Like a teacher cleaning the classroom before school opens, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is sweeping out the inefficiencies in her agency—but instead of helping, some in the U.S. Senate want to shove dust under the rug.

Education Department officials are doing just what was promised in an executive order earlier this year calling on the secretary to downsize and begin to close operations: removing federal rules and allowing local officials to make more decisions to help students. To wit, last week, the education agency approved a proposal from Missouri to give educators there more flexibility with new approaches to student testing.

Two weeks ago, McMahon demonstrated how the Education Department can wind down its responsibilities by filing an interagency agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor. That agreement transferred programs better suited to that office than to education—like adult education and family literacy programs—and it serves as a model for how the education agency can downsize and eventually close.

Now, though, some U.S. senators are proposing to block McMahon from making key agreements in the future. A new spending proposal prohibits the Education Department from transferring programs for children with disabilities or for students from low income families to other agencies.

Yet research reveals that the Education Department does not help educators and school district officials with the essential role of teaching students—it actually makes it harder for schools to focus on learning.

In 1998, a review of the education agency’s performance found that federal regulations create nearly 50 million hours’ worth of paperwork annually for districts and schools.

Things hadn’t improved by 2011, when another study found that local educators spend 7.8 million hours each year “collecting and disseminating information required under Title I” (programs for children in low income areas). These activities cost taxpayers some $235 million.

In 2017, a Government Accountability Office report found that the Education Department had a smaller reduction in staff (12 percent) between 1991 and 2015 than the U.S. Food and Nutrition Service (24 percent reduction), the Administration for Children and Families (39 percent), and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (40 percent).

Surely the Education Department was created to improve services for disadvantaged children, though, right?

In truth, the agency was actually the birthchild of a deal between President Jimmy Carter’s administration and the nation’s largest teacher union.

That union hoped establishing a cabinet-level agency in Washington would streamline its push for additional taxpayer spending in education—regardless of student outcomes. More money means more school staff (the number of non-instructional school staff hired between 1992 and 2015 increased by 47 percent, compared to a 20 percent increase in students and a 29 percent increase in teachers), which means a greater number of dues-paying union members.

In the meantime, student scores in reading and math are falling and the achievement gap between children at the top and bottom of the income scale has not narrowed in a half-century. And to make matters worse, McMahon and her staff have found blatant examples of discrimination in K-12 operations through “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives.

Fortunately, her office has already cancelled some $600 million in grants to schools that employ some form of racial preferences via DEI.

But if senators hamstring the agency’s efforts to reduce the federal footprint in education, these lawmakers will be forcing taxpayers to pay for racial discrimination in school curricula. Not only that, but they’ll be preserving the Education Department’s role as a jobs program for adults who fill out paperwork—costing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, not to mention the billions in operational spending on programs have failed to improve student achievement or create quality learning options for children with disabilities.

Closing the U.S. Department of Education has been a conservative priority since President Ronald Reagan’s administration. This Congress has a great opportunity to reject the racial discrimination DEI causes, better serve students in disadvantaged situations, and close a federal agency inspired by teacher unions.

The post Congress Needs To Stop Preserving the Education Department appeared first on The Daily Signal.