ArcaMax

How did I, my parents, grandparents and ancestors going back to the founding of the nation manage to get a decent education before the federal Department of Education (DOE) was created by Jimmy Carter and a Democratic Congress?

Quite well, thank you.

I went to a public school where the basics were taught – math, reading, U.S. history and science without a political agenda – and I graduated from college without help from the government. I paid back my small (by today’s standards) student loan. Tuition was cheaper then because government had not become involved in education to the extent it has today.

President Trump’s stated goal of eliminating the DOE has begun with his executive orders downsizing the bureaucratic population and federal grants. He will need Congress to approve its complete demolition.

The failure of the DOE to improve test scores in what was once considered the basics is well known, but it bears repeating. Federal spending on K-12 public schools has tripled just in the last two decades, but proficiency in reading and math has declined and if tumultuous meetings at school boards across the country are any indication, parents are increasingly fed-up.

According to a new Gallup poll, the percentage of adults who report being dissatisfied with the public schools has steadily increased from 62 percent in 2019 to 73 percent today. That’s the lowest, notes Gallup, since 2001.

Just how desperate the establishment is to preserve this failing education system can be seen in a bill under consideration by the Illinois legislature. If passed, it would severely harm the growing home-school movement. The bill would require home-school families to submit forms each year to their local public school that include names, birth dates, grade levels and home addresses of their children. Families who fail to submit the forms would be subject to criminal truancy penalties. Never mind that fewer than one in three Chicago public school students can read at grade level.

Federal, state and local governments provide $878.2 billion, or $17,700 per pupil, to fund K-12 public education, according to the Education Data Initiative. Clearly the return on this investment is not advancing education achievement.

A Wall Street Journal editorial doesn’t let Republicans off the hook when it comes to education misspending at all levels: “Republicans in recent decades have helped Democrats expand the Education bureaucracy and balance sheet. Its $1.6 trillion in student debt would make it the fifth largest U.S. bank. The (DOE) doles out $270 billion a year, which it can use to promote a President’s agenda and please parochial interests in Congress.”

That last part is where much of the challenge lies when it comes to reform, not only in the DOE, but in so many other programs and legislation where members vote according to their own interests, not the general welfare.

Whatever good the DOE might do can be rolled into other government agencies and the building leased to private companies which will help reduce the national debt.

I was not an “A” student in my public schools, but the quality of education I received prompted me later in life to pursue knowledge in history and other subjects.

When he was running for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told a PBS interview the federal government had “usurped” education “and has proven incapable of operating (it).”

No one could have said it better.

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Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I've Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America" (HumanixBooks).

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