Here’s a thought to stir the pot! Congressman Ron Paul participated today in answering questions submitted by readers of the Freakonomics blog. I thought his perspective on the U.S. Department of Education was interesting:
Q: It was mentioned you were in favor of getting rid of the Department of Education. Is this true, and if so, how do you feel this would benefit the country?
A: I do believe in eliminating the Department of Education.First, the Constitution does not authorize the Department of Education, and the founders never envisioned the federal government dictating those education policies.
Second, it is a huge bureaucracy that squanders our money. We send billions of dollars to Washington and get back less than we sent. The money would be much better off left in states and local communities rather than being squandered in Washington.
Finally, I think that the smallest level of government possible best performs education. Teachers, parents, and local community leaders should be making decisions about exactly how our children should be taught, not Washington bureaucrats. The Department of Education has given us No Child Left Behind, massive unfunded mandates, indoctrination, and in come cases, forced medication of our children with psychotropic drugs. We should get rid of all of that and get those choices back in the hands of the people.
Hmm, interesting. I have actually been having similar thoughts the last couple of weeks since having a discussion on this with some colleagues at the AECT conference. Can someone explain to me, exactly, why we need a U.S. Department of Education and what value this department has to justify its huge expense? I can see that there is some benefit to having continuity between states for students who transfer, but is that worth the cost of this department? I transferred mid-year as a high schooler from a school on semesters to a school on trimesters. You can’t get any more mixed up than that, and I adjusted fine when I jumped brand new into the middle of my new trimester and curriculum.
The other argument might be that we need a U.S. DOE to regulate uniform high quality across all states. But that’s so laughable, let’s not talk about it, since our students uniformly perform very poorly compared with other nations, and it could be argued that the U.S. DOE impedes rather than promotes educational reform and improvement. By dissolving the U.S. DOE and throwing responsibility for education back to the states, education would become an important economic issue: States would want to have top tier educational systems to attract people to their states. Competition would breed improvement. Innovation could be allowed to emerge in some states and the others could then learn and follow positive examples.
Now I could be wrong, and perhaps someone can successfully challenge my arguments here. I admit, I am still thinking these things through. So here’s the challenge: Can anyone give me a solid reason why the U.S. DOE is worth the millions of dollars we give it? A good reason why we should continue to allow it to exist? I’m seriously interested in knowing.
The original intent of DoEd was to gather educational statistics and fund large scale research. I think that’s a reasonable mission and should cost less than the current level ($80B?). I think we should keep the dept, and even maintain a Sec of Ed to advise the president on Education, but having DoEd dictating local educational policy seems counterproductive, unless we can substantially increase the carrots offered and reduce the sticks.
One issue that’s problematic is how does the US fund schools and can we trust local district (even State) governments to treat it fairly. Absent Federal funding, how can a district that’s caught in the squeeze between falling tax base and rising school costs on top of crumbling infrastructure actually afford the free, public education they’re obligated to provide? Do we owe it to the nation to make up the shortcomings? Possibly.
It seems to me that if the Feds want equal (or overriding) say on local educational policy then they darn well better start ponying up and matching state/local contributions to education on a dollar for dollar basis instead of the paltry 10% they provide now. That would take the budget for DoEd up to around $600B a year and with that kind of resource allocation, we might actually be able to rebuild schools, provide some kind of reasonable compensation for teachers, and actually move Education forward.
Thanks, Nathan, for clarifying the original intent of the DOE. I can see the obvious value of promoting large-scale research, but I agree with you that this role is not worth the billions the department receives. Especially because so little truly large-scale research is actually done. In fact, I can’t remember the last study I read about that crossed state lines. In the lab where I work, “large-scale” means multi-district within a state, not multi-states.
I agree that without the funding from the Feds, the states wouldn’t have enough for schools and research. However, theoretically, if there was no federal DOE, our federal taxes would go down, and so states could then raise the state taxes as needed for these issues. In the end there’d be less bureaucracy, and we’d all save money.
But of course, that’s theoretical, and I understand what would really happen if the federal DOE went away is that our fed taxes would stay the same to fund other issues, and then state taxes would go up. Sigh! But it doesn’t keep me from wondering if we could somehow reduce the federal DOE–maybe scale it back to its original mission of only supporting research and statistics and not policy? It’s in policy that I think the DOE oversteps its constitutional bounds the most, because the Founders knew that in education, the decisions should be made by those closest to the students.
Great comment and insight–thanks!