Idea 8- Eliminate the Department of Education
We sometimes forget that many departments of the federal government have not been around that long. The argument that we absolutely need these departments is quite ridiculous when you think about it. I believe that we would be better off as a nation if we got rid of a few of them. So as this administration is calling for endless funding of the Department of Education, I say lets get rid of it. Give the power back to the states and more importantly to the parents.
The department of Education has only been around since 1979, signed into law by the ever incompetent Jimmy Carter. I am sure that the intentions were good, but most government programs start out that way. Everyone wants higher academic achievement for our children, but a federal department is not the answer.
One of the mistakes of the Bush administration was to dramatically grow the federal government’s role and spending on education. It was a mistake because increased spending does not correlate to higher academic achievement (our goal). Since the mid 1980′s we have increased education spending by over 140%. The problem is that all this money has not lead to increased economic performance. Here is a report that outlines spending and academic performance. There is also the problem on what the money is spent on, which is always a problem the higher you go in government. The 2009 budget for the Education department was $62.6 billion with another $97 billion from the stimulus bill. Yet still Congress is giving out money…$23 billion was just put into a recent bill even though all the stimulus money has not been spent. And certainly the money is not being used to better education for our children. More money is being spent on administrative jobs instead of teaching jobs or increased benefits. Unnecessary programs are even being created just so districts can get money. This is, of course, what happens when you reward failure. Instead of forcing institutions to become more efficient, you encourage them to use money for unessential things knowing that someone will come and bail them out anyways. This is a dangerous path that so many other government programs have fallen into and they are bankrupting our country. (giving you flashbacks to GM, banks, union bailouts…etc)
The other element of the Department of Education is national standards. The same problem exists though. National standards do not equate to higher academic achievement. Here is another good report I found that discusses the misconceptions of national standards. As the failed Bush initiative proved, States will simply lower their standards to get more federal money. It has not had the intended effect. Do we really want to standardize mediocrity?
All of this leads to the larger and more important point of the federal government having more influence and power over the education of our children, when the founders envisioned this responsibility to lie at the state level and below. As we have seen recently in the state of Texas, the fight to keep liberal ideology out of the curriculum is hard. This would become even harder at the national level with the influence of unions, and school czars such as Kevin Jennings (if you have not read my post on him, you should). With more power to the feds comes less power for districts and parents. This is the direction we are headed with all government agencies so I see no reason to believe that we are not headed in that direction with education. Considering the facts that more money and more national standards do not help the stated goal, you have to wonder what the unspoken goals are. If you study Obama and those he has appointed it is pretty clear. They wish to push their liberal ideology onto kids as early as possible and further erode our founding principles. Basically expand what education elitists have accomplished at other levels. Once again it comes down liberal ideology. The federal government knows best, or at least better than the American people and the States. After all, you cannot count on those entities to push what they are supposed to. Just look at Texas.
(I have added some more books to my recommended reading list for all of those self educated types)
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