My opinion: democrats, and by extension unions, along with the other hangers oners, strive to achieve three parallel goals in almost everything they do. 1) increase gov’t finances via taxes, fees, creating apocalyptic hair on fire crisis’, etc., 2) decrease accountability and 3) increase power and control. It’s present not just in the DOE, but also with the use of NGOs, USAID, etc. It’s why the fraud being found is both staggering and not surprising.
Just look at the democrats reaction to the fraud being found in SNAP, Medicaid, autism treatment, homeless aid, bullet trains, USAID and so on. They don’t seem to care, yet yell and scream about Trump corruption.
The money keeps flowing out with no accountability. The democrats and their leeches feed off it yet scream racism or some other isms when challenged. And they are using immigration to get more money into the system.
One step I’d like to see taken is the same Sarbanes-Oxley standard that applies to CEOs having to sign their financial statements and being held legally responsible for its accuracy, to be applied to every NGO, 501c3, governor, mayor, city council member, union executive and bureaucrat involved down the line. Make them accountable. I guarantee at least half of the gov’t workforce would quit.
Since the beginning of the NEA, leftists have started flooding schools with political agendas such as sex education under the guise of health. This has now morphed into gender fluidity/orientation and kids questioning who and even what they are at ages when they should be learning to read. This has become more of a process of sexualization and indoctrination when a kid’s ability to reason and apply critical thinking has not developed. Like Hitler Youth, get them while they are young and loyalty to a cause is easy.
Sec of Education is systematically dismantling Dept of Education (only Congress can ‘abolish’). She’s moving all the things (food…) that eased to be under HHS OUT OF Ed and all the legal to DOJ. ( Let the Left scream.)
I agree that education should ALL be LOCAL!!! The salvation of the Republic will be - IS! - the reclaiming of TRUE education in truth to its proper role.
This aligns so closely with my priors that I thought it would be a good idea to ask Grok for its best counterarguments. The answer was, roughly: (1) Federal K-12 funding is only about 10% of total public school revenue, the rest being mostly state/local. (2) "Rigorous evidence" shows "targeted" resources can move outcomes (more on that below). (3) Racial/ethnic achievement gaps narrowed substantially through the 2010s before stalling or partially reversing, though gaps remain large. (4) Some hand-waving about uncertainty and risk from rapid reform or defunding. I asked for specific, localized examples of the argument that "well-designed, targeted resources plus structural reforms (accountability, choice, evidence-based instruction, stronger family/community conditions) have moved outcomes in rigorous studies." Examples: (1) Mississippi's inexpensive, mostly locally funded gains in readings with phonics programs. (2) Urban "no-excuses" result-driven charter schools in Boston and elsewhere, modestly funded by primarily local budgets. (3) Court-ordered redistributive local school-finance reforms, which generated at best weak evidence of student improvement combined with a focus on adult benefit capture. (4) Florida grading system reform, plus vouchers, charter expansion, public school transfers from failing schools, and reading instruction reform (phonics). In all, I'd say the rigorous counterarguments supported your thesis, while shifting the focus to reforming insane local policy rather than abolishing the federal education department.
NEA, etc. is legislated corruption same as California election fraud. It’s baked into the system and not an accident. Too many are eagerly feeding at the trough and how to undo this profiteering?
The federal Department of Education has become, in the eyes of its critics, one of the largest political experiments in modern American history. After fifty years of dramatically increased spending, academic achievement among students has remained largely stagnant, raising questions about whether the system was designed to serve children or the political interests that helped create it. Skeptics point to the origins of the department as a campaign promise exchanged for organized political support and warn that the same playbook remains alive today. As electoral coalitions become increasingly fragmented, they argue that a desperate left-leaning national candidate could eventually offer anything from open-border policies to cabinet-level positions tailored to ideological constituencies in exchange for dependable voting blocs. Ironically, critics contend, such arrangements could hardly yield results worse than the education experiment already has.
Public education is primarily a state issue. The Department of Education adds zero value to student outcomes. Here in California it has become a political indoctrination mechanism, and we all see the results in many passionate but uninformed young adults whose academic skills are substandard by global measures. The biggest losers are inner city often minority kids who do not have the flexibility or resources to compensate for tenured teachers who cannot be fired for these results. Kids are capable of so much more. It is the civil rights issue of our era. Not racism. Public K-12 education.
Excellent analysis. Those of us with operating synapses saw this boondoggle for what it is a long time ago, and these figures should be the final nails in the coffin. However, now that we know what dealing with the Deep State is like, is it wishful thinking that something can be done? Linda McMahon is doing her best, but is she shoveling against the tide? Anyway, this indictment should get better exposure than just a Substack post. I'll put a link on FB, at least.
This is the permanent political class at its purest: create a bureaucracy for an interest group, call it compassion, fund it forever, then ignore the results. Carter bought the teachers' unions. The unions cashed the check. The Department of Education became a compliance machine, not a learning machine. If spending created educated citizens, America would have the smartest children on earth. Instead, we spend like champions and perform like mediocrities. Reagan was right. Gut the department. Send power, money, standards, and accountability back to states, parents, classrooms, and children. Fifty years is enough failure.
How about, gut and get rid of state schooling altogether and let parents in common unity communities figure it out.
Given all that's happened and that we've learned this has never been more relevant:
"Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children." —Malcolm X
All one has to do is look from the outcome of any govrrnment action and the motive becomes crystal clear. In this case the out come and the motive are one in the same and you said it yourself: freeze the mind of children. Mission more than accomplished.
It's time to stop doubling down on the wicked state, and take our own fate in our hands.
My opinion: democrats, and by extension unions, along with the other hangers oners, strive to achieve three parallel goals in almost everything they do. 1) increase gov’t finances via taxes, fees, creating apocalyptic hair on fire crisis’, etc., 2) decrease accountability and 3) increase power and control. It’s present not just in the DOE, but also with the use of NGOs, USAID, etc. It’s why the fraud being found is both staggering and not surprising.
Just look at the democrats reaction to the fraud being found in SNAP, Medicaid, autism treatment, homeless aid, bullet trains, USAID and so on. They don’t seem to care, yet yell and scream about Trump corruption.
The money keeps flowing out with no accountability. The democrats and their leeches feed off it yet scream racism or some other isms when challenged. And they are using immigration to get more money into the system.
One step I’d like to see taken is the same Sarbanes-Oxley standard that applies to CEOs having to sign their financial statements and being held legally responsible for its accuracy, to be applied to every NGO, 501c3, governor, mayor, city council member, union executive and bureaucrat involved down the line. Make them accountable. I guarantee at least half of the gov’t workforce would quit.
Since the beginning of the NEA, leftists have started flooding schools with political agendas such as sex education under the guise of health. This has now morphed into gender fluidity/orientation and kids questioning who and even what they are at ages when they should be learning to read. This has become more of a process of sexualization and indoctrination when a kid’s ability to reason and apply critical thinking has not developed. Like Hitler Youth, get them while they are young and loyalty to a cause is easy.
Sec of Education is systematically dismantling Dept of Education (only Congress can ‘abolish’). She’s moving all the things (food…) that eased to be under HHS OUT OF Ed and all the legal to DOJ. ( Let the Left scream.)
I agree that education should ALL be LOCAL!!! The salvation of the Republic will be - IS! - the reclaiming of TRUE education in truth to its proper role.
This aligns so closely with my priors that I thought it would be a good idea to ask Grok for its best counterarguments. The answer was, roughly: (1) Federal K-12 funding is only about 10% of total public school revenue, the rest being mostly state/local. (2) "Rigorous evidence" shows "targeted" resources can move outcomes (more on that below). (3) Racial/ethnic achievement gaps narrowed substantially through the 2010s before stalling or partially reversing, though gaps remain large. (4) Some hand-waving about uncertainty and risk from rapid reform or defunding. I asked for specific, localized examples of the argument that "well-designed, targeted resources plus structural reforms (accountability, choice, evidence-based instruction, stronger family/community conditions) have moved outcomes in rigorous studies." Examples: (1) Mississippi's inexpensive, mostly locally funded gains in readings with phonics programs. (2) Urban "no-excuses" result-driven charter schools in Boston and elsewhere, modestly funded by primarily local budgets. (3) Court-ordered redistributive local school-finance reforms, which generated at best weak evidence of student improvement combined with a focus on adult benefit capture. (4) Florida grading system reform, plus vouchers, charter expansion, public school transfers from failing schools, and reading instruction reform (phonics). In all, I'd say the rigorous counterarguments supported your thesis, while shifting the focus to reforming insane local policy rather than abolishing the federal education department.
Isn’t this department being abolished?
NEA, etc. is legislated corruption same as California election fraud. It’s baked into the system and not an accident. Too many are eagerly feeding at the trough and how to undo this profiteering?
The federal Department of Education has become, in the eyes of its critics, one of the largest political experiments in modern American history. After fifty years of dramatically increased spending, academic achievement among students has remained largely stagnant, raising questions about whether the system was designed to serve children or the political interests that helped create it. Skeptics point to the origins of the department as a campaign promise exchanged for organized political support and warn that the same playbook remains alive today. As electoral coalitions become increasingly fragmented, they argue that a desperate left-leaning national candidate could eventually offer anything from open-border policies to cabinet-level positions tailored to ideological constituencies in exchange for dependable voting blocs. Ironically, critics contend, such arrangements could hardly yield results worse than the education experiment already has.
Public education is primarily a state issue. The Department of Education adds zero value to student outcomes. Here in California it has become a political indoctrination mechanism, and we all see the results in many passionate but uninformed young adults whose academic skills are substandard by global measures. The biggest losers are inner city often minority kids who do not have the flexibility or resources to compensate for tenured teachers who cannot be fired for these results. Kids are capable of so much more. It is the civil rights issue of our era. Not racism. Public K-12 education.
More looting of the treasury. The Founding Fathers, in their graves, are achieving immense angular velocity.
Excellent analysis. Those of us with operating synapses saw this boondoggle for what it is a long time ago, and these figures should be the final nails in the coffin. However, now that we know what dealing with the Deep State is like, is it wishful thinking that something can be done? Linda McMahon is doing her best, but is she shoveling against the tide? Anyway, this indictment should get better exposure than just a Substack post. I'll put a link on FB, at least.
Sending my sons to private school, K-12, remains the best money we ever spent.
This is the permanent political class at its purest: create a bureaucracy for an interest group, call it compassion, fund it forever, then ignore the results. Carter bought the teachers' unions. The unions cashed the check. The Department of Education became a compliance machine, not a learning machine. If spending created educated citizens, America would have the smartest children on earth. Instead, we spend like champions and perform like mediocrities. Reagan was right. Gut the department. Send power, money, standards, and accountability back to states, parents, classrooms, and children. Fifty years is enough failure.
Did no one pay attention to what Reagan said?
How about, gut and get rid of state schooling altogether and let parents in common unity communities figure it out.
Given all that's happened and that we've learned this has never been more relevant:
"Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children." —Malcolm X
All one has to do is look from the outcome of any govrrnment action and the motive becomes crystal clear. In this case the out come and the motive are one in the same and you said it yourself: freeze the mind of children. Mission more than accomplished.
It's time to stop doubling down on the wicked state, and take our own fate in our hands.