The HELLcyon Days of School

Etta K. Barstow was hired in 1870 by the Canton (Massachusetts) School Committee. She was to teach in the Sherman School, a one-room schoolhouse located on Pleasant Street, in District 5 . District 5 was called “Ragged Row.”


On the morning of October 5th, she had a confrontation with four of her male students…. Daniel Keliher age 9, John Coffee 11, Jerimiah Keliher 11, and James Cogswell age 13. These boys had presented behavior problems often in class.

When the four boys would not come inside after morning recess, Miss Barstow shut and locked the door. She went on to teach the rest of her students while the boys yelled and shouted curses outside.


Then… close to noon, a rock sailed into windows. It did not hit anything.


But, as Miss Barstow walked home for lunch break at Mrs. Baker’s rooming house, the four boys followed her shouting profanities while throwing stones the size of ink bottles at her.


She was hit on the back of her neck and head just below the ear. She was also struck on her back. This caused her to stagger and the boys yelled that she was drunk.


When Miss Barstow got to Mrs. Baker’s she tried to rest but continued to say she did not feel well. Her legs were weak and she could hardly move. Her landlady suggested she go to Boston to stay with her aunt and seek a doctor.

 A friend took her to the train and remained with her as she required assistance in seating and in staying conscious.


Upon arriving in Boston Etta went in and out of consciousness. Not being told of the attack, the doctor, by the name of Buckingham, took her symptoms to be those of a diabetic condition. By the next day Etta was dead.


The death by stoning of this young teacher was greeted with outrage by the residents of Canton.


James Cogswell, the 13-year-old, ran away never returning to Canton. However, Daniel and Jerimiah Keliher, and John Coffee were eventually only charged with disturbing a school. The assault on their teacher was not brought to the fore.



The Sherman School in the background. 1887 photo 


These three boys were sent to reform school in Westboro.
This sentence was later appealed. The boys were found guilty of disturbing a school building. They were given probation and ordered to pay a fine for the damages they had done to the school.


It is now believed Etta Barstow died from a common result of head trauma. When the stone hit her head it caused an unseen internal injury and bleed, which increased pressure on her brain and killed her the next day.


Miss Etta Barstow’s death was ignored for 140 years. She was a teacher killed by her students.


The myth of the idyllic LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE was just that...a myth.


 A great number of the children were hostile, unmanageable, and prone to violence.



Add to this mix students ranging in age from five to sixteen (some maybe even in their twenties) all crammed into one room. It was an open invitation to a great deal of trouble.

It was easy for the teacher’s role to become more that of a warden than an imparter of knowledge. The necessity of the physical over the intellectual increased.




School boards, especially those on the frontier, often preferred physically strong men as teachers. It was not uncommon to encounter, among the boys, fights involving biting, eye gouging, and all and out slug fests.


It was not unusual for a teacher to be driven out of the classroom in a matter of days. Some did not even last that long.


In the 1830’s a Tennessee school teacher was stabbed and dropped into a well (he lived) and the schoolhouse burned down.


“In the Flat Creek district”, said Indiana historian and novelist Edward Eggleston, “the boys have driven off the last two schoolmasters and licked the one afore them.”

 Attacks on teachers by older male students were a familiar part of nineteenth-century school practice. Teachers in these often rural schools literally fought to prove their right to their positions and often resorted to extreme uses of corporal punishment to maintain them.

These violent attacks were a direct challenge to the schoolmaster's authority. While the application of physical domination was one way in which male teachers established their clear and unchallenged authority, women teachers also experienced physical and psychological intimidation that required courage and determination to withstand.


Mary Ellen Chase described her first day at a school in New England..”I stormed up and down….This pathetic pretense of courage aided by the mad flourishing of my razor strap, brought forth…the expression of respectful fear on the faces of the young giants”


In many instances, parents did not interfere in the pupils' attempts to run the teacher out of town and did not punish them when they did.

It became a form of entertainment in some villages to observe the encounters between new teachers and their male students.


So...what is it like now...in  TODAY’S classrooms….?


Recent data shows that 39 out of every 1,000 teachers experience some sort of crime, and the true rate may be much higher since most incidents go unreported. (Department of Health and Human Services. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Violence Against Teachers and School Staff)


Teachers are the recipients of verbal abuse, racial and sexist slurs, repeated intimidation, threats of physical violence, vandalism of personal belongings and persistent classroom disruption.

Statistics show a trend of violence toward teachers that is increasing globally.


More than one-quarter of U.S. teachers are threatened on the job by their students, according to research by APA’s Task Force on Violence Against Teachers presented during APA’s Annual Convention.

A survey of 4,735 U.S. teachers conducted in 2010 found that 27 percent said they had been verbally threatened by a student in the past year. In addition, 37 percent had been the target of obscene or sexual remarks from students, and 31 percent said a student had made an obscene gesture to them or groped them. Another 19 percent said they had been intimidated by a student; 13 percent by a student’s parent.

“These numbers did not differ by school setting, by gender of the teacher or by years of teaching,” said Task Force Chair Dorothy L. Espelage, PhD, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Some more statistics:


• 5 percent of teachers had visited a physician as the result of an attack.


• 15 percent had been physically attacked but did not see a physician.

• 25 percent had their property damaged by a student.


• 22 percent said a student had thrown something at them that year.


• 13 percent reported that parents had thrown things at them.


Each year, 253,100 (7%) teachers are threatened with injury and they can be divided into the following categories by:                                                       


Locale


• 109,800 (43%) in cities

• 78,100 (31%) in suburbs


• 27,500 (11%) in towns


• 37,700 (15%) in rural areas


Level                                                                                      • 139,400 (55%) in secondary schools


• 113,700 (45%) in elementary schools


Gender


• 78,500 (31%) male teachers


• 174,500 (69%) female teachers

I have been a teacher for 23 years…..the one thing I CAN say is that I have yet to be stoned.

BENEATH THE UNION LABEL

Based in Washington, DC, the 3.1 million-member National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the United States.



The NEA’s stated mission is “to advocate for education professionals and to unite our members and the nation to fulfill the promise of public education to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world.”

The NEA was founded in 1850 as the National Teachers Association, and adopted its present name in 1857. Promoting government-owned public schools and “modern” pedagogical ideas, this union permitted no private school teachers to join its ranks.


These government-owned-and-run schools were modeled on statist European education in Prussia, and attracted social activist teachers who saw public school students as perfect subjects for re-engineering society.


Mann



That remolding began with the anti-Catholic objectives of Horace Mann (1796-1859) and expanded to the anti-religious humanism of John Dewey (1859-1952).


Dewey



John Dewey, an avowed humanist/ socialist, was made honorary president of the NEA in 1932. He traveled to Russia in the 1930s to help organize and implement the Marxist educational system there. Today he is known in America as the "Father of Progressive Education." In 1935, Dewey became the president of the League of Industrial Democracy, which was originally called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.


In a 1935 report presented at the 72nd annual NEA convention, the union's future Executive Secretary Willard Givens wrote: “A dying laissez-faire must be completely destroyed and all of us … must be subjected to a large degree of social control…. The major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual. It must seek to give him understanding of the transition to a new social order.”


In the 1960s and 1970s, teachers were becoming unionized at a faster pace than ever before. Precisely at this time, student SAT scores, a popular and objective achievement barometer, deteriorated dramatically. Confronted by this embarrassing fact, the NEA responded by calling for the abolition of standardized testing of students.

In recent decades the NEA has been outspoken about its positions vis a vis a host of social and political topics, including abortion, sex education, teen pregnancy, school prayer, socialized medicine, affordable housing, drug testing, prisoner rights, and bilingual education. In July 1997 the union formally adopted a series of social justice programs.

Nine years later, at its 2006 national convention, the NEA proposed that all public schools should unequivocally support homosexual marriage and other forms of marriage (polygamy, etc.). In the NEA’s view, this perspective should be transmitted -- via classroom instruction and textbooks alike -- to all children at all age levels, without any requirement for the permission or knowledge of parents.


At its 2007 national convention in Philadelphia, the NEA passed a number of additional resolutions -- some founded on the axiom that American society is inherently discriminatory and unjust, and others advocating massive increases in taxpayer funding of school programs and extra-curricular activities.


In the NEA's estimation, America's alleged inequities are by no means limited to the domestic sphere but extend also to U.S. foreign policy. After 9/11, for instance, the union's position was that America had long mistreated and exploited the peoples of other nations, and thus essentially had sown the seeds of the rage that ultimately found its expression in the 9/11 attacks.

Immediately after 9/11, the NEA issued guidelines on how teachers should discuss the topic with their students. These guidelines stressed the need for children to be tolerant and respectful of all cultures -- and said virtually nothing about the fact that the U.S. was at war with an enemy that was aiming to annihilate it. The NEA came so close to blaming America for having provoked the 9/11 attacks, that a public outcry ensued and the union was forced to remove the teacher guidelines from its website.

In the summer of 2002, as the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks neared, the NEA again posted guidelines on its national website stating that classroom teachers should not “suggest any group [was] responsible” for the previous year's atrocities. Rather, the union advised teachers to have their students “discuss historical instances of American intolerance.”


The union adamantly opposes merit pay (or "performance contracting") for public school teachers -- characterizing such a system as “detrimental to public education." Delegates to the summer 2000 NEA convention openly declared their categorical opposition to “any … system of compensation based on an evaluation of an education employee’s performance.” In 2007 the union elaborated, “competency testing must not be used as a condition of employment, license retention, evaluation, placement, ranking, or promotion of licensed teachers”

Not only is the NEA opposed to merit pay, but for decades it has manifested a marked hostility toward outstanding teachers.

In 1971, the NEA publication, "Schools for the '70s and Beyond: A Call to Action," the NEA declares:


"Teachers who conform to the traditional institutional mode are out of place. They might find fulfillment as tap-dancers, or guards in maximum security prisons or proprietors of reducing salons, or agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation – but they damage teaching, children and themselves by staying in the classroom. "



Escalante



The example of world-famous math teacher Jaime Escalante is instructive. According to Escalante (the subject of the 1988 Hollywood movie Stand and Deliver), who developed the most successful inner-city math program in America, teacher union officials chastised him for attracting “too many” students to his calculus classes. When Escalante finally resigned from the high school which he and his students had made famous, local teacher union officials circulated a celebratory note that read: “We got him out!”


The NEA is similarly opposed to vouchers which would permit parents to divert a portion of their tax dollars away from the public school system, and to use those funds instead to help cover the tuition costs for private schools to which they might prefer to send their children.

In the NEA's calculus, such voucher programs "compromise the Association's commitment to free, equitable, universal, and quality public education for every student.


Specifically, the NEA's closest political ties are with the Democratic Party. In 1976 the union used its financial resources and manpower to help elect Jimmy Carter to the U.S. presidency. After the election, Carter in turn thanked the union by creating the Department of Education in 1979, prompting one NEA executive to boast that this was the only union in the United States with its own cabinet department.

Today the NEA is a member organization of the America Votes coalition of get-out-the-vote organizations. America Votes is itself a member of the so-called Shadow Party, a nationwide network of activist groups whose agendas are ideologically Left, and which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats. NEA’s fellow America Votes coalition members include: ACORN, America Coming Together, the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations); AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees); the American Federation of Teachers; the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (renamed the American Association for Justice); the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund; Democracy For America; EMILY's List; the League of Conservation Voters; the Media Fund; the MoveOn.org Voter Fund; the NAACP National Voter Fund; NARAL Pro-Choice America; People for the American Way; the Planned Parenthood Action Fund; the Service Employees International Union; the Sierra Club; USAction; and 21st Century Democrats.


Of the $341 million the NEA received from September 2004 to August 2005, some $295 million came from member dues. In turn, many of those revenues were used to promote political agendas and candidates -- almost all of them Democrats. For several decades the NEA has been among the largest contributors of money and personnel to the Democratic Party and its candidates. Between 1990 and 2008, 93 percent of the union's political donations went to Democrats.

Studies have shown that as few as 40 percent of NEA members are Democrats, the remaining 60 percent splitting evenly between Republicans and independents. According to the NEA’s own internal polling, half of the union's members identify themselves as conservative. Yet the NEA, like other unions, claims an absolute right to spend dues as it sees fit, regardless of the viewpoints of the teachers it nominally represents.


Because the NEA is a tax-exempt organization, the federal government places certain restrictions on how the union may use its immense revenues. Specifically, the government requires that whatever funds a union earmarks for political activities designed to influence an election, must be disclosed on IRS Forms 990 and 1120-POL. The latter of these must be filed by any tax-exempt group whose political expenditures exceed $100 in a single calendar year, and requires some disclosure about the details of those donations.

Yet from 1994-96 the NEA reported that it spent no money at all on politics. This is because an honest disclosure of its political expenditures would have entitled union members, if they objected to having their mandatory dues used to finance Democrat causes, to recover the portion of those dues that had been so earmarked. Also, union revenues used for partisan political purposes were taxable in certain cases.


Beginning in 2005, new federal rules required large labor unions like the NEA to report in greater detail (to the U.S. Department of Labor) how they spent their money. Under these new disclosure regulations, it was confirmed that an immense amount of NEA money was being spent for purposes having nothing to do with the union's purported priorities (i.e., better wages, benefits, and working conditions for teachers and school staff).

 For example, the NEA reported that during the 2004-05 fiscal year, it had spent $56.8 million on "union administration," $25 million on "political activities and lobbying," and $65.5 million on "contributions, gifts, and grants." In other words, it is possible that up to $90.5 million (the sum of the latter two categories of expenditures) was earmarked for leftist political candidates, organizations, and causes.


As of 2006, the NEA's $58 million payroll included over 600 employees and officers, more than half of whom earned salaries exceeding $100,000 per year. NEA President Reg Weaver's salary was $439,000. As of 2004-05, NEA Vice President Dennis Van Roekel earned $273,000, and Secretary-Treasurer Lily Eskelsen earned $272,000. By contrast, the average classroom teacher earned $48,000.

According to its 2007 financial report, the NEA’s total assets were $188,710,730. Its total receipts for the year were $352,958,087. Moreover, the NEA's aggressive lobbying of Congress has enabled it to benefit from an archaic law freeing it from having to pay its $1.6 million in annual property taxes. No other labor union in America has been able to negotiate such an arrangement.


Back in the 1970s, it was saying, "We are the biggest potential striking force in the country. We are determined to control the direction of education. We will become the foremost political force in the country." Since then, it thoroughly has infiltrated the U.S. Department of Education. It runs thousands of its members through "political-action workshops," sometimes giving graduate-study credit to attendees. In one election year alone, its political-action committees threw some $250 million into Democratic campaigns.

The NEA's openly avowed goal today: "To tap the legal, political and economic powers of the U.S. Congress. We want ... sufficient clout [to] roam the halls of Congress and collect votes to reorder the priorities of the United States of America."


Teachers who join the union usually belong to one of two groups. The first group joins for access to specific union benefits. One is liability insurance. Lawsuits for sexual harassment, physical abuse, and racial discrimination have grown steadily in the last few decades and can threaten a teacher's job and reputation. Another benefit is protection against hostile board members with petty grievances through the local collective bargaining agreement. Unfortunately, both are necessities in today's education business. These teachers also feel that the NEA is their best hope for obtaining higher salaries and a voice in the administration of their schools.

The other group joins because they have to, their school districts and states have agreed to allow a closed shop to exist, where all teachers must pay some level of union dues. Few teachers join because they wholeheartedly believe in the political and social agenda of the NEA.

The uniqueness of the National Education Association is found in the fact that it is a near monopoly supplier of teachers to a government enforced monopoly consumer, the public schools. As the NEA has grown in power politically, it has also been able to govern the destiny of this public school monopoly to its own benefit.

The NEA has publicly boasted of its plan to seize control of the agencies and boards that decide who is allowed to teach and what is to be taught. The NEA has become the most powerful special-interest group in the United States. Their lobbying has brought about a 17-fold increase in federal education spending in the last 20 years.


In the January 1946 NEA Journal, editor Joy Elmer Morgan wrote an editorial titled, "The Teacher and World Government," which stated:


"In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher ... can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding and cooperation ... At the very top of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher and the organized profession. "

Bob Chanin, General Counsel to the National Education Association, recently retired after 41 years of service. In his farewell address to the NEA convention earlier this summer,


Mr. Chanin said the following:


“Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.


And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of million of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them; the union that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees."



One ring to rule them all...


The current budget of the NEA is more than $355 million and it spends more on campaign contributions than do ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the AFL-CIO combined.

FROM PRUSSIA WITH LOVE

We have the current American public school system because the Prussians (Germans) were defeated by Napoleon at the battle of Jena in 1806.

 The King of Prussia decided that the reason why the battle was lost was that the Prussian soldiers were thinking for themselves on the battlefield instead of following orders.

At that time the Prussian philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), was very much in vogue. He promoted the state as a necessary instrument of social and moral progress. He said, "The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."



Fichte



Using this basic philosophy prescribing the “duties of the state”, combined with John Locke’s view (1690) that “children are a blank slate” and lessons from Rousseau on how to “write on the slate”, Prussia established a three-tiered educational system that was considered “scientific” in nature.


Work on this system began in 1807 and was in place by 1819. The new Prussian system defined for the child what was to be learned, what was to be thought about, how long to think about it and when a child was to think of something else.


This model was eventually responsible for educating 92% of Prussian children. Another 8% were educated privately


The national school system was reinforced by King Frederick William III Children aged seven to fourteen had to attend school, and parents who did not comply could have their children taken away.

If they met government standards private schools could exist. Teachers had to be certified, and high-school graduation examinations were necessary to enter the learned professions and the civil service.


The schools imposed an official language to the prejudice of ethnic groups living in Prussia. The purpose of the system was to instill nationalism in demoralized Prussia and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy.

 This model for compulsory education was also a response to the industrial revolution. Nationalism actually became relevant and nations needed their citizens to think alike.

Early in American history, education was mainly a private, free-market activity — no compulsory attendance laws, and no school taxes. That system produced, at the time, a very literate, independent-thinking, self-reliant people.








In 1814, the first American, Edward Everett, went to Prussia to get a PhD. He eventually becomes governor of Massachusetts.


Over the next 30 years or so, numerous American dignitaries came to Germany to earn degrees (a German invention). Horace Mann, instrumental in the development of educational systems in America, was among them.

Mann

Those who earned degrees in Germany came back to the United States and staffed all of the major universities.


In 1850, Massachusetts and New York utilize the system, as well as promote the comforting concept that “the state is the father of children.”




Peabody

 Horace Mann’s sister, Elizabeth Peabody (Peabody Foundation) saw to it that after the Civil War, the Prussian system (taught in the Northern states) was integrated into the conquered South between 1865 and 1918.


Most of the “compulsory schooling” laws designed to implement the system were passed by 1900. By 1900, most PhD’s in the United States were trained in Prussia.


In order to make sure that the independence for communities to hire their own teachers would cease, the Carnegie group instituted the concept of “teacher certification” – a process controlled by the teaching colleges under Carnegie and Rockefeller control.


One of the reasons that the self-appointed elite brought back the Prussian system to the United States was to ensure a like-thinking work force to staff the growing industrial revolution.


One of the prime importers of the German “educational” system into the United States was William T. Harris, from Saint Louis. He brought the German system in and set the purpose of the schools to distance children from parental influence and that of religion.

He preached this openly, and began creating “school staffing” programs that were immediately picked up by the new “teacher colleges”, many of which were underwritten by the Rockefeller family, the Carnegies, the Whitney’s and the Peabody family. The University of Chicago was underwritten by the Rockefellers.


Just as the Prussian system was intended to unify Germany, the American educators' goal was to create a national culture out of the disparate subcultures that comprised the country in that period. (Catholic immigrants were a prominent target.) "To do that," children would have to be removed from their parents and from inappropriate cultural influences."



The current modern public school curriculum also comes directly from the Prussian system. American educators imported three major ideas from Prussia.


The first was that the purpose of state schooling was not intellectual training but the conditioning of children "to obedience, subordination and collective life."

Second, whole ideas were broken into fragmented "subjects," and school days were divided into fixed periods "so that self-motivation to learn would be muted by ceaseless interruptions."

Third, the state was posited as the true parent of the children.


The public schools are intended to create complacent "good citizens" — not necessarily independent thinkers. The growth in government power since the advent of public schools is hard to ignore.

Earlier in the century there were “school boards” in every town. Between 1932 and 1960, the number of school boards dropped from 140,000 to 30,000. Today there are about 15,000








Unlike our ancestors' private schools, the public schools sought to produce citizens who looked to government to make important decisions for them and solve societal problems.

America was a literate country before the importation of the German educational system. It was more literate than it is today. The textbooks of the time make so much allusion to history, philosophy, mathematics, science and politics that they are hard to follow now.

The bottom line is, according to the model, the public schools are working just as they were designed.

If we do not like what they have achieved, then we have to junk the Prussian system and move toward an education based on the American principles of free markets and individual liberty. Mere reform is not enough. We need to re-separate school and state. That's the only sure way to revitalize education, families, and the American spirit. We need to step out of the box and shift the paradigm.

LET THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION DEPART!

Education is critical in a complex modern society. Education is the process by which we impart moral values to our children, make them part of our particular culture, develop their ability to think, and give them specific kinds of information that they will need to be productive adults, good citizens, and civilized human beings.

Today there is great concern about the quality of American education.


But neither the importance of education nor its poor quality means that education is an important function of the federal government. In fact, education is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States, and for good reason.

The Founders wanted most aspects of life managed by those who were closest to them, either by state or local government or by families, businesses, and other elements of civil society. Certainly, they saw no role for the federal government in education.


Since the early 1900’s there were many varied legislative attempts to establish a Department of Education. However, the movement really took off with the election of Senator Abraham Ribicoff, the former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Ribicoff was assisted in his efforts by the National Education Association (NEA). The NEA began a political action committee that strongly influenced the nomination of Jimmy Carter for President. (Oh just so you know with a current budget of more than $355 million, the National Education Association spends more on campaign contributions than do ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the AFL-CIO combined.)

Anyway, one of Carter’s top priorities when he took office in 1976 was education. Although he had a vision of a streamlined government Carter decided that education was important enough to merit its own overseeing agency. Ribicoff and several other senators quickly drafted the Department of Education Organization Act. Carter signed the legislation on October 17th, 1979.


A Washington Post editorial raised the fear that "by sheer bureaucratic momentum, [a department of education] would inevitably erode local and state control over public schools.'' Another Post editorial reminded us, "Education remains a primary function of the states and localities, which is surely one reason this country has not had a national ministry of education as part of its political tradition. We think it is a tradition worth holding on to.''

At the time, however, the new department was criticized by members of the president’s own party.  And they were RIGHT!


“No matter what anyone says, the Department of Education will not just write checks to local school boards. They will meddle in everything. I do not want that,” argued Representative Pat Schroeder (D-CO).

Representative Joseph Early (D-MA) stated that a “national Department may actually impede the innovation of local programs as it attempts to establish uniformity throughout the Nation.”


Senator Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) condemned the new law as a straight political payoff by Carter to teacher unions for their endorsement in the 1976 presidential election. “This is a back-room deal, born out of squalid politics. Everything we had thought we would not see happening to education is happening here.”


Abolishing the Department has been a staple among Republican politicians.


When the Education Department was created in 1979, many critics warned that a secretary of education would turn into a national minister of education.

 Rep. John Erlenborn (R-Ill.) wrote, "There would be interference in textbook choices, curricula, staffing, salaries, the make-up of student bodies, building designs, and all other irritants that the government has invented to harass the population. These decisions which are now made in the local school or school district will slowly but surely be transferred to Washington.''


Dissenting from the committee report that recommended establishing the department, Erlenborn and seven other Republicans wrote, "The Department of Education will end up being the Nation's super schoolboard. That is something we can all do without.''


Ronald Reagan famously pledged to abolish it in the 1980 presidential election.

In 1996, the Republican Party platform stated: “The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education.”

 But then came President George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind, which grew the Department by 69.6 percent in just two years.  YEA Dubya!


 Defenders of the federal role in education insist that the department has no power to impose anything on the nation's schools. It can only study, advise, inspire, and offer supplemental funding. Of course, our folk wisdom tells us that he who pays the piper calls the tune--as federal money increases, so does federal control.

After decades of increased funding for the DOE, created just 32 years ago, its budget now ranks as the third largest of all government agencies.


The Department’s job is basically taking taxpayer money from states, filtering it through the DOE, and then sending it back to states. It does this in an inefficient manner and it has done little to boost academic achievement. It has, however, raised the salaries of its government employees.

Not including executive salaries, the average annual income of a DOE employee in 2010 was $103,000: nearly double the average annual teacher salary ($53,000 in 2009). Adding to this overblown spending, in 2009 the federal government’s Program Assessment Rating Tool—used to identify ineffective and duplicative programs—reported $359 million in earmarks in the DOE’s budget.


Furthermore, greater federal funding for education has come with increased federal red tape. This only adds to administrative burden and does nothing to help students learn. Data indicates that even though the federal government contributes only around 10 percent of the funding for education, it is responsible for 41 percent of the administrative compliance burden placed on states.


Warning....this part is very boring!

The Department of Education’s stated mission is to:


Strengthen the Federal commitment to assuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual;


Supplement and complement the efforts of states, the local school systems and other instrumentalities of the states, the private sector, public and private nonprofit educational research institutions, community-based organizations, parents, and students to improve the quality of education;


Encourage the increased involvement of the public, parents, and students in Federal education programs;


Promote improvements in the quality and usefulness of education through Federally supported research, evaluation, and sharing of information;


Improve the coordination of Federal education programs;


Improve the management of Federal education activities; and


Increase the accountability of Federal education programs to the President, the Congress, and the public.


This part is also tedious but you need to know:

There are several organizations within the ED. They include the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the National Center for Education Statistics, the Planning and Evaluation Service, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, the Office of Special Education Programs, and the National Research and Dissemination Centers for Career and Technical Education.
 

When the department of education was formed it had 450 employees and a budget of $18.1 billion. Today, its budget is $80 billion with about 5000 employees. 

Oh.... I am a teacher.  Today I asked several of my colleagues what the Department of Education did.....none of us could come up with an answer.  Enough said?