Skyrocketing federal spending on the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and the record low poor student achievement levels provide yet another Washington illustration of the truth of the maxim that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.”

A deep-dive data analysis by non-profit government watchdog Open The Books (OTB) — modestly entitled “PROGRESS REPORT: Cutting Waste, Ridding Radicalism, and Returning Education to the States” — exposes the 749% increase in federal tax dollars devoted to DOE since 2000, and the fact that, despite record expenditures, 34% of the class of 2024 graduating seniors can only read at basic or below proficiency and 45% of them are at or below basic proficiency in math.

When it was created by Congress at the behest of President Jimmy Carter in 1979, DOE advocates promised the result would be a reduction in federal education grant-making, motivation for parents to become significantly more involved in their children’s academic progress, encouragement of more research on innovative teaching and learning approaches, and high-level educational achievement more widely available for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

What has resulted is virtually the exact opposite of what was promised on every count, according to the OTB report:

“Nearly 50 years later, DOE has instead empowered school districts to exclude parents from their children’s education; funded research ranging from unhelpful to harmful to student success; and overseen plummeting rates of student success across demographics. Nevertheless, agency funding has reached new heights, rising 749% from 2000 to 2024. DOE has become the quintessential unnecessary, bloated bureaucracy; but the agency is a progressive darling with a large cottage industry of advocates it has itself funded over the decades.”

Those results prompted President Donald Trump to promise during his 2024 presidential campaign that he would dismantle DOE, and Linda McMahon, his choice as secretary of Education, reiterated the case for dismantlement when the 2024 academic achievement scores were made public. Those scores, she said, “confirm a devastating trend: American students are testing at historic lows across all of K-12. At a critical juncture when students are about to graduate and enter the workforce, military or higher education, nearly half of America’s high school seniors are testing at below basic levels in math and reading. Despite spending billions annually on numerous K-12 programs, the achievement gap is widening, and more high school seniors are performing below the basic benchmark in math and reading than ever before.”

Based on staffing levels and personnel costs data in the OTB analysis, Trump and McMahon appear to be making significant progress in some key areas toward fulfilling the president’s 2024 campaign promise, according to OTB, as DOE “employed 4,245 staffers in 2024, down from 4,930 in 2000, but up from 4,031 in 2020. Through Reductions-In-Force (RIFs), voluntary leave incentives, and return-to-office requirements, the Trump administration claims at least 1,950 staffers have left the agency in 2025.”

Thanks to the staff reductions, personnel costs should be dropping as well. Under President Joe Biden during the four years 2021 to 2024, DOE’s annual personnel costs averaged $560 million, while the latest available figures show total staff outlays plummeted 30%, to $391 million.

At the end of 2024, as Trump prepared to be inaugurated for the second time, two-thirds of the DOE workforce was located in the National Capital Region. Among the most common position titles at the time was “Management & Program Analysis,” of which there were 933. The average salary paid for those positions was more than $143,000 annually, according to the data compiled by OTB. The Median Household Income for the U.S. in 2025 was $83,730, 41% below the DOE position average.

Other common DOE job titles included 588 “General Attorney” positions paid an average of more than $147,000, and 572 “Miscellaneous Administration & Program” jobs paid an average of almost $147,000 annually. Only 306 positions bore the title “Education Program,” and they were paid on average more than $139,000 yearly. These salary figures do not include the cost to taxpayers of generous federal employee health and retirement benefits.

Decisions made during the Biden administration sought to create bureaucratic obstacles to dismantling DOE, according to the OTB assessment, complicating the task in multiple ways. The biggest such obstacle is the area of federally subsidized student loans. Overall DOE spending in 2025 was $96 billion, a $4 billion boost over 2024.

“This is largely due to massive increases in Pell grant spending, which increased $6 billion year over year. The Free Application for Student Aid Simplification Act of 2021 (FAFSA) baked in new Pell grant spending, so reducing overall DOE spending will be difficult without reforming this program. … Pell Grants are used to fund low-income students in four-year college programs; it is a yearly stipend that does not have to be paid back. Aid amounts are set by Congress,” OTB explained.

Similarly, the Biden administration massively increased federal spending on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs designed to reframe justifications for social welfare expenditures, including those for education, on the basis of critical race theory (CRT), the academic ideological hypothesis that “white supremacy” has dominated all American institutions, including government and education, since before the nation’s founding in 1776.

“Spending on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-related grants soared under Biden. Grants containing the words ‘social justice’ or ‘equity’ cost taxpayers between $144 million and $174 million between FY 2021 and 2024. Although Trump took an aggressive anti-DEI stance, $62 million in such funding was still spent in FY 2025,” OTB observed.

State public education system spending on federally-funded DEI initiatives also increased, with California’s more than $153 million in such program expenditures topping the 10 highest DEI spenders. Six of the top 10 were blue states, compared to only four red states. Ohio was 10th at nearly $31 million. The others included second-place Indiana and descending through Texas, Florida, Virginia, Arizona, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Connecticut in ninth.

Another example of Biden initiatives that now make it more difficult for the Trump administration to dismantle DOE is the $75.2 billion spent through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Program (HEER), which was part of the $276 billion Education Stabilization Fund (ESF). The ESF was an “investment” into “COVID-19 recovery and rebuilding efforts, managed by the U.S. Department of Education to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus impacts on education for our nation’s students.”

Under the HEER, higher education institutions were required to spend at least half of the funds made available to them through DOE on grants to students to help with their emergency housing, child care, and health care requirements. In fact, the program ended up fattening the bank accounts of more than a dozen of the nation’s most prestigious and expensive universities.

“Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Notre Dame did not receive Education Stabilization Funds but schools like Yale (beginning of 2021 endowment: $31 billion), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (beginning of 2021 endowment: $18 billion), and University of Pennsylvania (beginning of 2021 endowment: $18 billion), did. Meanwhile, their endowments soared. For example, Yale took $3.9 million in emergency COVID relief, while its endowment grew by $11.2 billion in 2021,” according to OTB.

It was not only elite private schools that benefited; state schools like Texas A&M, Michigan University, and the University of Virginia were also recipients.