Wrong. Carter emboldened the Soviet Union who spread their political power overseas like never before.
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/27/world/soviet-buildup-near-iran-tested-carter.html
Carter accelerated the drawdown of the US military post Vietnam to a point where morale within the services had fallen to a new low.
https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/more-the-crying-need-bigger-us-military
https://www.usatoday.com/story/nati...ge-lepre-haynes-vietnam-conrad-crane/2484665/
His dealing with Iran can be summed up with the failure of his allowing the Ayatollah to return and send the country into revolution that led to the debacle of the Iran hostage crisis.
As for the Department of Education...
Since its implementation, overall spending on education has skyrocketed while outcomes like test scores have remained static or fallen.
Federally mandated education programs likewise have added immense costs to education while doing nothing to improve it.
https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-19-266R
https://thefederalist.com/2019/02/19/federal-report-finds-u-s-department-education-massive-failure/
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/14/6944...port-on-ed-departments-handling-of-student-lo
It gets worse. Since the Department of Education has exponentially increased the ease of getting student loans for college, the cost of tuition at universities across the nation has increased exponentially far in excess of inflation and now student debt is a major problem. Here's the thought experiment example of why:
A university charges $500 for a course. Students are paying $500 cash to take the course. The government (Department of Education) comes along and says they'll back low interest loans for that $500 so more students can take the course. The university can't handle more students in the course, but they go ahead and raise the cost of it to $1000 and coach students paying $500 in cash how to get a government loan for $500 to cover the rest of the cost...
Universities are a
business. They are about making money, even public universities. This is why most have non-teaching PhD's and such on their staff doing research and other stuff. That brings in huge piles of cash. So, why shouldn't they also take advantage of student loans?
The bottom line here is, that the Department of Education doesn't do anything to make education in the US better but it does make a lot of education related businesses and people rich with government funding.