South Dakota Calls on Congress to Abolish the U.S. Department of Education

Ask people how they feel about the state of education in American, and you're almost guaranteed to get unhappy answers. Though what any given person might choose to claim as their biggest source of dissatisfaction will vary, overall there's a general disapproval over how things are being run.

The South Dakota House of Representatives decided to make their complaints formal a few weeks ago by passing a resolution calling on Congress to get rid of the federal Department of Education. As with most such plans, it's more about making a statement than actually expecting anything to come of it, but I thought it was rather telling.

Given the extravagant sums of money tied up in the federal Dept. of Education, eliminating it would substantially improve our national budget issues - assuming, of course, that spending didn't just get shifted to another department to keep funding the same nonsense under other names.

Personally, I don't believe that education was ever intended to be administrated from the federal level. Nor do I believe that the experiment in allowing it to be run from level has benefited us at all. Although it would be a massive (and initially messy) undertaking to dismantle it and return all power to the states, the potential positive consequences of such an action are fascinating to consider.

I'm not naive enough to think that state control will fix all of the problems with our educational system, but I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't have to improve things to a noticeable somewhat by default, simply by removing so many layers of political nonsense and ending the litany of unfunded mandates.

What do you think?