It might come as a surprise to most Americans that the U.S. Department of Education did not exist until 1977, and it was created by Jimmy Carter.
Since that time, the United States has slowly slipped into the abyss of international academia, falling from one of the best systems in the world to mediocrity.
The U.S. ranks 39th among industrialized nations in math and 25th in science, both categories that the U.S. led prior to the federalization of education.
Surely it must be because education is underfunded in America, right?
According to a study by Newsweek, the United States spent $11,319 per grade school pupil in 2018 and $13, 776 per high school student. Only Switzerland spent more for a grade school student and only France spent more for a high school student.
When factoring in college and technical education, the U.S. spent $16,268 per student, eclipsing the rest of the developed world who spent an average of $10,759, according to Newsweek.
Clearly education is not underfunded in Kansas or the rest of the country nor does it correlate with results in the classroom since we have been on a downward slope since the creation of the U.S. Department of Education.
Donald Trump has made it a priority of his incoming administration to do away with the bureaucratic nightmare that has become the federalization of education.
While this has some worried about how we would fund classrooms state by state, there is a bigger concern — if we don’t do something different, how will we be competitive with the rest of the world?
The biggest issue with the federalization of education is the same problem that happens any time government injects itself into society — conformity and lagging standards.
President George W. Bush tried to address the descent with his program called No Child Left Behind.
But the problem was trying to nationalize standards in a way that created the same student from the East Coast to the High Plains.
It also required a ton of paperwork and increased administrative oversight.
As with all government mandates, the size of government expanded, and with it the cost, but the dollars were not spent in the classroom but on the administration of the programs.
Before the Carter Administration injected the federal government into education, the focus was much more on the classroom and the ability of the educator to provide the necessary knowledge and skills to the students.
Without multiple programs or even the technological tools of today, the educator was a professional in their field of study, and they developed their own style and ability to react to the various students in their classrooms.
Educators were given a specific skill set that was to be gained by the students, and then they set out to achieve those goals.
During that time, elementary schools had a principal, and junior high and high schools might had a principal and an assistant.
Today the administrative staff has bloated, various programs have directors, and teachers have coaches to help them navigate not through teaching, but through the paperwork and red tape.
Educators controlled their own discipline, and parents backed them up.
But today, the multiple programs that have nothing to do with academic achievement have lowered the bar and distracted from intellectual advancement.
The first step back to academic excellence starts by getting Washington out of the classrooms and allowing states to focus on what is best for their students.
We have to put teachers back as the focus of how to best educate children and not bureaucrats.
It won’t happen overnight, but we will start to see America perform when we realize that involving the federal government was the pivot point of academic decline.
Earl Watt is the owner and publisher of the Leader & Times in Liberal, Kansas. Watt started his career in journalism in 1991 at the Southwest Daily Times. During his career, the newspaper has won a total of 17 Sweepstakes awards from the Kansas Press Association for editorial content and 18 Sweepstakes awards for advertising. Watt has been recognized with more than 70 first place awards for writing in categories from sports and column to best front pages, best sports pages and best opinion pages. Watt is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and is the descendant of several patriots who fought for America's freedom and independence.
