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CHART 1

Trends in Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Reading

EIGHTH-GRADE READING, AVERAGE SCORES

270 oO e@ 265 t e @ fe) @ co) ie) e@ = 263 260 @ @ e 260 255 1992 1994 1998 02’03. +2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2022 FOURTH-GRADE READING, AVERAGE SCORES 225 @ co) e@ • @ e@ 220 e © © 220 • • 2) 217 215 e oO • 10 1992 1994 1998 2000 ’02’°03 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2022

SOURCES: The Nation’s Report Card, “National Average Scores,” Grade 4, https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ reading/nation/scores/?grade=4 (accessed March 17, 2023), and The Nation’s Report Card, “National Average Scores,” Grade 8, https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/nation/scores/?grade=4 (accessed March 17, 2023).

& heritage.org

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This bloat has persisted for decades. In 1998, a commission led by Representative Pete Hoekstra released a critical report based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and analysis of the Department of Education. The report, Education at a Crossroads: What Works and What’s Wasted in Education Today, detailed the suffocating bureaucratic red tape Carter’s agency had wrapped around states.” The commission estimated that states completed nearly 50 million hours of paperwork just to get their federal education spending, which at that time, they estimated, resulted in just 65 cents to 70 cents of each federal taxpayer dollar making its way to the classroom. The situation has only worsened since the Hoekstra report. More recent evidence of Washington’s bureaucratic paperwork burden can be found in the growing number of non-teaching staff in public schools across the country, which doubled relative to growth in student enrollment from 1992 to 2015.

The labyrinthian nature of federal education programs—convoluted funding formulas, competitive grant applications, reporting requirements, etc.—has likely contributed to the considerable bureaucratic bloat in state and local school districts across the country and is one of the key areas of needed reform. Streamlining existing programs and funding so that dollars are sent to states through straightforward per-pupil allocations or in the form of grants that states can put toward any lawful education purpose under state law would bring a needed easing of the federal compliance burden. The federal government should confine its involvement in education policy to that ofa statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states.

To improve educational opportunities for all Americans, the next Administration should work with Congress to pass a Department of Education Reorganization Act to reform, eliminate, or move the department’s programs and offices to appropriate agencies. The following is an overview of what should happen within each of the offices and to each of the programs currently operated by the department.

PROGRAM AND OFFICE PRIORITIZATION WITHIN THE DEPARTMENT

Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE)

The OESE is comprised of 36 programs, ranging from Title I, Part A, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Impact Aid, to programs for Native American students and the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

• Reduce the number of programs managed by OESE, and transfer some remaining programs to other federal agencies.

• Transfer Title I, Part A, which provides federal funding for lowerincome school districts, to the Department of Health and Human Services, specifically the Administration for Children and Families. It should be administered as a no-strings-attached formula block grant.