Nearly 50 years after the U.S. Department of Education and teachers’ unions centralized control over the classroom, parents are demanding real educational choice for their children — not a bureaucratic, immoral government system that spends too much money and fails to educate students in the most basic skills.
This article is a lightly edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
According to a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberly Strassel, it would seem that the losses are piling up for America’s teachers’ unions. After decades of monopolistic control, the cracks are now showing. School choice programs are exploding across the country. Homeschooling has surged to record levels. Parents are voting with their feet against the very system the unions have built and vigorously defended for decades.
Back in 1979, the Department of Education was created as a political payoff to these same unions that helped to get President Jimmy Carter elected. But today, that Department of Education under President Trump is working tirelessly to upend the political monopoly that unions have held over education policy in America. And it could not come soon enough.
But let’s start with the obvious numbers. The United States spends approximately $15,000 to $17,000 a year per student — the fifth highest in the developed world. We allocate 5.56 percent of our GDP to education, more than most OECD nations. Yet despite this massive investment, our students are failing at historic rates.
The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 45 percent of high school seniors scored below basic proficiency in mathematics, 32 percent can’t read at a basic level, and these are the worst scores in more than 30 years. Reading scores declined five points from 2019 to 2024. The lowest-performing students are scoring at levels not seen in over three decades. And these are under very lax standards that have fallen along with performance.
Think about that: We’re spending more than almost anyone else in the First World in developed nations, and our children can barely read or do basic math. The centralized, top-down federal approach has achieved the exact opposite of what it promised: quality education for every American.
But at the center of this failure sits the Department of Education, an agency that was never about improving education in the first place but an agency that would provide political cover and policy enforcement for the teachers’ unions.
President Jimmy Carter created that department as a campaign promise to the National Education Association (NEA), which gave him its first-ever presidential endorsement. As NEA executive director Terry Herndon admitted in 1980: “There would be no department without the NEA.” Even the New York Times and Washington Post editorialized against it as “a cynical payoff.”
The NEA also bought Congress — contributing to 350 congressional candidates in 1978 — and over 80 percent won. The House passed the bill by a razor-thin 215-201 vote.
Since its inception, the department has presided over precipitous decline while enriching the two largest teachers’ unions with political power. It has lectured parents, chided faith-based institutions, and championed policies that removed faith — and with it, worldview, moral accountability, and educational standards — from our schools.
But here’s the good news: Parents are finally fed up with union-run education. School choice participation has jumped 25 percent in just one year — from 1 million to 1.3 million students coming out of COVID. Thirty-four states now offer vouchers, scholarships, or educational savings accounts. Nineteen have universal choice programs.
Homeschooling has exploded, growing 51 percent — from 2.5 million students in 2019 to 4.3 million in 2022. Growth continues annually, and this is not a pandemic hangover — it’s a fundamental shift in how American families think about education since the “great reveal,” when students had to show parents what they were learning from home.
So what about teachers’ unions? They’re hemorrhaging power. The Supreme Court’s Janus decision allows teachers to opt out, producing steadily declining membership. Their lawfare campaigns are failing — courts in Idaho, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and West Virginia have all upheld school choice programs. Even Democratic governors in Colorado and North Carolina are opting into federal scholarship programs despite union fury.
But first, we need to recognize what we’re witnessing: the collapse of an educational monopoly that has failed our children for more than 45 years. The Department of Education has no constitutional basis and has accomplished nothing except bureaucratic bloat and union empowerment. It has primarily been a weapon for policymaking that only serves the interests of unions and not parents.
Second, parents and their children deserve real choices and real freedom, not a government system that spends the most and achieves the least. When families can choose alternatives — private schools, classic education, homeschooling, co-ops, microschools — education improves because accountability shifts from bureaucrats in D.C. to parents coast to coast.
Finally, faith matters in education. When worldview, moral formation, and truth are removed from schooling, you get functionally illiterate graduates without moral purpose or a sense of direction. The school choice movement isn’t just about better reading scores, though we desperately need those. It’s also about restoring education that forms the whole person — mind, body, and soul — not just mindless cogs or political activists.
The teachers unions could very well be in panic mode, and they should be. Their grip is slipping. Parents are taking this threat seriously. And American children may actually get a real education in freedom.
Many K-12 schools now embrace the secular woke agenda and are hostile to Christian beliefs and parental rights. Fortunately, parents don’t have to settle for this. Liberty University Online Academy is a K-12 program designed to educate your children in the ways of the Lord while preparing them to stand firm in their faith when they graduate. Our flexible online curriculum ensures that your student is trained at your convenience and keeps YOU as the ultimate educator of your children.
