Education - still stuck in neutral....

 

 

"How in the world can we spend this much and only receive this little?"

If I were a customer and bought a product that performed like the Federal Department of Education, I would demand my money back. Maybe even double my money back. This useless department has been a cabinet level position since President Carter made it so in 1980. Currently, it employs about 5,000 civil servants and has an annual budget of $70B.

After President Reagan took office, it did not take him long to put this waste of resources in his budget cutting site. It was one of three departments which he wanted to see eliminated, and quickly. Of course that never happened, as many of the Democrats on the Hill had the staunch backing of the all powerful teacher's union. So year after year, it stays in business, doing practically nothing, adding to our growing debt.

So with spending all of this money, how are we doing? The following was taken from BusinessWeek in August of this year:

Compared to those hard-studying kids in China, Korea or Finland, U.S. students appear to be chronic underachievers. The average kid in the U.S. does less than one hour of homework on average at all grade levels, according to a study from a few years ago by RAND and the Brookings Institution. A recent Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Education Reform and National Security led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, former head of New York City public schools, concluded that the country's "educational failure puts the United States' future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk."

How can this be? The countries which are zipping by us do not have a multi-billion dollar Department of Education. With the amount of money we spend, we should have a commanding lead and growing. If that is not enough proof, even the teacher union loving Star and Tribune had this editorial yesterday: 

Last week, the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment reported that test scores for U.S. teens were flat, while those for their counterparts elsewhere — particularly in Asia — soared. Students in 65 of the world’s wealthiest countries participated, and those in 29 countries or educational systems scored higher than their U.S. counterparts in math. Students in 22 countries did better in science, and 19 countries performed better in reading.

Teens from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea were at the top of the rankings, while several countries comparable to the United States, including Ireland and Poland, pulled ahead for the first time.

Since President Obama took office, we have spent over $250B on this waste of space called the Department of Education. The only thing tangible they have produced is a counterfeit program called Common Core. Other than that, all they have been capable of doing is promulgating more expensive regulations, focus on bullying issues, and dumbing down the curriculum. As we continue to stumble over ourselves in education, the rest of the world passes us by.

Until we truly grasp REAL CHANGE in our country, and not just campaign slogans, we will continue to fall behind. Who knows? Maybe Common Core will save us - you know, like it is now proper diction to not use no double negatives.