Department of Education Earns Failing Grade

Of all the cabinet-level agencies sponging off American taxpayers, none are as lumbering, bureaucratic or as redundant as the Department of Education.  The department should be abolished, its 5,000 employees furloughed and its $68.1 billion budget returned to taxpayers.

With a stroke of his pen, President Jimmy Carter signed a law in 1980 creating the department. Prior to then, the agency was a part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Carter championed the idea of upgrading education to cabinet level status.

Like many of President Carter's ideas, it was poorly conceived.

States already had their own Departments of Education.  Yet Carter and Congressional Democrats insisted on another layer of government to establish policy for federal assistance to education.  Among the other duties envisioned for the agency was the collection of education data and enforcement of civil rights.

As with most Washington bureaucracies, the department strayed far afield from its mission.  Soon the department was immersed in school curriculum, standards and student achievement.   From its humble beginnings, the agency with the smallest staff of the 15 cabinet departments now has the third largest budget.

Unfettered by congressional oversight, the department continues to embellish its mission.  The agency proclaims its new role is "to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access."

If that sounds like government gibberish, that's because it is.

Student achievement falls woefully short of the government's pomposity.  Academic performance has sunk to new lows in the 98,000 public schools and the nation's young people lag far behind their global classmates.

In the most recent international testing, 15-year-olds in the U.S. ranked 25th in math among their peers from 34 countries.  The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development administered the testing and released the results in December, 2010.

U.S. teens fared only slightly better in science and reading, finishing near the middle of the pack. American students ranked 17th in science and 14th in reading.  Asian countries, including South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, were among the leaders, easily outdistancing U.S. students.

More taxpayer money won't guarantee U.S. students will catch up. 

In the last ten years, federal spending on education has nearly doubled.  Taxpayers doled out $46.2 billion to the department a decade ago.  In President Obama's recent budget, he requested $77.4 billion. All that cash trickles down to the state and local level with lots of strings attached.

The non-partisan Government Accountability Office reported that 13,400 federally funded full-time employees were needed by state education agencies just to implement Washington-mandated programs.  All those bureaucrats do not teach a single student.

In its review, the GAO found the education department precipitated 41 percent of the administration burden at the state level.  States are forced to add staff with no responsibility other than feeding the federal government's insatiable appetite for reports and data. 

The situation has worsened with the implementation of President George W. Bush's education initiative known as No Child Left Behind.  The education policy was drafted by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and passed into law in 2001.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, Bush's brainchild has boosted paperwork for state and local governments by 6,680,334 hours at an estimated annual cost of $141 million dollars.

Who picks up the tab for all those millions of dollars?  You do. 

State governments provide 46.9 percent of the money for public education.  Local school districts furnish 44 percent.  The feds kick in 9.1 percent.  Total taxpayer spending on public schools stands at an all-time high of well over $500 billion.

The Cato Institute, a Washington think-tank, reported that per pupil expenditures in constant dollars increased 25 percent from 1995 to 2005.  On average, it now costs $11,800 to educate one pupil in a public school for one year.  Even that figure is likely understated.

The institute studied major metropolitan school districts and discovered that the per pupil spending on average was 44 percent higher than local educators reported.  Slipshod record keeping, mathematical errors and lack of competent accounting staff were the main causes of the discrepancy.

If there was a direct correlation between money and student performance, Washington, D.C. public schools would be a shining example to follow.  The district spends $22,400 per pupil, nearly double the national average.  However, its achievement test scores rank the district near the bottom.

The inconvenient truth is that money alone won't improve education.

Instead of massive increases in funding, policymakers need to implement reforms designed to improve resource allocation.  Any effort should include curtailing the blizzard of red tape generated by the Department of Education and elimination of the agency's 11 regional offices and 13 field locations. 

Local school districts should decide what works best to improve education. They are directly accountable to parents and voters in the district.  No such accountability exists for the superfluous Washington elitists who oversee education. 

It's time to turn out the lights, send the bureaucrats packing and lock the doors at the Department of Education.  Taxpayers would be better off.  More importantly, students would be, too.