Dept of Ed (or lack thereof)

 

 

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire"

William Butler Yeats

 

If you live in Minnesota, have you ever wondered why we have a federal Department of Education, a state Department of Education and then each school district has their own superintendent and staff? Three layers of bureaucracy? We must have some pretty smart kids! Are all these layer really worth it? Is there bang for the buck? Maybe this needs to be investigated.

We will use Minneapolis as a case study. Minneapolis is a typical large "blue" city in the northern part of the country. Currently, the city of Minneapolis has a graduation rate of about 75%. That means that 1 out of 4 students who go to school in Minneapolis under the influence of the federal, state and local government, can't get a high school diploma. This rate has been stuck 1970. That means there has been no improvement in our graduation rate for all the years we have had the Department of Education. I know, the proponents of this broken system will tell us the we don't understand. Schools today are not just a place of learning, they are also bastions of social engineering, as well as social work. We need to teach "life skills", so if they don't learn how to read, spell and do math, oh well. One school on the city's North Side is particularly bad. During the 2006-2007 school year, only 29.3% of the students were considered proficient in reading and a very disappointing 8.61% were proficient in mathematics. On top of that, the graduation in this school was less than 40%.

At first glance, one might think the taxpayers are not getting their moneys worth. So how much does the Federal Government spend on education? The Department of Education was started under the Carter Administration. In 1980, Congress appropriated to the Department of Education an annual budget of $14.2 billion. For FY 2013, the Department of Education is requesting $69.8 billion in discretionary funding! This is an increase of $1.7 billion, or 2.5 percent, over 2012. Even if the budget had stayed static since 1980, we would have still spent almost 1/2 trillion dollars on the Department of Education. For what?

Back to Minneapolis for a minute. I have already mentioned that a high school, buried deep in this multi-layered bureaucracy, had a graduation of less than 40%. Contrast that to a private school in Minneapolis who does NOT cater to rich kids. On the contrary, many of the students are minority and most come from under resourced families. This school has 1) strict standards 2) a solid curriculum and 3) a strong dress code. What this school does NOT have is 1) the very political teachers union 2) Department of Ed meddling from both federal and state and 3) weak, PC laced curriculum. The result of this school? 100% graduation rate with 100% of the graduates being accepted at either a college, university or the military service.

Back in the 80's, then President Reagan wanted to shut down the Department of Education. He thought it was a waste of time and money. It did more harm than good. He was right. This is yet one more thing I miss about "the Gipper".