[Syncopated]

You want a robust education system, with base minimum standards for mathematics, composition, and creativity development. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water just because the current system is terrible -- we can reduce the budget while reducing the mission to the very core that made the DoE a desirable thing to institute in the first place. The DoE was founded because there was a need for it at the time. We had so many damned agencies involved at the federal level with education that we streamlined it in the late 70s with one cabinet-level post. The constitutionality of that notwithstanding (That wily commerce clause just lets us to anything! apparently), we even expanded it under Bush II. If you were to kill the DoE, as Reagan wanted, you will have to face off in the courts against lawsuits claiming persons with disabilities will be impacted, people of color, and endless lawsuits that will just wrack havoc on the unity of this country. What we need is to defund and reduce the mission of the DoE until it is palpable for the public at large to accept its abolishment. When you think politics, think in decades.

[Ohioan]

You highlight a number of constitutionally unauthorized Federal programs. Education is inherently local, as I pointed out. Layering bureaucracy above local education is counter-productive. The Federal Government has important, clearly defined functions. Imposing duties on local school systems is not among those functions.

Reagan was frustrated by having to work with Democrats in Congress, so he never got rid of the Department. That does not make it a legitimate Federal enterprise. As for Bush II, and his embrace of the idiotic "No child left behind," silliness--silliness because no two children have the same aptitudes, unless they are identical twins;--that is pure demagoguery, providing parents of slow learners with false hopes. Far better to let local schools take their own initiatives, in the local classroom, to help problems students find what they can do best, without pretending that everyone is potentially the same. And certainly not stultifying their ability to deal with problems by imposing Federal check lists of how to proceed in managing their own affairs.

The whole notion of a Federal role in local civilian education is totally antagonistic to the nature of American Federalism--and arrogant in the extreme.