The Department of Education

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Protein Wisdom linked to Doug Ross's post on five sound reasons for abolishing the Department of Education. I think my favorite is number 2:

Because it's been an abysmal failure that we can't afford: the Department of Education’s 2011 budget is nearly six times its original budget. It has increased from $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) in 1980 to $77.8 billion in 2011. And, by every measure, it's been a horrific waste of money, which the United States simply can't tolerate in its current fiscal situation.

Jay Howard at Protein Wisdom adds another:

And of course, #6: In too many places it dispenses a steady and growing stream of progressively-tinged dogma quite willfully isolated from objectivism.
Which as far as Jane Robbins has found (August 31st of this year), is the tip of the progressive iceburg.  Read. The. Whole. Thing. Emphasis mine.

…President Obama seems to reject America’s founding principles and embraces instead the belief that people must be managed, for the good of the country, by elites in government and other institutions. This was the philosophy of the early-20^th-century progressives, and it is pervasive in the Obama administration. A prime example is the complete transformation of the American health-care system in a manner that has proven to be ill-founded everywhere it has been tried.The progressive view of health care—that the system should be managed by “experts” for the good of the economy and society in general—is identical to the progressive view of education: the education of children is simply too important to be left, as the Founders intended, to parents, localities, and the states. This view is far more entrenched than most people realize. The progressive agenda threatens our constitutional system and parents’ right to transmit their values to their children through education. It is an ongoing effort that predates the Obama administration and has been infiltrating American culture for decades. With a renewed effort in the current administration, it is no exaggeration to say that we are now at a critical point in the battle for the soul of America.
Progressive educators have long advocated sweeping national control of education. One prominent progressive reformist, Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), fleshed out this view in a now-famous letter he wrote to Hillary Clinton (then a member of NCEE’s Board of Trustees) shortly after the 1992 election. Tucker laid out his vision, which, to conservatives, describes a dystopia of authoritarian control: “remold the entire American system for human resources development . . .  [a] seamless system of unending skill development that begins in the home with the very young and continues through school, postsecondary education and the workplace.” Beginning with the creation of national standards of curricula and assessment, and then solidifying control of education from preschool through the workforce, this vision is being implemented by the Obama Department of Education (DOE).

There is so much more linked at both the above posts.  You really should read all of it, carefully, thoughtfully, check the links, bookmark it, come back and read some more in a day or two- and think about what's being said.

What's the usual objection to getting rid of the Department of Education?  It's for the children.  Nobody explains how spending billions of dollars (dollars which these children will have to pay when they grow up) for decreasing results is somehow of benefit for these children.
What if we are asking too much here, more than can be delivered? Isn't that an important question to ask ourselves?   If the Education Department isn't even doing what we want it to do (and do we know what it's supposed to be achieving?  Is there even agreement about what our tax dollars are supposed to be doing?), then, shouldn't we be trying something else?