AMERIKUN EDJUCASHION

We need the Department of Education, right?


Where would our children be without them?

Well, the truth is, the Department of Education didn’t even exist until Jimmy Carter created it for the National Education Association in return for its political support.

The taxpayers in this country have spent, since 1965, an estimated $3 trillion on public education.

Think your tax dollars for education are well-spent? Consider the following statement by former Yale president Benno Schmidt:

"We have roughly doubled per-pupil spending (after inflation) in public schools since 1965… Yet high school students today are posting lower SAT scores than a generation ago. The nation's investment in educational improvement has produced very little return."

The numbers support this assertion. Between 1972 and 1992, the combined math and verbal scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) fell from an average of 937 to 899. This drop occurred despite the fact that the U.S. doubled its per-pupil spending, from $2,611 to $5,521 (in 1990 dollars) between 1965 and 1990.

Meanwhile, home schoolers that liberals like to write off as nut cases (ever listen to Bill Maher talk about them?) continue to outperform their “No Child Left Behind” counterparts. A Washington Times article from 2009 cites a study that indicates that the average home-school test results continue to be 30-plus percentile points higher than their public school counterparts.

Do you still think that giving the government more of your tax dollars will help education?

Whether the money does the job really doesn’t matter to Uncle Obama. In many cases, the worse the job, and the poorer the performance, the more money is likely to be thrown at a program.

Consider the results of a study released at the beginning of the year about Head Start, which in theory is supposed to narrow the performance gap between low-income children, ages three and four, and those whose parents have more money. Per their web site:

Head Start is a national program that promotes school readiness by enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services to enrolled children and families.

In the words of the Department of Health and Human Services, while enrolled in Head Start, students show improvement on measures of academic and social achievement. But all gains diminish and then disappear entirely within a few years of exiting the program.

HHS summarized Head Start's short-lived impact this way: "In the long run, cognitive and socioemotional test scores of former Head Start students do not remain superior to those of disadvantaged children who did not attend Head Start."

More recently, the General Accounting Office reported that there is simply no evidence that Head Start provides lasting benefits. Essentially, children end up back where they started. Those findings are consistent with 40 years of research on early intervention that shows that short-term benefits are possible but lasting gains are elusive.

Put simply: It’s a failure. Having eaten up some $166 billion over 45 years, Head Start is a bust.

The drive to nationalize education is based on a lie.The idea that imposing national standards from Washington will make Americans more competitive is a myth.

This is not about education-Washington is all about power. The more that states and localities can be rendered dependent on federal dollars, the more power accrues to the liberal educational establishment. It makes it much easier to direct what should be taught.

Is the dumbing down of our children coincidence or conspiracy? Many would theorize this is a deliberate action aimed at furthering the Marxist goals of the government. If you look at the behavior of both parties, the Marxist agenda is hard to debunk.

Just because conspiracy theorists are paranoid doesn’t mean there’s no conspiracy. Look at some of the changes in schools over the last thirty years.

• Remove references to Christianity (“winter celebrations” instead of Christmas)
• Disallowed moments of silence for meditation or prayer

• Advocate homosexuality

• Lower test scores

• Intrusion into student’s lives outside of school (see my next post)

Is this a conspiracy? At a minimum, it is another example of our government’s vast incompetence and our inability to make them accountable.

I don’t have children. If I did, I’d be pretty pissed off at the school systems. I do not understand why parents are not.