The Department of Education

The federal government doesn't have any schools.  Schools are run by state and local governments.  The schools in my area are county schools.  Several cities in the area have independent school districts that are separate from the county school system.  There are NO federal schools around here.  Are there any around your area?  I didn't think so.

So what business is it of the federal government?  Why do we need a federal department of education?  We don't.  All the federal government does is meddle in our affairs.  They issue "one size fits all" edicts that do nothing but add to the bureaucracy.  Have these rules made education better in the USA?  I keep hearing that we are amongst the lowest performers in the developed world in science and math.  That doesn't make it seem that all those rules and regulations have done much good.  Are schools safer today than they used to be?  Nope.

The school administration loves these inflexible rules.  I'm convinced that they prefer to have zero tolerance policies that require no judgement calls on the part of school personnel.  These administrators are so afraid of offending someone or showing special treatment to one person over another.  If the rule says that there is zero tolerance for students that bring a knife to school, then that student must be given a suspension.  Period.  A butter knife, a hunting knife, or a switchblade are all treated equally.

I once heard a story on the radio about a kid that had braces.  His mother wanted to give him a banana in his lunch box, but it would get stuck in the braces.  If he cut up the banana before eating it, the problem was avoided.  So his mother put a butter knife in the lunch box with the banana.  A teacher saw the butter knife, and the zero tolerance rule was invoked.  He was suspended for a butter knife.  You could have done much more damage with a legal fork than a dull butter knife.  This kid lived in a rural school district, not the inner-city.  Stabbings and knives and weapons weren't a big problem at this school, but the "one size fits all" rule said that the school had to punish this good kid.  This became a blemish on his record.  Somebody might have screamed "discrimination" if he got to bring in a butter knife, when some inner-city kid was suspended for pulling a switchblade on the teacher that told them to be quiet or quit fighting or whatever.

This is just one blatant example of why the government should get the heck out of education.  I mean that the federal, state, county, city, or any other government should get out of education.  It should be privatized.  I'm definitely a supporter of education vouchers.  Then you can choose who will educate your children.  The government indoctrination centers really are dying to get your kids away from you to train them to be good little tree hugging, socialist, anti-religious liberals.

So when we are talking about areas that could be eliminated from the federal bureaucracy, education has to be high on the list.  In fiscal year 2011, the federal government spent around $130 billion, and they don't even have any schools.  Let's cut out the money pit and MessAPolitico completely.  Don't just cut 10% or 25% or even 50% of the funding for the department of education.  Completely eliminate it.  Get rid of all the bureaucrats, top to bottom.  Close it down.  Save $130 billion dollars every year, or really, more than that since these budgets go up every year.  I'm betting you won't even notice the difference unless you work there.  If you do notice something, it's more likely to be a positive change than a negative one.