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One of the business leaders tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to suggest cuts for government spending said axing the Education Department would help boost kids' reading scores in the US. Education policy experts say it's not that simple.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who is tasked with leading a new commission named the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk, called reading proficiency scores for 8th graders "downright brutal" in a Sunday post on X.
"This is a 5-alarm fire & President Trump's vision to dismantle the Department of Education is the first step to fixing it," Ramaswamy wrote in response to a separate post highlighting the low reading scores.
The National Assessment of Education Progress found that 31% of 8th graders were proficient in reading in 2022 — three percentage points lower than the 2019 score.
Eliminating the federal Education Department — which Trump couldn't do on his own and would require congressional action — might not be the solution to boosting literacy scores. Education policy experts across the political spectrum said that the department oversees federal grants and data collection that monitor students' progress, and disbanding it might not improve kids' outcomes.
Weadé James, the senior director for K-12 education policy at the left-leaning think-tank Center for American Progress, told Business Insider that there's "no proof" eliminating the department would boost literacy.
"What we know is proven is that the department provides an opportunity for every child to have access and opportunity to receive a high-quality education," James said. "What is unproven is that closing the Department of Education is going to actually fix the literacy challenges that we're experiencing."
The department was founded in 1979, eight years after the NAEP began trial collection of its long-term reading assessment data — and the data showed that reading scores were slightly higher after the department was established.
When previously asked how Trump's incoming education secretary Linda McMahon will address literacy, Liz Huston, a Trump-Vance transition spokesperson, said that given McMahon's "extensive background in the business world, government, and serving on Connecticut's School Board, she is ready to deliver on President Trump's agenda to restore America's education system and prepare our next generation for the future."
While reading scores over the past decades fluctuated, there's never been a year in which students excelled in literacy, with the share of eighth graders meeting the department's reading proficiency standards ranging from a low of 29% in 1992 to a high of 36% in 2013 and 2017. The pandemic set back many children's reading progress, education experts previously told BI, along with a lack of consistent state and federal investment in reading instruction.
Nat Malkus, a senior fellow and deputy director of education policy at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, told BI that Ramaswamy is right to be concerned about kids' reading scores, but the idea that eliminating the Education Department will address those scores "doesn't hold a lot of water."
"If it weren't for the Department of Education, we wouldn't know the statistics that he's citing about how many students are proficient at reading," Malkus said.
He added that getting rid of the Education Department as a solution for literacy is "a little oversimplified."
"I think the administration is interested in changing the way funds flow with fewer strings," Malkus said, "but whether that will actually get through what is still a very closely divided Congress seems dubious."
Ramaswamy, Musk, and Trump, along with some Republican lawmakers, have supported dismantling the Education Department in favor of giving states more power over their residents' educations. Malkus said, though, that states are already largely in control of education — states, rather than the federal government, set classroom curricula and most school policies.
The Education Department's main role, instead, is to facilitate federal funding and research. James pointed to the Institute of Education Sciences within the Education Department, which is a nonpartisan research arm of the federal agency that also oversees NAEP. She said that bolstered funding and investment in the Institute would "help us to identify, what is the effective literacy instruction that students need."
She also said the Education Department has the power to establish and expand grants that could foster partnerships with local school districts and researchers to equip teachers on the best literacy practices.
The Education Department oversees several grant programs, including $18.4 billion in funding for the Title I program, which provides federal assistance to school districts to help low-income students.
