In 2022, Sam Brown, then running as an insurgent GOP Senate primary rival against establishment-backed Adam Laxalt, proposed eliminating the federal agency tasked with administering financial aid, collecting data about schools and monitoring educational programs and discrimination: the Department of Education.
In a debate, Brown called for cutting the agency, among other Cabinet-level agencies, to reduce federal spending and cut into the federal deficit. At the time, Brown suggested that departments that exist at the state level, such as education or transportation, do not need a federal counterpart.
Two years later, his stance has softened somewhat as the GOP front-runner in this year’s Senate race — his campaign website is now focused on empowering parents rather than bureaucrats when it comes to education.
“When you allow bureaucrats to prioritize outside agendas over the development of our children, kids lose every time,” Brown said in a statement to The Nevada Independent. “We need to get a handle on the out-of-control and ineffective budget from the U.S. Department of Education, kick D.C. bureaucrats out of our classrooms, and let kids be kids.”
But Brown’s primary challengers this time around are taking up the agency abolition mantle, a proposal with potentially drastic implications on student financial aid and federal accountability of schools.
Jeff Gunter, the U.S. ambassador to Iceland under former President Donald Trump, and former Nevada secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant, a vocal denier of the 2020 election results, each list eliminating the Department of Education as policy goals on their campaign websites, with Gunter referring to the agency as “useless and unneeded.” Trump said last year that he supported closing the department, but his efforts to rein in the agency during his presidency fell flat.
But while calling to cut the department still remains a hallmark of conservative bonafides, many Senate candidates’ stances are reflective of an increasing focus among “parents’ rights” in education. Tony Grady, another candidate, points to “reestablishing parental choice” as his preferred education stance.
The proposals to abolish the department are part of a GOP movement that has existed since the agency’s inception in 1980, as Republicans have questioned federal involvement in education, where policies are typically addressed at the district level. The efforts have struggled to get off the ground amid congressional opposition — especially to phasing out popular aid programs — and even a Republican president’s vast expansion of the agency’s scope in the name of greater accountability.
The agency launched under President Jimmy Carter; Ronald Reagan, who was challenging Carter for the presidency that year, called for the agency’s elimination in his campaign.
But three years later, a landmark report on the American education system from a federal commission established by Reagan’s secretary of education concluded that the federal government had a key role to play in education, with responsibilities such as data collection, research, curriculum development and student financial aid.
In the ensuing years, there would be minimal headwinds on eliminating the department, but it remained a policy goal among key Republicans in the 1990s, including Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and presidential nominee and former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS).
The federal education system saw its largest expansion of authority under Republican President George W. Bush with the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which increased the federal government’s role in holding schools accountable for student performance.
“Have there been a lot of serious efforts? No,” Rick Hess, the director of education policy at the center-right think tank American Enterprise Institute, said in an interview. “Have Republicans meant this? Sure, in some cases, but they just…
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