across the U.S. has remained stagnant at best. The most recent test scores for fourth and eighth graders revealed alarming declines in reading, while only one-third of eighth graders achieved basic proficiency in math — the lowest mark ever.
In other words, the decades-old experiment in federal micromanagement of education — conducted most recently at an annual cost to taxpayers of $268 billion — has failed. Leave it to two leaders who made their names and fortunes outside the swamp to state the obvious — and then actually do something about it.
Trump and McMahon understand that the energy, knowledge and ideas necessary to reform education are found overwhelmingly at the state and local levels.
In Iowa, for example, we’re empowering parents, ensuring neither zip code nor income is an obstacle to enrolling in the school of one’s choice, and getting back to evidence-based instruction in basics like literacy and math.
We’re also focused on preparing students for life after the classroom through work-based learning. More than 90 percent of our school districts offer a high-quality work-based learning experience. Only a few years after we made a concerted effort to prioritize computer science education, 84 percent of our high schools now offer such a class, compared to just 60 percent across the rest of the country.
These programs and others like them are working today. Smart federal investments could be a gamechanger, especially if they allow state and local leaders to direct the funds where they would have the greatest impact in their communities.
Unfortunately, dollars that flow through the Department of Education typically come with all kinds of bureaucratic strings attached that blunt the impact they might otherwise make.
One glaring example is the Education and Secondary Education Act, which provides funding for states and school districts. The department’s disbursement system is fragmented and confusing, divided into nine separate programs, each with it its own unique requirements, funding formulas and metrics, few of which (if any) are focused on student performance like Iowa’s own nationally recognized school accountability system.
The inefficiency here is obvious. But what’s even worse is that the prescriptive requirements prevent states from scaling innovative programs. And by splitting the dollars into so many different funding streams, the Education and Secondary Education Act usually results in small-dollar investments that fail to move the needle for students or teachers.
Thankfully, the Trump administration is signaling that it’s looking for new approaches. One idea is to deploy the funding instead as a block grant, while implementing clear standards of accountability rooted in student outcomes. This would give states the flexibility to stretch federal dollars further, rather than following the dictates of distant federal bureaucrats who don’t have the same visibility into our state’s needs.
I’m proud to say that Iowa is the first state in the nation to submit a comprehensive plan to the Department of Education to turn this concept into reality. It’s an outstanding opportunity to do right by Iowa’s students, teachers, families, local school districts and taxpayers. I sincerely hope the department takes us up on it. If it does so, the decision will have significant implications beyond Iowa’s borders.
It would demonstrate, once again, that this administration is serious about creating a new paradigm in education, one in which Washington takes its lead from those who are closest to students — not the other way around.
That transition will be difficult. It will involve hard decisions about agency workforce and structure — many of which are already being made. And it will require ignoring the inevitable hysteria from those in the media, teachers’ unions and the Washington bureaucracy who have a vested interest in maintaining the failed status quo.
Like most Americans, I’m cheering Trump and McMahon for refusing to back down from that challenge. It’s past time for states like Iowa to be given the reins.
Kim Reynolds is the governor of Iowa.
