I mean, what do all of these people do? We have local town/city school boards, usually headed by a superintendent. The state has its own department of education, which also supervises local schools. then we have the federal dept. of Education 9a cabinets level positio, started by Jimmy carter). At every level, there is tremendous duplication-waste , inefficiency, and fraud. Why is all of this needed? The USA spends more per student, than any other country. yet, the press is full of articles about how poorly educated most american kids are. The American carriculum isn’t the hardest-I’ve met quite a few foreign transfer students, who find the courses very easy. So why is the education business so huge?
Because they gives doctorates in Education, and for every EdD there is an equal and opposite EdD.
The bureaucracy needed to expand to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. (Rough quote from Civ 4 that I had to use somewhere).
That’s what governments do. That’s what bureaucracies do.
You have shown no evidence at all for your basic assertion: that the ‘Education Bureaucracy is So Huge’. Back that up and we can discuss this topic.
As I recall, the Education Department is one of the smaller and least-funded parts of the Cabinet.
Another vote for, What is the inefficiency? The Department of Education has reduced its workforce 40% since 1980, and only takes 2% of its funding for administrative expenses.
Don’t look at the Department of Education for gross redundency, although it is there. Look to your local school district. Anybody who has ever been inside one for any period of time can tell you that the way to increase its efficiency is to shoot every third person above a certain pay grade, as an encouragement to the others. 
Well, it seems to me , that we got along well without a Federal Dept. of Education-I still don’t know why Carter set it up. But back to my original point: the stuff we teach in schools doesn’t change all that much-like algebra-how much has it changed in the last 400 years? yet we get new textbooks every year-with the same old stuff-reshuffled. And the duplication: I can’t really accept that a high school course needs to be different between a highschool in Riverside, CA, and Waltham, MA. And what of these school committees? Edless meetings and debates-they seem to be launching grounds for politicians. Anyway-for those of you who think school committees are so wonderful-why are “Charter” schools so popular? (I would conclude that this is because school-committee-run schools are so bad).
Maybe we ought to have a national school system, and get rid if the ragbag of local and state school boards. i don’t see the present suystem as efficient or cost-effective.
If it works for British admirals it’ll work for educators!
Marc
Because they’re often trying new techniques, as we learn more about how kids learn. There are new fads in education all the time too. And the publishers like to make money with new editions. But does your school really get new books every single year? That seems unlikely to me, actually.
Here I disagree with you. Although there are plenty of problems with the state school systems, I cannot think that a federal system would be better, and it would be contrary to American philosophy as well–the usual idea is that anything that doesn’t have to be done federally ought to be done by the states, to preserve state autonomy.
States have slightly differing standards and needs. They also have different personalities and concerns; California is famous for political correctness requirements, and Texas is equally known for its conservatism. Those two dominate the textbook market, which produces some interesting situations, to say the least.
Charter schools are popular because they offer opportunities to escape from what some parents and teachers see as overwhelming and suffocating requirements, but still sort of within the public school system. You can try out a different educational philosophy–one you feel will suit your child better than the mainstream one–without paying thousands of dollars to send your kid to a private school. Parents are generally very involved in charter schools. And charters can offer interesting cultural educations; for example we have a local one that caters to (and is run by) Native American families, combining enculturation with a good education. I can quite see the appeal.
Yes, many school systems are a mess. But I absolutely do not think that taking it to the federal level and getting rid of charter schools would help.
Quote:
–without paying thousands of dollars to send your kid to a private school
But I DO spend thousands of dollars for my kid’s education-it is just paid under the label of “property taxes”. And OK, we have a local school board-why the hell is the whole thing duplicated at the state level?
I’m sure there’s plenty of inefficiency in the current system, but i’m not really sure what you’re arguing for in this thread.
First, you say you don’t know why we have a Federal Department of Education, implying that you would be happy to see that entity disbanded. If it were disbanded, responsibility for education would then devolve completely to the states and local school districts.
On the other hand, you argue that a high school in Riverside, CA, should have the same courses as a high school in Waltham, MA. If you really think that education should be standardized across the whole country, who do you think is going to be able to do it except a Federal agency? Do you really think that 50 states and literally thousands of school districts are ever going to agree on a universal curriculum?
And what about the principle of local choice? Do you believe it’s a good thing, or not?
It’s because of the people that get elected by all us voters. It’s a government thing.
“Trying” is too close to “experimenting” for me. And with incomplete knowledge about how kids learn, without teaching “critical thinking”, etc., how did we ever invent transistors, lasers, microchips, computers, send men to the Moon, eliminate smallpox, produce modern medicine, etc., etc.?
As for the price of textbooks, Richard Feynmann accidentally found out that that can be reduced considerably by having different publishers bid for supplying them.
I struggle with the concept of school districts. Some counties have 5 or more school districts, each with its own school board with about 5 members on it and its own district bureaucracy. The districts fall under a County Dept. of Education which loosely oversees all the dictricts in the county.
However, each COUNTY has ONE County Board of Supervisors with about 5 members on it to run all aspects of the ENTIRE county, including transportation, helath care services, sheriffs, jails, land use, courts, etc. etc.
Why do we need such hyper-local control of schools?
If you don’t have local control, your kindergartener is doing what is decided by Sacramento, or Washington. There will be a “One Size Fits All” approach to absolutely everything in Education. This is A Bad Thing.
There was a federal education bureaucracy prior to the establishment of the Department of Education. It was part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, so it’s not like the bureaucracy sprung up out of nowhere.
Well, in Texas (and I suspect many other places), the many school disctricts are a remnant of desegregation. In order to avoid having to desegregate the schools, the school districts broke up into smaller districts. Consequently, we have cities like San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston, each of which has numerous school districts across the city. The smaller districts are kinda a relic but are firmly entrenched and has led to great income disparity between districts.
Every year!!! I can hardly believe that. I was in a nearby high school this spring and noticed that the textbooks had a copyright date of over 10 years ago. And this was in History, which does change constantly. The math books were probably even older. At a recent meeting, a local high school teacher said that their textbooks were printed before the students were born!
If your school district really is buying new algebra textbooks every year, look to see who on the school board is getting kickbacks from the textbook publishing company!
So? I pay those thousands of dollars too, and I don’t have any kids.
But I consider it worth it, to live in a society with educated young people. (If nothing else, they can probably earn enough to pay for my Social Security when I need it!)
How about one school district for each county, or even regional school dictricts covering multiple low-population counties?
California school districts: 998
California counties: 58
Some of those counties are huge, though. LA County is an extreme example with a population of ten million. My guess is that there are over a million school-age children in LA and how many hundreds of schools. Even if there were only one school district, you would still need a large administrative staff to run all of that. (How much bureaucracy is needed to run a company with hundreds of stores and thousands of employees?)