US DOE should be eliminated?

[Ken]

Here is a question for those who think the US is falling behind in education, or that the public schools are doing a poor job of educating. How do you think the US measures up to the rest of the world? We hear about how great education is in other countries like Finland or Singapore. But is that really true?

The OECD actually does measure educational performance on a world-wide basis using something called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA test) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme ... Assessment which they have been conducting since the year 2000.

How does the US rate? In the most recent assessment, the US ranked 18th which puts it in the bottom half of the top tier, below Denmark but ahead of Sweden. And well behind Canada which ranks 8th (ahead of every European country but Estonia).

[Ken]

But wait.

Those are the aggregate figures for the entire US. And the US is the most diverse society by far of all the top OECD countries. And it also has the most income inequality and regional disparities.

What happens when we parse the numbers and look at the US by race and ethnicity? It turns out that what we REALLY have in the US is a problem educating Black and Hispanic children. This is extremely well known and a problem that has been looked at inside and out and forwards and backwards for decades. You can find racist explanations for this phenomenon, you can find racism-based explanations for this phenomenon, and you can find class and geographic based explanations for this phenomenon. It is way too big of a subject to address here in this post.

But if you separate out performance by race and ethnicity we find that White and Asian-American children rank up with the very highest in the world. Among countries of 10 million or more, the US scores for white and Asian kids are the highest in the world in reading and fourth highest in math (behind Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea). Whereas Black and Hispanic students in the US are more or less in the middle of the pack

Elite Asian families know what they are doing when they send their kids to the US to be educated in American public schools instead of back home in Korea, India, or China. Which is something you see happening in upscale top rated districts around the country. Back in Texas we had a wealthy Korean family living down the street who moved there specifically to put their children in US schools. And here in Washington we have wealthy neighbors from India who are doing the same exact thing.



and

[Ken]

But the DOE isn't just about K12 education. They actually spend the lions share of their budget in higher education. And how is the US doing compared to the rest of the world in higher education? Here are the rankings of the world's top universities.

There are three reputable international rankings of world universities.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities produced buy Shanghai's Jiao Tong University: https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2023

The World University Ranking by the Times of London: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/wo ... ld-ranking

And the QS World University Rankings produced by the British Analytics firm Quacquarelli Symonds: https://www.topuniversities.com/world-u ... y-rankings

How many on the any of these top 100 lists are American?

[temporal1]

o.look. another interesting topic.

Here is a question for those who think the US is falling behind in education, or that the public schools are doing a poor job of educating. How do you think the US measures up to the rest of the world? We hear about how great education is in other countries like Finland or Singapore. But is that really true?

“US DOE should be eliminated?”

Sure. I have no idea what they contribute to the well being of society. Do states not have this department?

P.1: [/quote]
History / An Overview of the U.S. Department of Education
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/what.html

.. The Department's History
Although the Department is a relative newcomer among Cabinet-level agencies, its origins goes back to 1867, when President Andrew Johnson signed legislation creating the first Department of Education. Its main purpose was to collect information and statistics about the nation's schools. However, due to concern that the Department would exercise too much control over local schools, the new Department was demoted to an Office of Education in 1868.

Over the years, the office remained relatively small, operating under different titles and housed in various agencies, including the U.S. Department of the Interior and the former U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services).

Beginning in the 1950s, political and social changes resulted in expanded federal funding for education.
The successful launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik in 1957 spurred nationwide concern that led to increased aid for science education programs. The 1960s saw even more expansion of federal education funding: President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" called for the creation of many programs to improve education for poor students at all levels—early childhood through postsecondary. This expansion continued in the 1970s with national efforts to help racial minorities, women, people with disabilities and non-English speaking students gain equal access to education. In October 1979, Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88). Created by combining offices from several federal agencies, the Department began operations in May 1980.

In the 1860s, a budget of $15,000 and four employees handled education fact-finding.
By 1965, the Office of Education had more than 2,100 employees and a budget of $1.5 billion.
As of mid-2010, the Department has nearly 4,300 employees and a budget of about $60 billion.

[temporal1]

Out takes from longer interviews:
Is it possible to imagine these voices not represented IN BALANCE with the bulk of “education?”

4 yrs ago / THOMAS SOWELL / Thomas Sowell on Academia Echo Chambers // Economic Facts & Fallacies / 3min

Description:
Thomas Sowell discusses Academia with Peter Robinson.

Book: “Economic Facts and Fallacies”

2015 / WALTER WILLIAMS / Walter Williams on the Educational System // CSPAN Interview (2015) / 12min

Description:
Walter Williams discusses the American educational system from his personal experience and professional research.

Book: “American Contempt for Liberty”

[Josh]

Local communities, parents, businessmen, church leaders, neighbours should be the ones running schools. They should be the ones teaching. The federal government doesn’t actually teach children.

[Ken]

Local communities, parents, businessmen, church leaders, neighbours should be the ones running schools. They should be the ones teaching. The federal government doesn’t actually teach children.

Local communities ARE the ones running schools and doing the teaching. At least traditional public schools. Charter schools are a different story. They are deliberately designed to be unaccountable to local communities and usually are only accountable to their private shareholders.

The Federal government is mostly just involved in passing Federal funds down to states and localities to support public education. And secondarily involved in making sure Federal laws governing education (special education, civil rights, disability act) are enforced. In over 15 years of teaching I have never once seen or met or even heard of a DOE employee visiting any school or school district where I worked. To the extent that school districts have any contact with the DOE it is mostly people in district finance departments dealing with grants and that sort of thing.

The Federal government provides about 10.5% of all funding for K-12 education. But it goes more heavily to poorer districts which are concentrated in both rural and big inner-city areas and less so in suburban and medium size cities. If you cut off Federal funding for education by eliminating the DOE the axe will fall most heavily on those rural and inner city districts and it would frankly be another big nail in the coffin for rural America.

[JimFoxvog]

Local communities, parents, businessmen, church leaders, neighbours should be the ones running schools. They should be the ones teaching. The federal government doesn’t actually teach children.

I understand some areas may discriminate against some groups. Here, it makes sense to me, that the Federal government can work to make things fairer for the disadvantaged populations.

Yes, the federal government doesn't teach; it just makes it possible to do a better and fairer job.

[barnhart]

I'm not convinced American education is as bad as the some people seem to think. Some of the countries that score higher have factors in their favor not found here. For example Germany has a two tier system that channels students who don't excel academically into a tech school, vocational type education. The US would rank better if the bottom third were not included in the averages.

[Ken]

Local communities, parents, businessmen, church leaders, neighbours should be the ones running schools. They should be the ones teaching. The federal government doesn’t actually teach children.

I understand some areas may discriminate against some groups. Here, it makes sense to me, that the Federal government can work to make things fairer for the disadvantaged populations.

Yes, the federal government doesn't teach; it just makes it possible to do a better and fairer job.

What you are talking about are laws passed by CONGRESS. Such as:

Civil Rights Act
Individuals with Disabilities Act
McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act

Eliminating the DOE wouldn't make any of those laws go away. It would just mean that implementation and enforcement of those laws would get transferred to some other larger agency such as Health and Human Services which is already about 20-times LARGER than the DOE. The result of such consolidation would almost certainly be more bureaucratic and less accountable since the Secretary of HHS would have so many other objectives and priorities competing for his/her time. Whereas the Secretary of Education has only education on his/her plate.

Eliminating the DOE would also mean that there would be no one advocating for or speaking about education at the Cabinet level in the White House.