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There is no need to eliminate useful things that common sense can so easily fix.
The serious downside comes when your state school board discovers that they can completely shut down all public schools, in the absence of any standards, regulation or oversight. Like they did in Arkansas in 1955. (I know that sounds like ancient history to most of you, but I was a junior in high school that year, and things within one's lifetime still seem very possible.)
The federal department of education has many faults, and has served public education poorly and slipshodly. But at least, they are there to provide sanctions against Orval Faubus and his present-day counterparts at the governor's funny-farm.
The function of the federal department of education should be, more or less, limited to guaranteeing that every school-age pupil in the republic has access to a school that is open for business, free, and at a very minimum producing students with basic literacy. But there is no need to force every school board to hire an army of clerks producing mountains of busiywork to prove compliance with an endless litany of irrelevant standards.
What quality? Scores have only gotten worse since it was established and we've really slipped competitively as a country compared to the rest of the world.
Actually, the Dept. of Education has been around in some form since 1867. Federal Role in Education *The original Department of Education was created in 1867 to collect information on schools and teaching that would help the States establish effective school systems. While the agency's name and location within the Executive Branch have changed over the past 130 years, this early emphasis on getting information on what works in education to teachers and education policymakers continues down to the present day.
The passage of the Second Morrill Act in 1890 gave the then-named Office of Education responsibility for administering support for the original system of land-grant colleges and universities. Vocational education became the next major area of Federal aid to schools, with the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act and the 1946 George-Barden Act focusing on agricultural, industrial, and home economics training for high school students.
This might belong in P&OC, but I wanted to get some feedback from educators and administrators.
If the federal government eliminated the Department of Education entirely - no funding, no standards, no strings - what's the worst possible outcome?
Is there a serious downside?
What would education in the United States look like?
Would any schools close?
Would quality suffer?
The answer to that is another question: Who is more likely to make decisions that will guarantee the BEST education for your children; Local school boards composed of friends and neighbors you VOTE for or faceless bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.?
The answer to that is another question: Who is more likely to make decisions that will guarantee the BEST education for your children; Local school boards composed of friends and neighbors you VOTE for or faceless bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.?
I don't see any downside by getting rid of the DOE. They have failed for 30 years to improve education in this country and priced themselves out of a job.
I fully disagree with you nana. I have before. Your sole concern is pushing special education. What about the rest of the kids in the country? Don't you think they deserve decent schooling? From your posts, I think not.
The Feds have progressively destroyed the main goal of our educational system to teach kids to do their best and strive for what they could achieve, much of it due to the fact of forcing things as least restrictive environment and mainstreaming down every districts throat.The Federal Education was not a full fledged monster until 1972. (* look at you own link in the NYSED thread)
I started teaching about when DC got hold of the Dept. of Ed. and it has destroyed neighborhood schools and true local control in NY State. I went to school under little federal pressure and to college under no massive pressure. From the time I started teaching in the early 70s, every year the schools were forced under more and more federal regs and programs. It has NOT improved education. It has shoved paperwork at teachers, tests at students ( much of which is totally irrelevant to learning), and most kids lose out when the curriculum is watered down for multiple reasons.
I quote you:
"Eliminating the department would be a big problem for those of us who rely on it to enforce the laws giving our special education students access to a free and appropriate education."
Yes, you rely on it for what benefits you. Having a Federal Dept. of Ed. isn't benefiting most children. State and local education control without Washington interference should do that. I vote for it to be dissolved.
I speak as a retired teacher. Local control is better. What are you afraid of?
Well, I am afraid that the 1 in 88 children who have autism would end up being shunted off to classes where they were taught nothing just as they were back before IDEA. Would you go back to segregated schools for black kids too?
Everyone deserves a good education. I do NOT believe local school districts will do that as they don't care about anything but money and crap. If the good teachers ran the schools, then the kids would get an education, but the admins are crappy.
I taught in Chicago in the inner city at the high school level. We had some fantastic teachers, but our school had to contend with the district, the state and the feds. One example involved the local school council publicizing the metal detector day to her son so that the gang kids knew to dump weapons outside before they got caught. Another example of local control involved what was called *parent conference* where we had kids and parents in to discuss infractions of the rules, but the principal did not support the teachers. We had those with political ins with the admins get plum positions like department chair despite the fact that these were often the least qualified teachers in the department. We wrote curriculum to integrate business and math under a federal grant. That grant allowed us to buy the best geometry textbooks for our students. The local school school council and the principal decided that we should teach geometry for trees (without proofs) and threw out our books without even offering them to another school. That was my last straw. I quit teaching after that year though I stayed for the rest of the year for the sake of the kids. I could go on and on. I taught in this school and it was *very* locally controlled for the 8 years I taught there. The local school council had people with specific political agendas and who knew nothing about educating the kids.
Our federal government has intruded in a million different areas where it has no business. It is now so huge that the economy is crushed under the burden of paying for such an oversized, non-productive group. And NO political party has any intention of making it any smaller, as evidenced by the fact that Romney is just as much a "Big Government" guy as Obama is (he just wants to spend money on war-making, instead of just Special Interests).
Education was MUCH more productive in previous generations, when multiple "diversity education" classes bumped out math and science as pre-requisites for high school graduation. With the feds in the middle of education (like they soon will be in health care), we send our money to Washington to be rationed back out, after the huge Government taking its cut of about 90%. What an absurd waste of money. What an absurd usurpation of local self-determination. What a corrupt way to brainwash future generations and make them blind to the economy-crushing effect of gigantic and intrusive government.
But what kind of nation are we creating by pouring the vast majority of resources into the lowest-achieving educational groups, rather than the highest?
Wouldn't it be smarter to maximize our strength and wealth as a nation by focusing on the high achievers, thereby creating in the future MORE wages to be taxed, in order to funnel the most back to those who are needy? It seems to me that focusing so much on those who are extremely limited in their educational potential is counter-productive and a "black hole" for limited funds. There are many, many jobs in engineering and the sciences that are being filled by foreigners instead of recently-graduated Americans, because not enough of our young people go into these academically challenging fields.
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