t was a tiny, barely funded department until the push to offer special education to all children via public schools. Too many school districts refused, citing costs. The federal government had passed legislation and in order to enforce it, they jumped in.
What was the original need?
Look what it has become. States, whose citizens are responsible for paying for their own public education systems, must pay more in federal income taxes to fund the Department of Education, so that bureaucracy can first waste a bunch of that money, then turn around and redistribute those funds back to the very states from whence they collected said funds. Bu-bye, state sovereignty. Bu-bye, limited power and authority of the federal government.
That is just ONE example.
.