Addition By Subtraction in Education – Top 3 Takeaways – September 12th, 2023
- Getting rid of the Department of Education is a great idea. On occasion over the years, I’ve shared the brief advice I was given early in my career by a top radio executive. When asking him what I could do to improve, his response to me was to “stop doing the bad stuff”. It’s a short, simple and brilliant truism which can be applied to just about anything. The best and most efficient way to improve in any aspect of life is to identify “the bad stuff” and to stop doing it. Getting rid of the bad instantly makes whatever you’re working on better! With only a quarter of Americans currently holding the view that the country is headed in the right direction, something most Americans can agree on is that there’s no shortage of “bad stuff” that comes out of Washington D.C. (and at our literal expense). But in the grand scheme of bad stuff that metastasizes in our nation's capital, arguably nothing’s worse than the U.S. Department of Education. Whoever thought that getting considerably worse results for considerably more money was ever a good idea? Unless you are supportive of that concept you too should want to “stop doing the bad stuff” when it comes to education in this country which would start with eliminating The U.S. Department of Education. In my extensive coverage of education and mental health issues over the past two and a half decades I’ve laid out the case. Entering 1980, the first full year of operations for The Department of Education, the average education outcome for Americans was 2nd in the world (with only Australians ahead of us). Religious holidays, references and prayers were acceptable. Over the next twenty years, entering the 2000’s, we experienced a 300% increase in diagnosed depression. At the same time the United States slid to 17 from 2nd in grade school education outcomes (over the next twenty years we’ve fallen to 27th). It directly coincided with the creation of the US Department of Education and the implementation of its various agendas. According to the Pew Research Center only 6% of Americans didn’t identify with any religion or faith in 1980. More recently that figure has nearly tripled. But even a three-fold increase in atheism doesn’t tell the whole story. Over 26% of those under the age of 35 don’t believe in God. The proliferation of faithlessness connects directly to the rise in mental health issues in society which connects directly to the timetable of the onset school shootings – starting with Columbine in 1999. That was the first generation raised in the current, faithless public-school system under The Department of Education. Much worse education results. A proliferation of mental health issues and subsequently more violence.
- It’s a damning record for the US Department of Education as students have become far less globally competitive and have experienced a rapid rise in mental health issues manifesting in worse outcomes including schools that aren’t as safe. Other than that, the US Department of Ed has been great. And bonus, as taxpayers we pay $80 billion annually to fund that kind of failure. Now the reason I’m bringing this conversation to the forefront once again is because of what Vivek Ramaswamy is set to do tomorrow in Washington, D.C. and what Mark Cuban has said in response that’s gained some attention. Over the weekend Ramaswamy announced... My speech next Wednesday in D.C. will directly address this: exactly *how* we will shut down the U.S. Department of Education based on *existing* legal authority. And Cuban’s response was this: So you want us to be a deadbeat country that doesn't pay it's bills or fulfill it's contractual obligations committed to by the 3 letter agencies you would close and instead spend that money on hiring ten thousand+ lawyers to handle the thousands of lawsuits that will end with billions in settlements ? (Maybe start a Dept of Lawyers?) As opposed to putting together a results driven plan that defines where efficiencies and improvements can be implemented that result in our country being better educated and more energy efficient at a lower cost to taxpayers? Ramaswamy’s response to Cuban... I won’t hold it against you for not knowing the first thing about the U.S. Dept of Education. Here’s how it’ll work: I’ll take the $80BN spent by a useless & toxic agency & put that $$ in the pockets of parents to send their kids to better schools. It’s quite sensible, actually. Now, here’s the thing. I don’t have any data on this but I’m pretty sure that Mark Cuban is generally more popular than Vivek Ramaswamy who’s only polling at 7% in the Republican primary for president. In part for that reason, in part due to Vivek’s penchant for snarkiness when dealing with others he disagrees with, which isn’t doing him any favors, and in large part because the education establishment and its allies on the left politically are fiercely protective of the education bureaucracy they’ve created for the purpose of indoctrinating, ahem educating our children, Ramaswamy is being given little more than the “look at the crazy right wing zealot” treatment in news reporting for his proposal. Especially when contrasted with a somewhat reasoned response from Cuban extolling the virtues of coming up with a substantive plan to improve education. But the reality on the ground is that Cuban & Co. are missing the more basic and effective point. We don’t need some theoretically brilliant multi-hundred-page missive on educational improvement.
- We just need to stop doing the bad stuff to get better. It’s not complicated. The US was a world leader in education before the creation of the US Department of Education in 1980. We’ve gone nowhere but backwards since. So cut it out and stop doing “the bad stuff”. And from a point of practicality, not only could taxpayers save $80 billion per year while getting a better educational result in return, but the influence of the teacher’s unions and other political organizations that infest all D.C. bureaucracies and that taint educational agendas and curriculum in the classrooms would go away as well. There wasn’t a need for a US Department of Education for the first 204 years of our country’s history. There isn‘t one now either. Every state has its own Department of Education, and every state is comprised of local school districts. Letting them do their jobs free from Washington politics and interference is a “results driven plan”. The way Ramaswamy continues to come off is continuing to rub a lot of people the wrong way. But his ideas have merit. Especially this one. There are few things we could do to improve this country more than to eliminate the Department of Education which has ailed it over the past 43 years.