Abolish the Department of Education?

[Generation Why?]

It would be the first one axed under the JB Administration.

A GenWhy? Administration would make many people happy.

So long to:

1. DoE
2. DHS
3. TSA
4. EPA
5. FDA
6. Department of the Interior
7. Department of Commerce
8. Department of Agriculture
9. ATF
10. DEA
11. HUD
12. USDA
13. FCC
14. The criminalization of marijuana


Just saved a lot of money.

With that said, yes the Department of Education should go. Let the states deal with it. Simple things in life...

[Starbuck]

Brass tacks: The period of time you reference has to do with one major cultural shift: integration and forced bussing. Prior to that, we had a lot of good schools, a lot of mediocre schools, and a lot of really bad schools. The bill of goods sold to the American people was that mixing the performing population with the under performing population would bring up the under performing population, when it fact it dragged down the performing population.

The secondary shift was the end of ability tracking and mainstreaming. The parents demanded this. Parents of kids who were not in the A group could never accept that their kids simply did not perform academically. They believed that the school was programing their kids for failure. Blacks and education academics insisted that the tracking system had to be done away with because it would forever shut the black kids out, because they weren't getting the educational support "from society".

This was all supported by the activist and judicial belief that the history of underfunding black schools could only be addressed by bussing, such that it would be impossible to underfund black schools. A surprising number of otherwise intelligent people still believe that majority black schools are underfunded, when in fact they are disproportionately over funded in almost every school district.

The cost of distrust is high. The cost of deception is higher. The cost of dishonesty is highest. When people can't even discuss the situation in terms which actually define it without being screamed at and labeled "racist" then progress doesn't seem likely regardless of whether there is a DOE or not. In fact, the only people who are currently allowed to demand a return to neighborhood schools are poor black people, and the only ones doing that are associated with black separatist and Muslim groups.

Really can't find fault with what you say.
So, why would you be opposed to getting the feds out of the education directing business?

While you answer that, consider this:
Mississippi, who is at the bottom of the ACT scores, is one of only 8 states who require that all students take the test. All the rest of the states only test those who think they will be going to college.
There are a lot of meatheads in Mississippi. It will come as no surprise to you that the vast majority of meatheads have children who are also meatheads. (A meathead is a habitually minimal performer)

[m00]

A GenWhy? Administration would make many people happy.

So long to:

1. DoE
2. DHS
3. TSA
4. EPA
5. FDA
6. Department of the Interior
7. Department of Commerce
8. Department of Agriculture
9. ATF
10. DEA
11. HUD
12. USDA
13. FCC
14. The criminalization of marijuana


Just saved a lot of money.

With that said, yes the Department of Education should go. Let the states deal with it. Simple things in life...

I agree with most of your list, but I would reform the EPA and FDA but keep them to narrow missions. Just like we *do* need some level of federal security apparatus (although nowhere near how large it is today), I think it makes sense to protect people from dirty air/water (polluting water tables, pumping garbage into the air) and it also makes sense to protect people from contaminated baby milk formula (China recently had a huge scandal with this).

The agencies I really don't like are the ones that protect us from non-threats, or the ones that protect us from ourselves. Dept of Education comes to mind, especially because most states have their own state-level DoE. If we really want statistics on how different states' educations rank up at a national level, there are probably private corporations that we can just contract that work to. Its in each state's best interest to have good education programs, because good education means skilled labor/talent which attracts jobs to the area. Also, middle class parents want to work in areas with public schools which is further incentive. So I don't understand what the DoE is supposed to even do.

From Wikipedia: The primary functions of the Department of Education are to "establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights."

The ONLY thing in this mission which is remotely valid to justify government involvement is enforcing privacy and civil rights, but you don't need a cabinet level department for this.

[Novaheart]

Really can't find fault with what you say.
So, why would you be opposed to getting the feds out of the education directing business?

While you answer that, consider this:
Mississippi, who is at the bottom of the ACT scores, is one of only 8 states who require that all students take the test. All the rest of the states only test those who think they will be going to college.
There are a lot of meatheads in Mississippi. It will come as no surprise to you that the vast majority of meatheads have children who are also meatheads. (A meathead is a habitually minimal performer)

I have long maintained that we have paid a huge price for some well intended but poorly executed ideas in education. One of which was "Every Kid To College". Of course at the time I had a most elitist nationalist take on that. I saw the US as the first post industrial society and I really thought it was possible for every kid (from every background) to end up in a white collar job. My excuse for this stupidity was twofold: I somehow imagined that there would still be a cooking and cleaning class of people in the US, and I was only a teenager at the time.

Every kids to college was a huge mistake. Some kids aren't college material, and others simply don't want to work in an office. The destruction of our vocational schools was a huge mistake.

But the "new way" wasn't the only crime committed. Long before "Every kid to college." , many school systems had started using vocational schools as reformatories. That was dead wrong and predates the 1960's by at least 30 years.

I see some oversight role for the federal government because IMO the educational systems which are testing better than ours tend to be a little more top down than county or municipal school systems. Germany's schools are organized at the state level, and Finland is national. I think that both Finland and Germany (from what I have read on Wikipedia) have some designs we would do well to copy.