“It’s time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve. It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.” - Failure
Stalin once said, “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed”. Public education began as a means to shape the masses by removing the teaching of children from the backward parents who birthed them. Initially, spiritual-based instruction sought to indoctrinate the population with its own particular strain of religion. Then, the first national education system was started in Prussia for the purpose of solidifying the national identity and to create obedience to the state, stressing community over the individual. And why not, submissive followers made for good soldiers ready to submit to their social betters.
Leaving the matter of formal schooling to the state and local authorities, education was left out of the United States Constitution by a majority vote at the Constitution Convention in 1787. But that hasn’t stopped a flurry of legislation on the federal level including the establishment of a cabinet-level department, the Department of Education in 1979.
The Department of Education serves as a national system to improve the academic standing of American students and better prepare them for their future vocation. Federal involvement, they claimed, would lead to an overall improvement in the well-being of the public. Its facilities are located in the heart of Washington DC, housed in a building the size of 7 football fields with a staff of over 4,000, and a budget of nearly $70 billion. A bit extravagant for a matter left to the States, don’t you think? Even worse, student performance since its inception has languished. Based on a study by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), most federal programs originating from the Department of Education are non-functioning with only 6 percent receiving the OMB’s highest rating.
Today, the old compulsory public school model established decades ago no longer reflects our reality or our new economy. A school year with summers off is a throwback to the days when kids worked on the farm, hardly applicable in modern times. Grouping children by age despite differing abilities frustrates achievers while hindering those who lag behind. A more innovative, and experimental environment is needed and unlikely to emerge from the current paradigm. Alternative education models are more likely to employ the strategies seen in superior schools worldwide.
In 2010, President Obama eliminated the federal guaranteed loan program that utilized private lenders, replacing them instead with the monopoly power of the federal government. When the Department of Education started lending in the 1990s, they did so without the standard assessment of risk where lenders only provided loans to individuals who were good candidates for repaying the loan and had chosen degree programs that would assure good employment. And since these federal loans are now exempt from bankruptcy, they are doled out liberally to anyone who wants them, driving demand and, ironically, increasing the cost of university tuition. Neither the Department of Education nor the university system have anything to lose in these arrangements and therefore no responsibility in seeing that students repay the loan or even obtain a professional position that would ensure that they could. Instead, students have become saddled with double the loan debt they had before the feds took full control. Unfortunately, the Department of Education now holds over 92 percent of all student loans.
Vicki E. Alger’s 2016 book, “Failure” takes a comprehensive look at the history of education in the United States and how the government came to control it, including the creation of the Department of Education and the politics behind it. Alger also details the success found in education opportunities around the globe that often feature parental choice, competition, autonomy, and teacher performance pay.
With education spending accelerating at ten times student enrollment, American students remain average. In fact, in March 2018, the Department of Education's Twitter account sent out the following dismal statistics: “US students rank 23rd in reading, 24th in science and 40th in math.” An astonishing admission nearly 40 years after it was specifically established to improve the intellectual standing of America and its citizens.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to each state as a “laboratory of democracy”. It is here where experimentation and invention can take us from our one-size-fits-all approach to education and prepare our youth for the new entrepreneurial realities of today. The Department of Education is a dinosaur of the past. It deserves permanent extinction.
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