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President-elect Donald Trump has placed a bull's-eye on the Education Department, and promised to dramatically downsize — or even eliminate — the agency. But it won't be easy. 

Previous GOP heavyweights, including Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, tried to axe the department, and the task proved elusive.

Reagan's opposition to the Education Department — spelled out in his successful 1980 campaign against department creator Jimmy Carter — has inspired droves of current and former GOP politicians to call for an end to the agency. But Reagan couldn't get it done, and seemingly lost his drive to do so, anyway. 

In a twist, Reagan's own Education secretary, Terrel Bell, commissioned what became the landmark "A Nation at Risk" report that warned of "disturbing inadequacies" in U.S. schools — findings widely credited with fueling the dialogue for more federal intervention.

Although Bell had commissioned the report without the White House's blessing, Reagan liked it and ultimately signed on, said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. 

"'A Nation at Risk' clearly contributed to the demand for federal intervention and, at least in the short term, ended the debate over closing the Department," said Martin West, a Harvard professor who served as an education adviser to 2012 GOP contender Mitt Romney.

West said Reagan's shift was reflected in his second term, when he appointed William Bennett as Education secretary.

"Bennett was far more conservative than Bell and, with Reagan's support, used the bully pulpit of his position to push for a wide range of reforms," West said. 

Bennett, who now works as a conservative commentator, didn't immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment. 

The issue of closing the Education Department resurfaced other times as well. Then-House Speaker Gingrich pushed to eliminate the agency after his party took control of the House in 1994, but the plan never gained much traction on Capitol Hill, Hess said. GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole also took the same position in his 1996 presidential race.

"The challenge is that states and their congressmen love federal education money, they just don't like it when strings are attached, when the Feds tell them what to do with it," said Patrick McGuinn, a professor of political science and education at Drew University. "Also, closing the Education Department can come across as anti-education even when the local control argument is made." 

With a nearly $80 billion annual budget, the department doles out large sums annually in Pell Grants, Title I funds and special education services — programs that are popular with parents and school districts from both red and blue states.

But it's the enforcement action under President Barack Obama's administration that's drawn the ire of this generation's conservatives. In particular, many don't like that the department's Office for Civil Rights has become increasingly active over the last eight years on campus sexual assault enforcement and ensuring bathroom access for transgender students. 

Obama's also been criticized for dangling billions of dollars and other incentives to states that took steps such as adopting the Common Core standards. Backlash against those federal efforts to shape policy helped lead to last year's passage of the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act, which hands a lot of control back to states. 

What's not clear yet is how aggressively Trump will act to take steps to close the Education Department — or whether he'll take any action at all.

In his book "Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again," Trump said of the Education Department, if "we don't eliminate it completely, we certainly need to cut its power and reach." 

"Education has to be run locally. Common Core, No Child Left Behind, and Race to the Top are all programs that take decisions away from parents and local school boards" and "allow the progressives in the Department of Education to indoctrinate, not educate, our kids," Trump wrote. "I am totally against these programs and the Department of Education. It's a disaster."

Last year, Trump told Fox News he wants to cut spending and "may cut" the Education Department.

In announcing a $20 billion school choice proposal in September, Trump said there "is no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly."

Trump wasn't alone in the Republican presidential primary in questioning the need for the Education Department.

GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were among candidates saying they'd like to abolish the department, and Sen. Marco Rubio questioned the agency's purpose. But breaking ranks, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another candidate, said Republicans historically have made a mistake in calling for the department to be closed. 

"You know what independent voters heard? Oh, so the Republicans want to kill education?" Kasich said. "We've got to be careful in the way in which we use our rhetoric."

Congress would also have to approve closing the department. West, the Harvard professor, said that could be a heavy lift. West noted that in Reagan's time, even Republican lawmakers were divided on the issue amid pressure to keep the department open from key groups such as teachers unions and the Catholic conference. 

"It would certainly be feasible from an administrative perspective to shift functions currently carried out by the Education Department to other agencies," West said. "Politically, however, I don't see even a Republican-controlled Congress providing the votes to do this, especially if the Trump administration were not to make it a top priority."

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who is considered the leading candidate to chair the House education committee, told POLITICO earlier this fall that she would do "as much as humanly possible to roll back the functions of the federal government in education," although she acknowledged as a "realist" there are political challenges in doing so. 

An aide for HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander — who served as the federal Education secretary under President George H. W. Bush — said Wednesday that a Trump administration "has a prime opportunity to significantly reduce the intrusion of the Education Department into our local schools and classrooms." The aide said that when Trump enforces the Every Student Succeeds Act passed last year as written, "the size of the Education Department will be necessarily and appropriately diminished."

Carter signed the law establishing the Education Department in 1979 — after announcing his intention to create the department years earlier before the National Education Association. "The time has passed when the federal government can afford to give second-level, part-time attention to its responsibilities in American education," Carter said. 

Previously, education functions had been handled as part of what was then called the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, so education issues competed with high-profile matters such as Social Security for resources and attention. 

Creating the department set the stage years later for President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind school accountability law, signed in 2002, which was widely unpopular but credited with shedding light on the large gaps between the performance of minority and poor students and their peers. Obama took an even more-aggressive stance in crafting education policy. 

For Trump, as with Reagan, there's a challenge in finding people to work in the Education Department who don't believe it should exist, said AEI's Hess. 

"It's hard to find people who want to go into government and then abolish the government they're leading," Hess said. 

https://www.politicopro.com/education/story/2016/11/trumps-plan-to-downsize-education-department-faces-obstacles-137419