Show Notes

Welcome back to The State of Education podcast, presented by One-Room Education.

In Part 2 of this amazingly informative mini-series, The Government’s War on Real Education, I present you with a wide variety of topics pertaining to how the government has been controlling what your children learn with little to no regards as to your opinion in the matter, and the rise of the idea of school choice. Topics for this episode include:

• Funding of public and private educational institutions by the Federal Government
• How that funding is used to keep well-meaning educators and community members silent to the overt anti-education, and anti-American practices and messaging in schools.
• Who is benefitting from the implementation of these policies?
• What we can do, as members of our communities and citizens of the United States to start correcting this problem.

I start this episode off with a quick recap of the topics and main points from Part 1 of The Government’s War on Education. For the full notes and references from Part 1, click *HERE*.

Throwing Money at the Issues

Taxpayers paid a total of $667 billion from the Federal Government on the education of American children in 2020 alone (NCES Reports).

The total number for the budget of the education system in America is the $667 billion Federal budget, PLUS the state and local funding. This money funds public AND private schools throughout the U.S.

This means that the issues that parents are trying to escape that plague the public school system, are also found within private education due to the acceptance of public funds and the strings that are attached to them.

This brings me to the main point of this episode…the federal funding of education is ILLEGAL!

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“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

10th Amendment to the United States Constitution

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Why Federal Funding of Education is Illegal

the 10th Amendment clearly states that any responsibility not explicitly stated in the Constitution as the responsibility of the Federal Government was supposed to be handled by the individual states. Yes, this includes the education of the citizenry.

Each state is supposed to have the autonomy to educate their citizens to thrive within their individual regional economy, not just the urban economic centers. The needs of the California economy are vastly different from Coal Country (Kentucky, West Virginia…) or the Rust Belt.

How is the Federal Government Funding Education of it’s Illegal?

During the Reconstruction Era, after the Civil War, the Federal Government needed to ensure the rights of all of the newly freed slaves and indentured servants were being adhered to.

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Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

Milton Friedman

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The Federal Department of Education was founded as a data collection agency to assist and advise the states on educational matters. It wasn’t until the Federal DOE was granted funds to disperse in the form of grants that it was able to drive the direction of education throughout the country.

The money that public and private schools receive today from the Federal Government is conditional on the completion and maintenance of a minimum average standardized test score for each grade, established and expanded by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

This means that the Federal Government is able to provide funds to the “states” specifically allocated for the education of their citizens. But it’s ok, because you don’t have to participate and all of the federally funded programs are optional…according to them.

Currently only 9 states and 1 territory have opted out of the Common Core, Race to the Top initiates (the updated versions of No Child Left Behind).

Who Wants to Keep this Going?

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Essentially teacher’s unions and politicians are working together to fund the schools as public for-profit institutions where the people at the top get paid more and more money and the politicians keep getting elected to make the situations “better”, but the teachers and the students keep getting left holding the bag.

Katie J., The State of Education, Ep. 6

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How can We Possibly Begin to Fix this?

I believe that the first step is to institute the practice of school choice in every state.

Currently 22 of the 50 states offer fully available school choice. This includes transportation to and from those schools. (Click *HERE* for the full list of states that provide fully accessible school choice)

School choice forces schools to compete for your student, and the funding that comes with them. It also allows for specialization within the secondary schools. For example, mechanical programs, STEM programs or extra curricular activities provided by the different districts can help guide the decision where your student would like to go.

This allows students from school choice states to enter the workforce with more marketable skills than those who live in non-school choice states. Students from states without school choice are often forced to attend the for-profit post-secondary institutions to obtain skills readily available to those students from school choice states.

Educate our students about their rights and responsibilities as citizens of the United States and the actual history behind our nation.

This means telling a realistic and balanced telling of the history of our nation that includes historical context, framing and understanding on the part of both the teacher and the student.

This would include the reintroduction of mandatory civics classes for all students grades 5 and above, with an introduction to citizenship starting in grade 3. This will be the topic of next weeks episode: Part 3: The Removal of Civics and History from the Central Curriculum.