Today, the United States Senate confirmed in a historic vote the nomination of Betsy Devos to be the next Secretary of Education. With the Senate tied at 50-50 the new Vice-President, Mike Pence, had to assume his only constitutional role and break the tie in the Senate.
There are many people upset with the nomination of Mrs. Devos to head the Federal Department of Education. As a public school teacher, I can’t believe that someone with no real knowledge of public education could be tapped to run the complex department. Her expertise in the area is quite minimal and when pressed by Senators for basic responses to common problems in education she couldn’t stand up to the muster.
However, I have a solution to all that feel like they have been betrayed by the Devos confirmation. Abolish the U.S. Department of Education!
There is absolutely no reason to have federal control over the education system in the United States. Created in 1980 the education department has caused more problems than it has solved. It has stripped control over education from local entities that know their students better and given it to power hungry bureaucrats in Washington that have extreme agendas to improve our rankings around the world.
We have spent years as a nation trying to figure out why our international ranking in education has been on the downward spiral, but many people ignore the fact that our standing in the world was actually better and not that bad in 1980 when the department was created. We created an arbitrary problem and have stuck with that thinking for decades.
Education is best done at the state and local level and that is where it should stay. There should not be a Department of Education in Washington and therefore Betsy Devos would not be in charge of it. A government is done best when done locally.
On the same day the Senate confirmed President Trump’s secretary of Education pick by a historically narrow margin, a House Republican introduced legislation to abolish the entire department Betsy DeVos will lead.
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie’s bill is only a page long, after merely stating the Department of Education would terminate on Dec. 31, 2018.
Massie believes that policymakers at the state and local levels should be responsible for education policy, instead of a federal agency that’s been in place since 1980.
“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development. States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students,” Massie said in a statement.
