The Regular Guy Believes... Cutting Federal Government Spending is Child's Play III

I've got ten minutes to kill, so I thought I'd see what I could cut from the first page of the Department of Education's budget:

The Budget supports the Administration’s new vision for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The reauthorized law would encourage States to adopt higher, clearer standards that set the expectation that every student will graduate from high school ready for college and a career. The new law would support dramatic improvements in the quality of assessments to measure complex skills and help teachers identify and respond to students’ strengths and needs. The reauthorization would also recognize and reward schools for helping students make important gains, even if they are not yet at grade-level, and offer new flexibility for successful States and districts to pursue new solutions to help all students meet high standards. At the same time, the law would require vigorous efforts to turn around persistently low-performing schools, applying comprehensive strategies that put children first. In support of these efforts, the Budget provides a $3 billion increase in funding for K-12 education programs authorized in the ESEA, including $900 million for School Turnaround Grants, and the Administration will request up to $1 billion in additional funding if Congress successfully completes a fundamental overhaul of the law. Together, these measures would represent the largest funding increase for ESEA programs ever requested. 

Oh, dear.   $3 billion of my money and I have no idea what this horseshit means.  And I'm a pretty smart feller.  The reauthorized law would encourage States to adopt higher, clearer standards that set the expectation that every student will graduate from high school ready for college and a career.   Really?   Every student?   Ready for college?   Hmmmm... not from the high school I attended; a lot of those guys couldn't have gotten to college with a map.   And then:  The reauthorization would also recognize and reward schools for helping students make important gains, even if they are not yet at grade-level.   Wait a minute.  The school gets rewarded for helping students get up to the point where they are still below grade-level?  Sounds like the "soft bigotry of low expectations" to me.     

But maybe I should just keep reading and things will become clearer:

The $4 billion Race to the Top, created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act), began a competition among States to spur systemic and innovative reform across four areas: supporting high academic standards; improving teacher effectiveness and distributing effective teachers more equitably; using data to improve achievement; and turning around low-performing schools. Not all States will receive Race to the Top grants, but the competition itself has galvanized key stakeholders across the Nation to reform State laws and to develop new plans for lifting student achievement. The Budget provides $1.35 billion to continue the President’s Race to the Top challenge and to expand the competition from States to school districts that are ready for comprehensive reform.

Oh, crap.   Worse and worse.   $4 billion for the Race to the Top program?   To "galvanize[] key stakeholders across the Nation to reform State laws and to develop new plans for lifting student achievement."   Sounds like the Race to the Trough - Full Employment for Otherwise Unemployable Education Consultants Program.   Hey, I've got a new plan for lifting student achievement... turn off the TV!  Where's my money, Uncle Sam?

Hell, cut it all.  We don't need a Department of Education.  If the description of the programs sound like horseshit, there's a fairly good chance that they are horseshit.   That's a cool $50 billion.  

Here's how I know this can be done.   The Department of Education didn't even exist until 1980, when it was created by the certified genius Jimmy Carter.   Ask yourself:  were American children smarter before the Department of Education or are they smarter after?   When they recentered the SAT in 1995, they didn't do it because scores were getting too high, did they?  

Wonder what your Congressman did during that ten minutes?  Probably too busy robo-calling for GOTV to do his job.

Here is the future of education.  It's called the Kahn Academy, it's on YouTube, it's better than your kid's algebra teacher, and it's free.   That's right, not $50 billion... F-R-E-E.   



UPDATE:

And while I am on the topic of education, buy this book by Charles Murray.