Frankly, the American educational system has one job and it’s lousy at doing it. Schools spend tens of thousands of dollars per student only to come away with results worse than one-room schoolhouses of days past. Where does all the money being ‘spent’ on students actually go? Some of it goes to gimmicks and inflated union salaries, and educational supplies contracts with large companies, but a good deal of it goes to consultants and large companies that provide similar services while accomplishing nothing.

In today’s outrage, the media is fuming that $900 million in ‘research’ conducted by the Dept of Ed has been cut off by the Trump administration.

“Every kid deserves a great public education and that can’t happen without nonpartisan research and data to understand what’s working and what needs to be fixed,” Sen Patty Murray complained.

We’ve had decades of ‘data’ and ‘research’ which routinely concludes contradictory things and which has accomplished nothing, except perhaps belatedly convincing the educracy to go back to phonics.

We don’t need $900 million worth of research. The application of academic theories to education failed badly. No amount of consultants have turned out failings in the educational system. And the Dept of Education is a giant money-sink that does nothing but funnel cash to all the wrong special interests. Like the rest of the government.

Kids don’t need the Department of Education, they need competent and knowledgable teachers capable of covering subjects with them. And the D of E is one of a number of reasons why they’re an endangered species.

Putting that $900 million into actual local education would count for a lot more than more ‘research’.

Education is not a science, it’s a practice.