If We Can't Eliminate The Education Department, At Least Broom Out Its Office For Civil Rights

Forbes ^ | March 5, 2017 | George Leef

[reaganaut1]

Among the great blunders of Jimmy Carter’s presidency was creating a U.S. Department of Education. The federal government has no constitutional role in education and this sprawling bureaucracy has chiefly enabled legions of bureaucrats to impose their misbegotten ideas on how schools and colleges should operate from their perches in Washington, D.C.

In recent years, the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has been the spearhead for “progressive” change. With nothing more than some “Dear Colleague” letters supposedly meant to provide “guidance” to colleges and universities, OCR officials made dramatic changes in the law during the Obama administration.

The next head of the OCR should be someone who understands that those changes were both ill-advised and illegal, and work to eliminate them. A number of Americans (this writer included) have advocated that the job be offered to Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego.

Whether Professor Heriot or someone else is nominated, the foremost task for the next OCR head to do is to reverse its intrusion into discipline procedures for students accused of sexual assault. The toxic effects of that intrusion are the subject of a recent book by Brooklyn College history professor K.C. Johnson and journalist Stuart Taylor, Jr.

In The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at American’s Universities, the authors give a detailed account of the damage wrought by the OCR’s “guidance” to colleges. They also demolish the idea that campuses are in the grip of a “rape culture” and show that sexual assault cases are better left to the police rather than school administrators.

[eyeamok]

I think we desperately need the Education Department. We just need to redefine it’s Core Mission.

The Department of Education SHALL have only 3 Responsibilities .

1. Guarantee that EVERY SCHOOL IN AMERICA Teaches US HISTORY.

2. Guarantee that EVERY SCHOOL IN AMERICA Teach The US COnstitution,Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, ALL HISTORIC DOCUMENTS

3 Require ALL Students to demonstrate Proficiency in EVERY ASPECT of the US Constitution, including All Arguments for said Article or Amendment that brought it into existence, Before receiving a DIPLOMA!

[Pollster1]

If we think we can’t eliminate the education department, perhaps we’re just not trying hard enough.

Step 1: Permanent hiring/promotion freeze for the Department of Education.
Step 2: Eliminate all frivolous expenditures for the Department of Education (travel, morale, etc.).
Step 3. Eliminate useless Department of Education jobs individually if they contribute insufficient value to justify their cost.
Step 4: Relocate the entire remaining department to northern Alaska (a beautiful state, but anathema to delicate leftists).

[DannyTN]

We could redirect it into educating our existing citizenry on the constitution. It’s not just current high schoolers who need to learn this.

I think we should provide a tax credit for taking courses on the constitution. Provide them over the internet and provide them in class room settings locally for those that don’t have internet.

[i_robot73]

Nothing reduced in govt has ever STAYED that way. Hell, Zero did it to welfare w/ a pen/phone...not a ONE in D.C. said a word in protest (except to use it in their political ads).

The *ONLY* way is to eradicate the whole stinking, illegal lot. Tear it out by the roots, burn the field, salt the Earth and Fukushima the site.