THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 173, August 4, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
TAXPAYER BILLIONS WASTED ON EDUCATION
By Alan Caruba
FULL STORY:
If there is one problem that baffles and frustrates people who write to me, it is the state of education in America today. Everybody,
whether educator or parent, knows the educational system continues to fail the millions of students who pass through the public
schools from kindergarten thrrough the twelfth grade, a system leaving too many of America's youth without the skills of literacy
and mathematics, as well as without a decent knowledge of history, civics, geography, and science.
Recently, Neal McCluskey, an education policy analyst at the Cato Institute, published an analysis, A Lesson in Waste? Where
Does All the Federal Education Money Go? It should be mandatory reading for every Senator and Representative in Congress.
The White House should read it. At the very least, it can and should be read by the Governors of these United States. And you
should read it too.
McCluskey states:
“Since the 1965 passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which concentrated
unprecedented authority over American education in the hands of the federal government,
federal lawmakers have passed increasingly restrictive laws and drastically escalated education
spending, which ballooned from around $25 billion in 1965 (adjusted for inflation) to more than
$108 billion in 2002.”
A billion dollars is a lot of money. Now multiply that by 108 and you get a figure of such monumental waste that one wonders why
there isn’t rioting in the streets. There is, however, a growing restive feeling among citizens and policy-makers that something is
desperately wrong. This has been accelerated by the passage of President Bush’s answer to education failure, the No Child Left
Behind Act. McCluskey says, “a revolt against federal control of education is brewing.” I hope he is right.
“Despite the huge infusion of federal cash,” writes McCluskey, “and the near tripling of overall per pupil funding since 1965,
national academic performance has not improved. Math and reading scores have stagnated, graduation rates have flat lined, and
researchers have shown numerous billion-dollar federal programs to be failures.”
McCluskey asserts: “The nation as a whole must determine if the federal presence in American education should continue at all.”
Here’s my answer: NO! Being fond of the U.S. Constitution, no amount of reading reveals the word “education” anywhere in it.
Indeed, the Framers of the Constitution did not want the federal government involved in education, a requirement of an educated
electorate that they understood should be the province of local communities and of the member-states of the American federal
union.
Today, the only thing states can do, if they do not wish to be put under the iron hand of the federal government, is to refuse to
accept federal funding for education. To put it another way, they must refuse to accept the taxpayer’s money which their own
citizens have had taken from them by the federal government!
Moreover, there has been a federal funding explosion under the administration of President George W. Bush, a man who declares
himself to be a Conservative! What is wrong with this picture? “One of the largest funding increases,” notes McCluskey, “has
occurred in just the last four years; funds allocated to the Department (of Education) rose from $38.4 billion in 2000 to $63.3
billion in 2004, a 65 percent leap.”
The Department of Education is not the only one involved in spending federal dollars on education programs. There are six other
departments involves -- Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development.
The return we get for the billion expended is worse than pathetic; it is the criminal “dumbing down” of whole generations of
American students.
One of the most egregious examples of how education funds are wasted is an $8.4 million program, “Exchanges with Historic
Whaling and Trading Partners.” It vies with the $119.3 million program for the “Teaching of Traditional American History
initiative.” The former funnels $2 million each to the New Bedford Whaling Museum and similar outfits and the latter does the
same for the Inupiat Heritage Center, the Alaska Native Heritage Center, and other allied groups with their snout in the federal
trough.
It should be obvious that federal programs should expend funds to the benefit of all students, but these examples demonstrate
how programs in Massachusetts and Alaska benefit only those with access to them.
One can point to virtually every one of the socalled education programs and find one example after another of failure. The second
largest, Head Start, cost nearly $6.8 billion in 2004. Studies have demonstrated that attendees show a slight advantage over their
peers for a year or so and then, thanks to the mind numbing educational system, those gains disappear. Similarly, a relatively new
program, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, kicked off in 1995 with a budget of $847,000 now is funded to the tune of
nearly $1 billion and this after school program has not yet demonstrated any “influence on academic performance,” nor much
else of value.
What is the answer? Congress must end the federal government’s stranglehold on education and return its governance to the
states and to local communities. The typical one-size-fits-all federal answer to everything, combined with the use of massive
amounts of taxpayer funding to coerce submission to its failed programs, has produced an education system that threatens the
future of the nation.
As far back as 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education released a report, A Nation at Risk, which
warned, “if an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on American the mediocre educational performance that exists today,
we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” The war on the future of our nation’s children and youth continues.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Education & America's Schools
A Practical Guide to Homeschooling
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past columns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maplewood, New Jersey, 07040.
Copyright 2004 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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