Government Too Big Will Fail, Part II
Since its creation in 1980, has the Department of Education helped America or harmed America?
The U.S. Federal Government is Too Big and grotesquely out of bounds with the 9th and 10th Amendments. Our Founders knew that Government is a necessary evil, and that it must be restrained, lest it grow too big to control. The bigger the federal government, the further it is away from the People so We the People (WTP) then have No say in what happens. If America is going to survive, we MUST reduce the size of the federal government!
Will America continue its course as an unhealthy, morbidly obese self, aka Fat Feddy, headed for a full-blown, left-artery heart attack?
Or will America cut out the Pork, Get Fit and re-emerge as Fiscal Fed, using self-control to cease the incessant spending rampage, roll up those sleeves and get to work with a full auditing of every federal department? America can then assess her needs to stay fit and strong, funding the absolute necessities that America needs to preserve and maintain all around good health.
We can start with a simple question: is America better off since the creation of that federal department/agency or not? If not, why? Is it a constitutional department/agency that should fall within the jurisdiction of the federal government? Can it be reformed, reduced or should it be eliminated? As we begin this enormous task of reducing the federal government, we must do it wisely, cautiously, like one loses weight with a healthy, whole food “live-it” approach, avoiding foolish, fast, processed food “die-its.”
America must have an educated population to survive, so it is beneficial to ensure that all children receive the best education possible. Writing about the idea to eliminate the DOE is nothing new and has been discussed by various scholars since the DOE’s creation here, here, and here, to name only a few articles discussing its demise, so I won’t reiterate the origins. That said, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) is low-hanging fruit and should be first on the chopping block.
Not long after former President Jimmy Carter signed off on the creation of the DOE, former President Ronald Reagan proposed dismantling it and placing certain authorities back to other agencies. President Reagan said, “By eliminating the Department of Education less than two years after it was created, we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”
US. taxpayers spent 83.97 billion dollars in FY2024 for the DOE and have spent over a trillion dollars since its creation in 1980. It has approximately 4,178 employees with an employee expense of 521.41 million dollars in 2022. What do we have to show for it? "US Education rankings are falling behind the rest of the world." Test scores pre-covid continued to lag in 2017. There are plenty of articles discussing poor test scores of Americans throughout the years here, here, here, here and here. Yet, DOE tells us test scores are improving.
Dr. Thomas Sowell crunched the numbers and said that American education had been improving since WWII until the 1960s, and when the federal government got involved, US test scores fell.
Naturally, in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, most people wanted change, because a “mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Trying to change the system through busing resulted in lowering the standards of the better funded schools rather than changing the poor schools that did not perform well. Big Fail!
And, of course, there is the DC money machine that We the People cannot control UNLESS we eliminate the source: the useless (and more likely harmful) federal agencies themselves. Similar to America’s horrific foreign policy, America spends more money on education than nearly all western countries combined.
And there is also the fact that federal money funnels through the DOE for public school grants, student loans and Pell grants for low-income students. For fiscal year 2023, over $94 billion was available to the DOE. Therefore, if we eliminated the DOE, that funding would go with it, unless reapportioned to another agency (which would most likely happen). Corrupt, career politicians want to keep the money flowing despite the harm it causes Americans (and another reason why our founding fathers knew limited government is best).
If we believe what the DOE tells us, test scores are improving. Really? Look around! Observation can rule over statistics because as many older employees will attest, if anyone has worked side by side with a Gen Z’er, many of these new “workers” can barely read, cannot write cursive (DOE ended cursive from Common Core standards in 2010) and can barely speak or write “the King’s English.” Ask for a ¼ pound of meat at the deli and you might get a perplexed stare from a Gen Zer. Generalizing is never good, but in this case, it is quite easy to spot which Gen Z employee/worker went to private, parochial or public school, simply by how well they read and write!
On February 9, 2023, Rep. Thomas Massie introduced H.R. 899 – in the 118th Congress. Representative Thomas Massie announced that he has reintroduced H.R. 899, a bill to abolish the federal Department of Education. The bill, which was one sentence long, stated, “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2023.” Original co-sponsors included Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY), Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA), Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).
Representative Massie said, "Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development. States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable. Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational opportunity for their children, including home school, public school, or private school."
But abolishing a government agency is not an easy task. Former President Ronald Reagan once said “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth” because both the House of Representatives and the Senate must agree to abolish an agency. (Eye rolls deserved.)
Of course, there is opposition to eliminating the DOE and it is in the form of the usual attacks: J. Luke Wood says to terminate the DOE is racist.
Wood gives the following reasons:
“Reason 1: It’s racelighting (i.e., race-based gaslighting). He says “Racelighting is an “act of psychological manipulation where people of color receive racial messages that distort their realities and lead them to second-guess themselves.”
Reason 2: It’s about the war against critical race theory.
Reason 3: It’s a battle against accountability for civil rights.”
Mr. Wood, meet Dr. Thomas Sowell. Anyone familiar with school choice and “choicing” their children in local charter schools understands the educational disparity between the DOE statistics and Charter schools’ success rates. Thomas Sowell explains it best in his book, Charter Schools and Their Enemies:
On DOE failure and funding, Dr. Sowell said:
“The 50,000-plus students on waiting lists for admission to charter schools in New York City,1 where per-pupil expenditures average more than $20,000 a year, 2 represent more than a billion dollars a year that could be lost by the traditional public school system in New York City alone, if all the students on those waiting lists were able to get into charter schools. And that is just the initial financial loss in one city during one year.”
“It is successful charter schools that are the real threat to the traditional unionized public schools. No charter school network examined here has been more successful educationally than the Success Academy charter schools in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, the South Bronx and other low-income minority neighborhoods in New York City—and none has been more often or more bitterly attacked in words and deeds.”
On Critical Race theory, Dr. Sowell said:
“It is a painful irony that people who are promoting the make-believe equality of "inclusion" and "diversity" in schools are attacking charter schools that are producing the real equality of educational achievement.”
“Ideological agendas in public schools absorb time, energy and resources that are especially needed in the education of young people from a cultural background often lacking in many of the things that youngsters in more fortunate circumstances can take for granted— such as highly educated parents, books in the home and a whole way of life that prepares them in childhood for achievements as adults.”
“Propagandists in the classroom are a luxury that the poor can afford least of all. While a mastery of mathematics and English can be a ticket out of poverty, a highly cultivated sense of grievance and resentment is not.”
And on the disparity of national test scores, Dr. Sowell elaborates in Inside American Education, “Other countries whose educational systems achieve more than ours often do so in part by attempting less. While school children in Japan are learning science, mathematics, and a foreign language, American school children are sitting around in circles, unburdening their psyches and “expressing themselves” on scientific, economic and military issues for which they lack even the rudiments of competence. Worse than what they are not learning is what they are learning—presumptuous superficiality, taught by practitioners of it.”
The apologists from DOE continue to defend and deny that Critical Race Theory and sex and gender “studies” are not taught in school, contrary to what students tell their parents, and they say that it is a “right wing conspiracy” from parents who are “domestic terrorists.” Recently Libs of TikTok posted this:
SCHOOL ATTEMPTS TO HIDE SECRET GENDER LESSON FROM PARENTS
“A parent in Oregon allegedly asked for a copy of his kid's school's S*x Ed curriculum and the school refused to send it. They only allowed him to see it within the school walls on a school computer where he snapped these screenshots.”
And, what about the latest news that DOE amends Title IX .pdf?
DEI must DIE and the best way to do that is what Mr. Wood said - to eliminate the DOE.
And, then there is the student loan disaster we have today. When the federal government through the DOE started issuing student loans, college tuition ballooned enormously over the decades (since colleges now had guaranteed tuition payments) leading us to the current student loan fiasco – and asking a plumber or welder to bail out someone who “earned” a Bachelor of Arts in gender studies! Just like the Department of Agriculture issuing mortgages, the DOE should not be in the financial loan business! Guaranteed federal student loans are a recipe for disaster and created the continuing rise in the cost of college tuition.
Charles Murray summed up his article, Do We Need the Department of Education? by saying, “In summary: the long, intrusive, expensive role of the federal government in K-12 education does not have any credible evidence for a positive effect on American education.”
The DOE meets the criteria that it is harming America and not helping America produce a well-educated population. If we push education back to the states, there may need to be some federal oversight to ensure that the issues that led to Brown v. the Board of Education do not re-emerge. But that would be far less costly than what taxpayers are funding currently. And, maybe, just maybe, our children will start learning the 3 “Rs” again!
So, 4,178 (cushy fed jobs) would be eliminated and that is certainly a concern when trimming the federal budget because no [normal] employee wants to lose his/her job. But, with enough notice, it is no different than in the private sector, when layoffs occur, and people are faced with the daunting task of finding new employment when their job ends. Fortunately, it is still an employee market.
So, let’s get chopping. One small detail: Our elected officials need to get on board!
