How is the Federal Department of Education Constitutional?

I need some help with a question. Your informative replies will be appreciated.

Under what Constitutional principal, amendment, etc does the Federal government have a right to create Federal mandates for education or to use Federal dollars for school funding or to even establish a Federal Dept of Education?

Wouldn't education fall under the power of the States, as opposed to the Federal Government?

I don't know...

But I do know if I had to pay for a child's education right now I could not afford it
by any stretch. I guess I am glad I do not have any children... If the notion is to abolish
public funding for eduction I believe it; if that is the case, I don't think any list or justification I can produce will help or matter. God Bless America

[edit on 19-7-2010 by Janky Red]

reply to post by Janky Red


I am not saying we should stop funding education. I am saying that it is a state responsibility to fund it and a states right to decide what gets taught and how.

I believe that they should continue free public educaton on a state by state level. Though, I do believe we spend entirely too much per child educating them. This is mostly due to too many levels of administration in school systems.

Edit to add:
By the way... thanks for the reply.

[edit on 19-7-2010 by ZuluChaka]

The General Welfare Clause would be the only possible justification for the Federal Department of Education, which has been operational since 1980, and legislated by Congress as the Department of Education Organization Act and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. President Ronald Regan had promised to eliminate this dubious cabinet agency, but failed to do so, and throughout the 80's and 90's it was a visible part of the Republican Parties platform to have it eliminated. However, since the first Election of George W. Bush, who declined to ally himself with the abolition of the Education Department, the Republican Party has seemingly dropped this issue.

There is actually precedent of an earlier version of the Education Department that was created in 1867 as a Cabinet level agency, but was quickly relegated to an Office, rather than Cabinet level status, becoming a minor bureau in The Department of Interior, where it remained relatively inauspicious until the controversial Education Act of 1979. According to The U.S. Department of Educations own website, the current budget for this bureaucratic agency is $68.6 billion, which in my humble opinion is at least $68 billion too much.

The O.P. is correct that education is a local and state issue, and the federal government has no express mandate to handle the matter of education. A telling figure, and one that illustrates the ridiculous amounts of money the federal government spends, The Department of Education is the smallest Cabinet level department with no more than 5,000 employees. It is a profound waste of money, and obscenely so. While education is important, education is not the sole province of government, even on a state and local level, and arguably the private sector has done far better in the matter of education than government has. Since the federal government has no Constitutional authority, (outside the possible interpretation of the Welfare Clause), their involvement in educational issues is suspect, to say the very least.

[edit on 19-7-2010 by Jean Paul Zodeaux]