Why Do We Have a Department of Education? Jimmy Carter's Debt to a Teachers Union.

Public education existed well before 1980, but an unpopular President Carter wanted the nation's largest union on his side before an election.

Anthony L. Fisher Feb. 7, 2017

With Betsy DeVos just confirmed as the new Secretary of Education, it's worth taking a look back at the events that led the creation of this cabinet-level department.

Public education (including federal involvement in public education) was a thing in the United States for a couple hundred years before 1979, when Congress narrowly approved the cleaving of a new Department of Education (DoED) out of the already existing Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. But the newly created federal bureaucracy was more of a favor to a large and powerful special interest group on behalf of a beleaguered president than a necessary reorganization to allow the federal government to "meet its responsibilities in education more effectively, more efficiently, and more responsively," as then-President Jimmy Carter put it.

Upon signing the Department of Education Organization Act Statement in October 1979, Carter said:......To Read More....