The truth is, there is no provision listed beneath Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, [Congress’s power to lay and collect taxes] allowing for a federal “Department of Education”.
In fact, prior to the adoption of our existing Constitution, the People of Maryland delegated the power for a state funded and regulated educational system to their state elected officials, and not to a national governing power — the wording being as follows:
“The General Assembly, at its First Session after the adoption of this Constitution, shall by Law establish throughout the State a thorough and efficient System of Free Public Schools; and shall provide by taxation, or otherwise, for their maintenance.”
The Maryland Constitutional also states, in emphatic terms:
“the People of this State have the sole and exclusive right of regulating the internal government and police thereof, as a free, sovereign and independent State.”
In fact, under Art. 3 of Maryland’s Constitution, the command is for local regulation and funding of education as opposed to a federally funded and regulated public school system!
The Maryland Constitution also states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution thereof, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people thereof.”
This very provision of Maryland’s Declaration of Rights is also agreed to by the People of the United States by their ratification of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States!
Now, with respect to our federal Constitution and its delegated powers, upon researching the record of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, we find Delegate Charles Pickney, on August 18th, proposed a broad power “To establish seminaries for the promotion of literature and the arts and sciences”, but this proposal was rejected by the Convention in favor of a limited grant of power expressed in Article 1, Section 8, Cl.8, of the proposed constitution. The limited power, later agreed upon by ratification of our Constitution authorizes Congress "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” and what is authorized to accomplish this? by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The fact is, the federal Department of Education and its current functions are in defiance of the defined and limited powers granted to Congress. And every time a member of Congress votes to fund this agency they are committing a fraud upon the people of the United States and are usurping a power not granted!