Few federal agencies warrant dissolution as much as the Department of Education. A bill in Congress to achieve just that has been introduced, the “States’ Education Reclamation Act.”

Jeffrey A. Tucker explains that the Act won’t just save taxpayers $70 billion.

More importantly, it will return education to the states completely, which is an essential first step to fixing the whole system. The target is to return education to families and communities in both financing and control. That is the American system. Nothing else will substitute.

However, returning education to the states is not the same thing as returning it to families and communities. Dissolving the DOE does, indeed, seem to be in the cards, yet euphoria at the prospect may be exaggerated due to some wholly understandable confusion on the topic.

The central source of this confusion lies in the fact that there is no such thing as “the” Department of Education. There are 51 departments of education. Dissolving one of them leaves 50 standing.

It’s actually worse than that because there aren’t just 50 other Departments of Education. The American education system is indeed a nationwide system. The system consists of teachers, administrators, principals, superintendents, school boards, and university education departments, along with both the state and federal DOEs. That’s eight constituents. Eliminating one leaves seven standing, multiplied across 50 states.

A surprise awaits people celebrating the federal DOE’s imminent demise. The state DOEs are baby sisters of the federal DOE, with the same views and policies on education.

It is well known that “people are policy.” These eight constituents of the system are made up of people who are as alike as peas in a pod. They are all the same people supporting the same extreme leftist rainbow agenda.

Local school boards do not control local education. State statutes and state education department policies do. The role of the school board is to implement state policy and levy taxes on the local citizens.

Take a peek at your latest tax bill. You’ll note that the largest tax liability is to your local school district.

Why is this? In part, it’s because the education establishment is enraptured with “technology,” which is ultimately a costly and failing strategy:

Parents decried the alienating reality of online education and complained about the hassles of balky school websites and software. As for teachers? Sixty percent told Education Week that the biggest problem with technology was distracted students, and 80 percent said that more screen time led to worse student behavior. What’s more, the existing research makes clear that it’s hard to draw any clear relationship between technology and improved learning outcomes.

[snip]

Education requires concentration. Whether we’re talking about basketball, algebra, or the flute, learning calls for focus, engagement, and practice. That’s how students gain knowledge and master skills. Today’s digital devices and social-media algorithms, however, are increasingly optimized to be engines of distraction — to break up that kind of sustained attention.

We really need to ask: What is our goal with education? What are we trying to achieve? Is there any place in education for the computer or cell phone? For example, it is well-known that reading is the foundation of all educational success, and it is now known that paper is better than a computer screen.

Thankfully, the word about our education systems’ failures is getting out, and homeschooling is on the rise.

As for those eight constituent parts spread across 50 states, the whole system has an Achilles’ heel. The one identifiable legal nut that holds this vast system together is the statutory requirement that teachers must be state-certified. Unscrewing that nut would allow school boards to hire whomever they please and choose the qualified over the certified.

Image by Pixlr AI.