Education reformer Ryan Walters calls DOE move ‘long-overdue correction’ to failed system 

Describing the Department of Education as “one of the most costly failures in our federal government,” education reformer Ryan Walters praised plans announced this week to transfer significant DOE functions to other federal departments. 

Walters, who was Oklahoma’s state superintendent for public instruction and now leads the Teacher Freedom Alliance, said the DOE was “created by Jimmy Carter as a political favor to the teachers’ unions.” 

Over 45 years, “it has consumed more than $3 trillion while student outcomes have collapsed, and nearly half of every federal education dollar has been wasted on bureaucracy instead of reaching a classroom,” he said Friday in a release shared with The Lion. 

Walters, a former classroom teacher, leads an alliance that helps public school teachers opt out of unions such as the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which endorse far-left policies and funnel money to leftist politicians. 

Union boss Randi Weingarten accused President Donald Trump of holding Americans “hostage” during the government shutdown and imperiling schools because the DOE was closed, but Walters had a rebuttal. 

“The only people holding Americans hostage are the teachers’ unions,” he wrote in an editorial for Fox News last month. “They held your children’s education hostage during COVID. They hold teachers hostage when they don’t conform to liberal standards. And worst of all they treat parents as roadblocks and hold them hostage when they push back. 

“The shutdown proved what many of us already knew: states are not only capable of managing education, they already do. Education in this country is funded and governed primarily at the state and local level.” 

The “final mission” 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Tuesday that six DOE programs – including K-12 and higher education programming – would move to other federal departments.  

The move is part of fulfilling President Donald Trump’s March executive order to close the department. While that will take an act of Congress, since it was established by a congressional act, the administration is downsizing the department in anticipation of its eventual closure, a process it calls “the final mission.” 

Walters described the moves as “a long-overdue correction to a system that has failed America’s children for generations. 

“President Donald Trump and Secretary McMahon have done what many wanted for decades and yet lacked the courage to do. Their leadership is finally restoring power to states, parents and teachers, the people who actually educate children, instead of union bosses and federal bureaucrats. 

“This is exactly the kind of bold action it will take to rebuild American education. This moment marks a historic opportunity to raise standards, restore accountability and put students first.”