Date: July 7, 2004
Subject: Where does all the Federal education money go?

In his column in the Washington Times, Cal Thomas makes the case for getting the federal government out of education by highlighting a new study from the Cato Institute. Says Thomas:

One of the justifications for this socialistic redistribution of education money is the egalitarian objective of assuring the poor get their fair share and supposedly improve their chances of escaping poverty. But the Cato study again proves the failure of this thinking. Statistics show no correlation between the amounts of education money spent and a decline in the poverty levels in individual states.

As the Cato study concludes, the federal government should drop out of education and return the money and power for instructing children to the state and individual communities. Education achievement was better when it was practiced in the little red schoolhouse and didn't come as it does today from the big White House and its Cabinet agencies. The billions wasted on education since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society has been a financial and educational disaster, not to mention a violation of the Constitution.

Control of education should be as local as possible. Presidents Jefferson, Eisenhower, and Reagan all made the case for local control of education. Voters would do well to pay attention to election-year promises from the candidates — liberal, conservative, and in-between — with this in mind.