America needs to understand the operation of public education

March 28, 2023

“Public education in the U.S. is largely financed by state (46.8 percent) and local (45.3 percent) sources, while the remaining 7.8 percent is contributed by federal sources,” according to a research.com article from last September. The sources for the state and local portions are from income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and fees. 

So state and local taxes account for roughly 92 percent of the funding for public education, and the people, businesses and organizations who pay taxes are responsible for education funding.

How state and local spending is determined and distributed varies from state to state, but this explanation is a good general look at the process that keeps public education going most of the time.

And the upshot is that it is entirely appropriate that the people are responsible for funding public education, since public education is constitutionally a function and responsibility of states and localities.

The U.S. Constitution does not include education in the scope of responsibility of the federal government. Our Founders decided that things not assigned to the federal government are left to the states. And this idea was agreed to by the states when they ratified the Constitution.

That being the case, why is there a federal Department of Education?

Charles Murray, writing in the Hillsdale College publication “Imprimis” years ago an article titled “Do We Need a Department of Education?” He tells us that “American education had been improving since World War II. Then, when the federal government began to get involved, it got worse.”

He does not blame the downturn on the feds, but wrote that “[t]he overall data on the performance of American K-12 students give no reason to think that federal involvement, which took the form of the Department of Education after 1979, has been an engine of improvement.”

The involvement of the federal government in areas of our lives tends to shift the focus on those areas away from the states and localities and toward the federal government to varying degrees, depending upon the level of involvement of the feds are in those areas. This is especially bad for areas where the federal government is not constitutionally the governing body with that authority, like public education.

A glaring example of this phenomenon is the recent action of the Department of Justice, when it got involved in the supposed “violence” at local boards of education meetings. This occurred when parents and other citizens appeared and vocally opposed some of the things affecting their children that they disagreed with.

If there really were threats of violence or actual violence in these circumstances, addressing them was the responsibility of state and local authorities, not the DOJ. Its actions were clearly unwarranted, and a gross over-reach.

Recently, we have been seeing some — emphasis on “some” — teachers, administrators, school boards, and teacher unions swerving from traditional curricula and secretly substituting things like teaching Critical Race Theory rather than traditional history, allowing books in school libraries that are not age-appropriate or appropriate for any student, assisting and encouraging young students to pursue gender transitioning, and other inappropriate things.

This generally occurs without telling the parents of these children what is happening, and even deliberately hiding this from parents.

“Parents have raised concerns about how SEL [social and emotional learning] 

teachings are impacting their children,” the Congressional Post reported. “One parent from Texas recounted how her daughter was socially transitioned into thinking she was a boy,” and a father from Washington “shared how a school put his child on antidepressants without parental consent through the SEL program.” This is clearly wrong.

Wrongs like this are often done by people who absurdly imagine they are superior to parents. A Georgia state Representative, Democrat Lydia Glaize, said during debate on an education bill that many parents are not qualified to have input in their child’s education since they did not graduate from high school. 

Perhaps she is unaware that parents’ taxes and taxes paid by organizations parents and support pay for education, as well as her salary.

This attitude, accompanied by a lack of professional integrity, have transformed education in some schools and school districts into indoctrination. There, young people are taught not “how” to think, but “what” to think about some things.

The House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 5 by a 213-208 party-line vote.

Congressman Morgan Griffith, R-VA, commented that the bill “recognizes and restores parents’ rights through five pillars: the right to know what’s being taught in schools and to see reading material; the right to be heard; the right to see school budget and spending; the right to protect their child’s privacy; and the right to be updated on any violent activity at school.”

Democrats voted against the bill, and use untruths and exaggeration to condemn it. They do this not because their evaluation of the bill is correct, but because it attacks their socialistic agenda to indoctrinate the young.

Since public education is funded almost completely by the taxes and fees paid by the people, the people have the indisputable right to express their opinion and be informed about what goes on in public schools.