Should the Department of Education Be Abolished?

In the three-plus decades since the Department of Education was established in 1980, the decline in American education compared to other nations is well-known. One wonders what good the Department serves.

Charles Murray (B.A., Harvard; Ph.D, M.I.T.), a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, makes a strong case for the abolition of the Department of Education, using three tests: Constitutionality, whether there are problems with the American education system that can only be fixed at the federal level, and track record. He says the Department fails on all three counts.

This article appears in the January 2012 issue of Imprimis, the free monthly print publication of Hillsdale College. If you aren't one of the 2.1 million monthly readers of Imprimis, you can subscribe here. Charles Murray's article is online here.