It angers Americans when we learn that our government sent out $200 to $400 BILLION dollars of COVID relief checks to people who didn’t deserve them. The Department of Education’s (DOE) 2023 budget is approximately $185 billion. We should be apoplectic that the DOE effectively wasted a large portion those funds, not just last year, but for decades. After a couple of false starts, the DOE as we currently know it, was launched in 1980. (The actual name of the department is the Education Department, and its real acronym is ED. Given the more readily recognized meaning for the acronym ED, it just seemed too easy. I chose to use DOE instead). Given the importance of education, it must always be a top priority. Any nation that fails to properly educate it’s citizens is making the conscious decision to reduce it’s position in the arena of global competitiveness. That is the very reason we must keep it as far away from the federal government as possible.
Imagine a line graph measuring the growth of the DOE. The X axis is years, beginning in 1980. The Y axis is the annual budget, with zero at the bottom left. The graph would display an almost unbroken straight line from the bottom left to the top right of the graph. Now, imagine a second line graph measuring our competitive educational position, globally. The X axis is again years, starting in 1980. The Y axis shows our numerical position among our global peers with #1 at the top. This graph displays a nearly uninterrupted straight line from the top left to the middle-bottom right of the graph. By overlaying the 2 charts, it is obvious we are spending more money every year to produce ever dumber students. Were this to happen over a 1 to 5 year period, one could chalk it off to coincidence. Unfortunately, it has been taking place over the last 40 years.
The DOE has been such an abject failure that it would be foolish to attempt to repair it. We should bury this misfit department as soon as possible. The federal government has no constitutional authority to educate our children. That hasn’t stopped it from trying. It has flopped like a fish out of water from one program to another. In 2002 “No Child Left Behind” was launched with its promising title and unachievable goal. Then in 2009 “The Race To The Top” was foisted on the American people. It proved as useless as its predecessor. In 2010 a cruel joke known as “Common Core” was forced on our children. Parents, teachers, school administrators, and students, despised it. But the bureaucrats knew best, so on we forged toward educational oblivion. The latest failed attempt by this useless bureaucracy came in the form of the “Every Student Succeeds Act” conceived in 2015. The DOE is a leading cause of our educational failings. It is not capable of correcting the ills of our failing system. It could however, be helpful at fulfilling a position as an information gathering organization. It could effectively work as a sort of conduit between the 50 states Given today’s technology, it could fulfill that duty with something like 10% of its current budget. That would free up $165 billion dollars A YEAR that could be used in ways that directly benefit all stakeholders.
We could use the $165 billion to provide more Charter Schools, or to provide scholarships for parents to send their children to higher performing private schools. We could provide funds to those who choose to homeschool. We might provide technology that would allow the top math teachers, for instance, in a state to connect with students from other schools in the state for, say, 1 hour of instruction per week. Each state might create a system that identifies and compensates top performing teachers. The potential uses are many. Almost anything would be an improvement over the pig in a poke strategy we are wasting money on today.
Eliminating the DOE would place the responsibility of educating our children entirely in the hands of states. They would operate as mini-laboratories in the search for the best way to educate our students. These labs offer the best opportunity for returning our students to the top of global educational ratings. A one size fits all D.C. education platform has never worked in the U.S. Education should be more local. Parents should have a larger role in deciding what their children are being taught. My proposal would require every state to report testing results annually to a DOE central data repository. Inevitably, some states would excel at math, others at science, etc. All states would provide data on both curricula and on teacher methodology. The slimmed down DEA would process the data it receives from the states. It would make a performance list available of the 50 states in each educational discipline. The list would be available to all interested stakeholders. For the first time, interested parties would be able to compare local results with those of every state. For the first time parents could hold their State Department of Education accountable by accessing easily comparable, downloadable, information from a central source. Even the ED would have a hard time screwing that up.
Thanks for viewing my latest writing. If you think it has value please refer it to your friends. Bob
With this type of program, each state would compete to better educate. Even pick out programs that do better in different categories.
🎯
Absent any necessary purpose, cut it entirely, take 10% and send it to the states proportionally upon a showing of need, then eliminate the remaining 90% to reduce our debt. Alternatively, just gut the thing entirely.