So, I’m having another exchange with someone of the Left, this time at Quora. My interlocutor this time is someone I’m professionally associated with who goes by the handle “Enrique Cerdo” (not his real name). In a comment thread he asked me this question:
Here’s my answer:
The DoEd was established in 1980, the year I graduated from High School (cum laude). Its mission statement is: “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”
The DoEd has spent, since 1980, over $3.8 trillion dollars in supposed pursuit of “educational excellence.” This is the result:
“According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old – about 130 million people – lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.”
Innumeracy is worse.
In 1981 the National Commission on Excellence in Education was formed to study public education in America. In 1983 it released its report, A Nation at Risk: the Imperative for Educational Reform. https://jhibel.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/2016/03/A-Nation-at-Risk-1983.pdf
From the opening of that report:
“Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur–others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.
“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
You want government waste? Here’s $3.8 trillion’s worth.
You know why those test scores have remained flat? Because the tests themselves have been continuously dumbed-down over the decades.
Dismantle with extreme prejudice. As the old joke goes, embalm, cremate and bury. Take no chances. Demolish the building and salt the ground. Oh and call in an Exorcist. Can’t be too thorough.
I like “Nuke the site from orbit,” make the glass bounce, then salt it.
You know why those test scores have remained flat? Because the tests themselves have been continuously dumbed-down over the decades.
Credit requirements for graduation have steadily been scaled back as well.
The claim is that the schools no longer have the budget for arts and music and technology, but “core” classes aren’t being cut. However, that doesn’t explain why English (a.k.a. literacy) and Math (a.k.a. numeracy) requirements are less than they used to be.
The entire “education” system and process have been dumbed down, not just the tests. “No Child Left Behind” sounds great, but really means “No Child Allowed to Fail (or Succeed)” — or among my circle of friends, “No Child Really Matters”. The way government achieves this lofty goal is not by increasing the quality of education, but by reducing standards to the lowest common denominator (a conceptual term those remedial math kids won’t understand) and giving diplomas to students who still didn’t get passing scores.
At the end of the day, the people most harmed by the dumbing-down are the kids who would be high achievers, but are no longer given — or in many cases, allowed — opportunities to achieve.
And yet, even with the reduced standards — ostensibly put in place to raise graduation rates — the literacy, numeracy, and graduation rates remained mostly steady.
People who wonder what went wrong are asking the wrong questions. Nothing went wrong. “No Child Left Behind” and “Common Core” and all the other DoE programs are doing exactly what they were designed to do: ensure equality of outcome by reducing everyone to equal mediocrity.
I teach at a STEM university and have been told that the SAT scores I got in 1968 would be 200 points higher if I were to take them now.
I see it – students have a very limited knowledge outside of their major and no interest in knowing anything but that.
They all think they are going to be game designer as make millions. It reminds me of the blacks in the cities that are all going to be stars in the NBA being paid millions.
Not going to happen in for the most part.
As an aside We home schooled and it made all the difference in the world. I have had several students who were home schooled and you can always tell those.
Why is it they alway com straight out of the gate with the fact-free name calling?
The quality of public education has been declining for a number of years and what you’re actually seeing is the result of idiot parents raising idiot children.
Yes. Since 1920 or so, about four generations run through an exponentially worsening public school system. Yuri Bezmenov explained it in the early 1980’s: https://youtube.com/shorts/vle2-O1nums?si=DTcVshmkV18ED983
The Ed Department is a waste of money but the massive expenditure increase and flat achievement is on the local school districts and state level policy. Don’t abolish the ED, use it as a hammer to fix problems.
btw the DOE is the Department of Energy.
Yup. Fixed.
WRT the DoEd, nope. Abolish it.