The Dept of Education was created by Carter in 1980 as a payback to the teacher's union. Since that time America has gone from the top ten in education in the world to number 40. The Federal government has no business in education. The states can do that very well as they did prior to 1980. Our schools no longer teach basics because they are too busy meeting federal idiot criteria in order to receive their federal dollars. On top of that the Dept is huge, does nothing and costs billions.