For the first time ever, articles of impeachment have been filed against a U.S. secretary of education. The effort is political posturing – lacking substance and votes – and underscores the fact that states, not Congress, are better suited to real education policy discussions.
House Democrats, led by U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., are pursuing impeachment against Secretary Linda McMahon for allegedly refusing to comply with the law, lying to Congress, and breaching the public trust. Impeachment is intentionally reserved for serious infractions, “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but this action appears to be the result of her critics having little recourse over policy disagreements.
Though the effort may certainly get attention, it has almost assuredly no positive impact on America’s students. And, with little hope of securing votes to successfully impeach Secretary McMahon, many have called the congresswoman’s move “political theater,” “completely unserious,” and “symbolic.”
The attempt to impeach Secretary McMahon underscores a challenge in federal education policymaking: leaders taking symbolic partisan action with little impact, rather than doing the work it takes to move the needle for kids. Posturing can happen at any level of government, but it is especially likely at the federal level, which underscores why states, not Congress, should lead on education policy.
Congress is not the appropriate, or even the most capable, entity to create high-impact education policy that has meaning for student learning.
Despite good intentions in federal lawmaking around math and reading, and increases in funding (including recent cash injections after COVID-19), fewer than a third of fourth- and eighth-grade students in the U.S. are at or above the proficient reading level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, at 31% and 30%, respectively. The story isn’t much better for math proficiency in fourth and eighth grades, at 39% and 28%.
Congress has a role. It can and should create more flexibility in existing programs and remove barriers to opportunity, such as by adjusting the federal tax code to expand the uses of federal 529 accounts or creating federal tax-credit scholarships. It has a role in protecting the civil liberties of students enshrined through federal law. And Congress should increase the flexibility of existing federal funding streams, such as consolidating funds into block grants.
But overall, these reforms still prioritize local – state level – policy leadership. More energy and attention should be devoted to actual innovation and change at the state level, and to meaningful changes at the federal department level that can facilitate state leadership.
Consider the fight in Arizona over its Empowerment Scholarship Account program, the oldest and most established education savings account program in the nation. A recent failed special session is now bringing two competing ballot measures to a head this fall, each aimed at letting voters decide whether to significantly cap the program overall or protect the program for military families. The outcome of this election cycle is not symbolic for Arizona students at all. It will have real consequences for families looking to use the choice program in the near future for children who are on their educational paths today.
Several state legislatures are also pushing policies prompting courts to reassess the boundaries between religion and public schools, including new requirements to post the Ten Commandments in public classrooms or to include Bible passages on required reading lists. Because the U.S. Supreme Court has changed and legal reasoning on certain religious liberty issues has shifted, challenges to these new laws may create a policy landscape that has not existed before.
Likewise, consider the variety of court battles “quietly shaping U.S. education,” as one article put it, in several states, including rulings that found charter school funding unconstitutional in Kentucky, ruled against a choice program in South Carolina created using federal COVID-19 relief dollars, upheld a tax-credit program in Idaho, and left the fate of an education savings account in Utah an open question. These questions about state obligations to public school systems go to the core of what constitutes a public education in the current era.
The gritty work of education policy, which has real impacts on students, comes from states or from federal policies that expand the work that states are trying to accomplish. That’s why attempts by the current administration to reduce federal bureaucracy in favor of state policies that affect real students are worthy of our support and attempts to file symbolic articles of impeachment are not.
