This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 15th, 2018. I'm Keeland Brown.

It bears repeating always and everywhere the federal government has no constitutional role in the field of education.

New guidance from the federal government will end some Obama era guidance in higher ed, but is that all to the good?

Cato's Neil McCluskey comments.

If you look at the Constitution, the federal government is given no authority to govern education.

So that means the federal government can't establish schools,

it can't run schools, it can't tell schools what to teach,

it has no authority to send money to schools, but what it does have a job

to do, and this comes from the 14th Amendment, is to make sure that when states

and school districts, when they supply education, they don't

discriminate in its provision.

And so one of the very few areas where the federal government actually has a role in education

is to step in if there is blatant discrimination on the part of school districts and states and there has been no other

remedy so if a school district is discriminating the first thing should

happen is a state should get involved and if the state doesn't fix anything you also have the option of going through the courts but that ultimately can mean federal courts and then the federal job is especially to say if a federal court says you are discriminating

you need to stop that that, you know, the U.S. Department of Education or the Department of

Justice monitors that school

district said you need to do what you have been ordered to do because what you

were doing was illegal. That is what the federal government should be doing

in education.

At least that's what it has the constitutional authority to do.

But we also do want the federal government not to be overly active in that role or activists,

...