What if there was no department of education

There would have been due process, the presumption of innocence, the right for the defense to confront the accuser, the right to an unbiased judge, the right for the defendant to hire a lawyer, and other such hoary traditions of justice.

The underlying principle, then, was that it was better that 10 criminals go unpunished, than one innocent person be found guilty. It swept away virtually all of those ancient protections for the accused. Here, the even-handed procedures of the courts were deemed too favorable to accused rapists and harassers at universities. This is more than curious; in the past, left-liberals had insisted upon the right of legal aid for the poor. Evidently, that does not apply to the accused on campus.

Are there no poor male students? Those of us who believe that justice is justice is justice, whether on the mean streets or the campus quad, certainly welcome this alteration. Yet, that positive change is not enough to save the Department from abolition.

The Department of Education should disappear, simply, because each university, each business, each person ought to be able to impose whatever rules of justice they wish on all people and institutions they deal with voluntarily.

Suppose I set up a grocery store and announce that if there is any altercation between me and a shopper, the matter will be settled with the flip of a coin, or dice, or chicken entrails, or tea leaves, or based on my own subjective interpretation. If you wanted to get the resources from No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top, then you had to implement what the Secretary directed.

Instead of promoting individualized educational systems that could benefit students, the Department of Education was blackmailing state governments into using its system. Abolishing this department would eliminate this practice at least in the short term. The cost of the Department of Education is phenomenal. This funding, which primarily comes from taxpayer dollars, has had zero impact on test scores.

It has come to the point in the United States where teachers must teach to the test in their classrooms to ensure that they can keep their job and their kids can go to a school that is close to their home.

Over the past 40 years, results have stayed flat or declined in most categories, which shows just how wasteful this system happens to be. All the country does is spend more without seeing a return on that investment, which is why there are growing calls to get rid of it.

Student loans could be privatized to make them more efficient. Pell grants would likely transition over to Health and Human Services or the Interior if the Department of Education were to be abolished. That would keep those funds locked in from the government to help with the cost of tuition. The government-backed student loans would then go into the private sector where the free market, not Congress, would get to dictate what the interest rates are for future revisions.

Although such a move would have an adverse impact on those who are in default or on a repayment schedule for eventual forgiveness. Those programs could be brought along as part of the mandate. People would receive better services with less run-around using this option. It would eliminate all centralization from the U. Community-based education tends to be more effective than centralized systems that attempt to use a one-size-fits-all approach. The idea of not letting any children get left behind is noble, but the U.

NCLB created high-stakes testing elements that punish schools who under-perform even though they have little say about who attends. That never happened. By abolishing the Department of Education, the U. Although there would still be some centralization at the state level, it would be nowhere near the issues seen at the national level. It eliminates the bureaucracy that creeps into the educational system. There is nothing wrong with the presence of standards, but they are usually insufficient in their determination of what the actual educational experience is in the United States.

Even with clearer and more rigorous requirements in place because of Common Core, there are still states that meet or exceed them right now. Some schools would be able to get more money. Once the abolition of the Department of Education started, there would be a transition period where any remaining funding in the budget would receive distribution based on the current rules of the system. When it is gone, then there would no longer be money tied to grants, specific behaviors, or curriculum enhancements.

That means each state could increase or decreases taxes independently to manage their finances better at the local level. That means states could manage their levies through property taxes, sales tax, lottery sales, or whatever combination of funding tools they wanted to use as long as they were compliant with local, state, and national laws. The increased focus on education began when Congress passed laws providing aid to schools in communities most affected by World War II and the GI Bill encouraged Americans to seek a postsecondary education.

The Cold War emphasized the importance of innovation, which facilitated laws such as the National Defense Education Act to support loans to college students. We would have inconsistent education data, as the quality of data would vary among the states. If the department shut down, we might also lose a treasure trove of data gathered from across the country on educational outcomes and the demographics of student and teacher populations. Under Title IX, no one can be excluded, or denied benefits from a federally funded education program on the basis of sex.

The federal code also allowed the department to open investigations into colleges for their mishandling of sexual assault cases. Federal Student Aid Information Center - information about federal student aid programs - help with completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid - general information about your current federal student loans.

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