President Trump’s transition co-chair, Linda McMahon, is preparing for confirmation hearings to be secretary of education. If approved, she’ll pursue the president’s goal of eliminating the department she leads, requiring her to convince Americans that it’s wise to reduce the federal role in schools.

For 200 years, Washington had no role in classrooms. This was in line with the 10th Amendment which states that “powers not delegated to” the federal government by the Constitution or “prohibited” to the states are “reserved to” the states or the people.

“One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration,” Trump said in a September 2023 campaign video, “is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education — and education work and needs — back to the states.”

President Reagan, in 1983, was the first to try eliminating the Department of Education, created by President Carter in 1979. The attempt failed, proving true Reagan’s remark in his 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing,” that “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”

On Thursday, a Republican of South Dakota, Michael Rounds, introduced the Returning Education to Our States Act to try his hand at canceling the Cabinet department and redistributing “all critical functions” elsewhere. The bill would require 60 votes; Republicans will hold 53 seats after January.

The Department of Education is the smallest of the 14 Cabinet agencies and provides under ten percent of budgets in public classrooms. State and local taxpayers kick in the rest. It’s curricula are where Washington’s hand has the most sway and draws the most resistance from the public.

Schools, Trump said, are “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material,” and they “must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed … so they can grow up to be happy, prosperous, and independent citizens.”

Among the new strategies Trump pitched is “school choice,” giving “parents the right to choose another school for their children.” Popular with parents in failing school districts, the policy was a goal of a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman.

On Wednesday, the co-head of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, tweeted Friedman’s 2008 interview with the Hoover Institution. In it, the economist said he’d “abolish” several cabinet agencies including Education.

A little-noticed remark Friedman made toward the end of the clip will be key to whether Trump succeeds where Reagan did not. Asked what he’d eliminate if he were “made dictator for one day,” the economist objected to the premise.

“I don’t want to be made dictator,” Friedman said. “I don’t believe in dictators. I believe we want to bring about change by the agreement of the citizens. … If we can’t persuade the public that it’s desirable to do these things, we have no right to impose them, even if we had the power to do it.”

Trump started the task of persuasion in his video. He said that America “pours more than $1 trillion a year into public education” and noted that’s more than “any other country.” American students, however, rank “at the bottom” of education lists rather than “being at the top.”

Saying, “we owe our children great schools that lead to great jobs and leads to an even greater country that we’re living in right now,” Trump argued that “our classrooms are focused not on political indoctrination, but on teaching the knowledge and skills needed to succeed.”

Focusing on improving outcomes is a winning strategy. Giving the Department of Education an F on improving the disparity students face at the bottom of the income scale is, too. With reading and math scores approaching historical lows, Americans may be ready for change.

At Washington, though, the desire to exercise power can be overwhelming — and with that mindset comes hubris, the notion that the government knows better than parents. Succumbing to this impulse will just put a new glove on the same, old heavy hand.

Unless President Trump and Ms. McMahon can persuade enough citizens that students will be better off without the Department of Education, expect the agency to endure — and to teach advocates for reducing federal control Reagan’s lesson about the immortality of government bureaus.