The cutting of education funds

From the Gene Simmons section:

dblboggie wrote: The Tea Party and Herman Cain do NOT want to cut funding for education. They want to do away with the FEDERAL Dept of Education.

That seems like the same thing to me.
In fact the Tea Party idea is worse than cutting funding because they want to eliminate the whole thing.
Cutting funds isn't good but if you take away the department then there's no place for the funds to go at all--and that's worse

That's like saying you want to knock down your whole house just because you screwed up a paint job on a wall. And in this educational/Tea Party scenario, I'm not even sure if they wanna rebuild the house or not.

TheNextPrez2012 wrote:That seems like the same thing to me.
In fact the Tea Party idea is worse than cutting funding because they want to eliminate the whole thing.
Cutting funds isn't good but if you take away the department then there's no place for the funds to go at all--and that's worse

That's like saying you want to knock down your whole house just because you screwed up a paint job on a wall. And in this educational/Tea Party scenario, I'm not even sure if they wanna rebuild the house or not.

Why do you want the feds running education when the states can do it better?

TheNextPrez2012 wrote:From the Gene Simmons section:

dblboggie wrote: The Tea Party and Herman Cain do NOT want to cut funding for education. They want to do away with the FEDERAL Dept of Education.

That seems like the same thing to me.
In fact the Tea Party idea is worse than cutting funding because they want to eliminate the whole thing.
Cutting funds isn't good but if you take away the department then there's no place for the funds to go at all--and that's worse

That's like saying you want to knock down your whole house just because you screwed up a paint job on a wall. And in this educational/Tea Party scenario, I'm not even sure if they wanna rebuild the house or not.

I don't think you understand the situation here. First, the Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in education, it is NOT one of their enumerated powers. Second, Federal government spending has had ZERO effect on improving test scores or the graduation rates of students nationwide. Third, we have seen a MASSIVE increase in Federal spending on "education" over the years with an inverse result - scores falling and lower percentages of kids graduating!

So please, tell me, how does keeping such a complete failure as the Dept of Education make any sense at all??? Would you continue to pour ever increasing amounts of your own money into say, a private tutor for your own kid, if that tutor was only making your kid stupider? I sincerely hope you say no.

Well, that's what the Tea Party and Herman Cain are talking about. Why on earth would we continue to flush good dollars after bad on the Dept of Education??? Why not divert that money to the states and local municipalities who are the constitutionally proper entities to be handling education?

The federal government has been muscling in on control of education and curriculum's for decades - and all we have to show for it is ever more dismal results!

It is far past time to get the federal government out of the education business!

the job of the Department of Education is..."The primary functions of the Department of Education are to "establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools"

This tells me that they are not meant to teach but to give assistance and provide the tools for the schools.
If they don't handle their funds properly that's no reason to disband the agency. we need to make sure their funds are handled properly
Also--and this is the big banana--the kids are the final barometer for the system and not the department. It doesn't matter how much we provide the schools...if the kids don't want to learn they won't learn

TheNextPrez2012 wrote:the job of the Department of Education is..."The primary functions of the Department of Education are to "establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools"

This tells me that they are not meant to teach but to give assistance and provide the tools for the schools.
If they don't handle their funds properly that's no reason to disband the agency. we need to make sure their funds are handled properly
Also--and this is the big banana--the kids are the final barometer for the system and not the department. It doesn't matter how much we provide the schools...if the kids don't want to learn they won't learn

I know what the Wiki says about the Dept, but what it doesn't make clear is the utter waste of money that the Dept has proven to be. Our nation's students have only gotten more and more ignorant since the Dept's inception, while the money going to the Dept has skyrocketed over the years. There is nothing the Dept is doing that could not be done more efficiently and for less money by the states and local municipalities. And clearly the so-called "assistance" and "tools" the Dept offers have had ZERO effect on improving educational outcomes; it has had decades to come up with workable "tools" and "assistance" and it has failed to do so after all of that time.

Sorry buddy, but the Dept of Education cannot be salvaged; but more to the point, there is no constitutionally mandated role for the federal government in education. Between that and the utter failure and waste of money that the Dept has been I cannot see how anyone could defend continuing its existence.