Noem backs Trump on federal influence in K-12
PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — In a recent column distributed statewide, South Dakota's governor made an observation about the federal government's relationship with the state's public K-12 schools.
Governor Kristi Noem wrote, "They send us money, sure – but South Dakota schools spend more money complying with federal regulations than they actually receive in federal funding."
The governor's column appeared to support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign pledge that the federal Department of Education should be closed .
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The Republican governor, who earlier this year had positioned herself as a potential choice to be Trump's 2024 running mate, said in the next sentence of her September 13 column, "The power should be held first and foremost by parents, and with their permission, the teachers, then local school districts, then the state – and it should go no further."
That statement also aligns with Trump's 2024 campaign positions regarding K-12 education.
The governor's column prompted KELOLAND News to ask the state Department of Education for numbers supporting her observation regarding how much schools spend complying with federal regulations.
KELOLAND News also looked at state government's annual budget reports to see how much the South Dakota Department of Education has been receiving from the federal government in comparison to the department has been receiving from state government's general fund.
General funds for the state Department of Education rose by $331,990,145 during the most-recent 10 years, an increase of 74% increase, from $448,177,365 in state fiscal year 2016, to $780,167,510 for the 2025 state fiscal year that began July 1.
During the same period, federal funds designated by the Legislature for the department rose $115,016,244 for an increase of 70%, from $164,414,837 in state fiscal year 2016, to $279,431,081 in state fiscal year 2025.
During the peak years of COVID-19 assistance, federal funding to the state department rose much more, temporarily reaching the highest levels ever. Federal aid to the department climbed to $485,974,328 in SFY21 and $436,882,617 in SFY22.
The federal funding pays for many things, but none of the federal funding flows through South Dakota's K-12 school-aid formula , which is separately calculated under a complex state law . The Legislative Research Council sketched out how the state aid formula works in a 2020 issue brief .
Basically, the Legislature sets property-tax levies statewide for public K-12 schools, and state government pays each school district whatever wasn't raised from those levies on property within each district. Last winter, the Legislature appropriated $715,659,424 as state government's share of state aid to schools for the current 2025 fiscal year.
State Education Secretary Joe Graves, a Noem appointee, didn't provide the amounts that KELOLAND News had requested regarding the governor's statement. The secretary issued instead a lengthy statement of his own, in which he too argued that the federal government has an overly large role in K-12 education.
The statement from Secretary Graves said:
"For the sake of simplicity, let's just look at South Dakota school districts' general fund accounts. This is the account that pays for salaries, building utilities, instructional materials and supplies—basically all the regular costs for running a school.
"In South Dakota, of all the revenues schools receive for their general fund, only about 7.5% of those come from the federal government. (To avoid any skewing because of COVID dollars, we used total federal revenues $79,993,520 in FY 2020 divided by total general fund expenditures $1,073,486,569.)
"Given that, it would seem reasonable that the federal government would have 7.5% of the say of what goes on in schools but, in fact, it is much, much larger than that.
"Even though the federal constitution includes no authority over schools by the federal government—because education is a role reserved to the states—they still manage to have an immense amount of influence. For example, the federal No Child Left Behind legislation (now referred to as the Every Student Succeeds Act) essentially took over school curricula—pushing hard on English language arts and math and all but eliminating science and the social studies at the elementary level, restricting recesses, and limiting time spent on the arts.
"Title programming comes with vast swaths of regulation, but schools feel they must accept the dollars because they are so hungry for the extra dollar of school funding.
"Special education funding also comes with vast amounts of regulation and has never been funded at even half the rate originally promised.
"Changes in Title IX come with large price tags even for states where the new rules are largely unacceptable.
"In other words, in a constitutional system in which education is specifically reserved to the states, the federal government has taken control over a great deal of what happens in schools by funding just 7.5% of school general funds," Graves' statement concluded.
KELOLAND News followed up with a question Thursday morning of what Secretary Graves would recommend the federal role should be. We'll let you know when we receive an answer.
Trump's position would reverse a quarter-century of deeper involvement by the federal government in K-12 schools nationwide, especially through the No Child Left Behind requirements. The federal legislation requires that schools measure students' academic progress annually and issue a report showing the results from each school.
NCLB came from a bipartisan effort in Congress and the White House.
When No Child Left Behind originally passed the U.S. House of Representatives 384-45 in 2001, the chamber was split with 221 Republicans, 212 Democrats and two independents. In the U.S. Senate, where NCLB originally passed 91-8 , the chamber was split 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and one independent who caucused with the Democrats. Republican President George W. Bush signed the act into federal law on January 9, 2002.
In South Dakota, the state Department of Education annually publishes the " South Dakota Report Card ." Students in grades 3 through 8 and in grade 11 take assessments each year in English language arts and math. The 2023 news release noted, "The proficiency rate for English language arts was 50 percent, and the proficiency rate in math remained steady at 43 percent." A more detailed analysis of those assessment results by gender and race can be seen here .
