Why?

Because it offers services and oversight that are desperately needed. From the overview from the federal government’s website:

And that’s just not for K-12 institutions.

Have a student loan from the federal government? Department of Education handles that.

Those lunches for students living in poverty? Department of Education.

Around 8% of the public education budget for the state of North Carolina? Comes from the Department of Education.

Imagine having 51 different entities measuring achievement and growth in thoer own ways and trying to compare them.

Have a child with an IEP? Enforced and backed up by the Department of Education.

It is not ironic that both Mark Robinson and Michele Morrow have called for the state of North Carolina to not accept federal funds. Even Project 2025 has called for the elimination of the federal Department of Education. But to eliminate the Dept. of Ed. would be to remove both a cohesive entity that provides oversight, funding, and support for our state’s schools that could never be replaced within our own capacity.

Look at how low our state minimum wage is. Look at our unemployment benefits. Look at how badly we provide oversight in our own voucher system.

And look at our ranking right now of public education compared to the rest of the country.

Through the pandemic, the federal government literally kept our schools afloat. For someone like a Mark Robinson or Michele Morrow to say that we do not need what the Department of Education offers our state is not only indicative of their lack of knowledge in how things work, but another reason that we need to invest even more on the local, state, and federal levels in public education.