By Carleen Johnson
The Center Square

This week, President Donald Trump took another step toward fulfilling his promise to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

Federal officials announced that “six new interagency agreements (IAAs) with four agencies to break up the federal education bureaucracy, ensure efficient delivery of funded programs, activities, and move closer to fulfilling the President’s promise to return education to the states,” in a news release from the Department of Education.

“The president is fulfilling a campaign promise. He took the first real step towards dismantling the failed federal education bureaucracy by breaking up the Department of Education and redistributing its functions to different federal agencies,” Aaron Withe, chief executive officer at the Olympia, Wash.-based Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square on Thursday.

The Freedom Foundation is a conservative tank and advocacy group that opposes public sector unions. It promotes policies aimed at reducing the power of unions, such as encouraging public employees to leave their union.

“The teachers’ unions have had unprecedented control over the federal education policy since the late 70s. And what do we have to show for it?” Withe asked. “We have soaring costs, declining achievement, and a system that serves union bosses instead of serving students and families. So, I think what the president is doing here is one, fulfilling a campaign promise, but putting power back in the hands of states rather than out of federal agencies.”

The Department of Education is being reorganized through the transfer of certain offices and functions to other federal agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State. It’s part of an effort to reduce bureaucracy and a stated goal of returning education to the states by shifting K-12 and higher education program management to other departments.

“These agreements follow a successful workforce development partnership signed with DOL [Department of Labor] earlier this year, which has created an integrated federal education and workforce system and reduced the need for states to consult multiple federal agencies to effectively manage their programs,” according to the news release.

In response to this week’s announcement, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal issued a news release saying there is no evidence the changes will produce Trump’s stated goals of returning “education to the states” and eliminating federal bureaucracy.

“These changes increase the number of federal agencies with oversight of K–12 education five-fold, undoubtedly creating confusion and duplicity for the educators, administrators, and families across the nation who engage with ED staff regularly,” Reykdal said. “This administration keeps blowing holes in federal agencies and then acting like moving the deck chairs from one sinking ship to another is noble. It is not.”

Withe said the response from Reykdal and other education officials in liberal states is to be expected.

“It doesn’t surprise me one bit that they’re kicking up a fuss about this. In blue states, I think you’re going to see them become perhaps more emboldened in their policymaking decisions around education,” he explained. “Likewise, in red states, I can see them being able to do more as well.

“You look at particularly liberal blue states where teachers’ unions have the most power. We’ve seen for decades now decreases in education outcomes. That’s no coincidence. They are not incentivized to improve the education of our children. They’re incentivized to bring out the next generation of liberal voters that are going to go and vote for candidates that they want.”

The Freedom Foundation has assisted tens of thousands of public employees, many of whom are teachers, in opting out of union membership since the 2018 Janus decision.

In 2023 alone, the Freedom Foundation reported that more than 35,000 individuals chose to leave their government employee unions, representing a 17% increase in opt-outs compared to 2022.

“We’ve seen some of the largest declines of teacher union membership in U.S. history in recent years,” Withe noted. “The teachers’ unions have gone further and further to the radical left. I mean, they’re pushing not just anti-Semitism today, but critical race theory, the transgender stuff… I mean, you go through the list of radical leftist issues that the unions are for right now. I can’t distinguish them from the Communist Party today.”

The Washington Education Association, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has been pushing back against efforts by the Freedom Foundation – and the free-market Washington Policy Center think tank – to encourage teachers to leave their unions.

“Extremist political groups like the Washington Policy Center and Freedom Foundation (aka, Opt Out Today) are attacking our right to be represented by our union and our ability to advocate for our students. The Freedom Foundation and other anti-union groups don’t support us or our students – and are actually fighting against what our students need to be successful,” the WEA states on its website.