Dismantling the education department is a worthy experiment

Since President Ronald Reagan first promised to eliminate the Department of Education, the agency President Jimmy Carter created in 1979 as a payback to teachers unions for their campaign support, abolishing it has been a recurring theme in Republican politics.

But Reagan and subsequent Republican presidents faced the same reality: Dismantling a Cabinet agency is far harder than campaigning against federal overreach. Consequently, the department stayed, got bigger, and became the kind of entrenched bureaucracy the Founders warned us about.