President Trump is moving to shut down the federal Department of Education. Congress will need to make any cuts permanent, but downsizing the federal education bureaucracy is a long-overdue reform. The department, however, is not the only way that the federal government intervenes in the nation’s schools.
The government also spends $35 billion a year on school food programs through the Department of Agriculture. The school lunch program was enacted in 1946 and has morphed into an array of breakfast, lunch, after-school, and summer food programs that now cover 30 million children.
My new op-ed at National Review discusses four reasons to axe federal school food programs and allow the states to adopt their own policies.
My full study on the issue is here.