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Ronald Reagan Was Right (Part One)

August 4, 2008 — In the 1980 Presidential Election, former California Governor Ronald Reagan made a campaign promise to abolish the Department of Education, a cabinet-level bureaucracy a year old.  Though stymied by the Democrats in the House of Representatives, he revived the idea in his 1982 State of the Union address, calling for major savings in the process (as noted by the free market Cato Institute).

The idea didn’t just stay with President Reagan in Republican circles.  Senator Bob Dole championed eliminating the Education Department in an Atlanta, Georgia campaign speech during his unsuccessful 1996 run.  That year, the GOP platform stated “The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place.  That is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools….”

Yet far from being on the ropes, the Education Department is now a new bureaucratic monster.  According to the Cato Institute, the department’s budget skyrocketed by nearly 70 percent during Bush’s first term.  We could save nearly $70 billion alone by following Ronald Reagan’s lead.  Yet the costly budget isn’t the only problem with the Education Department.

Through the “No Child Left Behind Act,” the current administration teamed up with big government backer Ted Kennedy to give this agency nearly unlimited power to regulate our nation’s education system, forcing standardized tests down the throats of students.  The program also chases good teachers out of the system (who gave up the opportunity to make a lot more money) who hoped to inspire children to learn, only to find themselves forced to teach to a test.

There’s also a whiff of corruption in the Education Department.  It turns out that a conservative commentator (Armstrong Williams) was paid in taxpayer dollars to promote the NCLBA, costing both you and his journalistic integrity.  And it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of supporters of such reforms have ties to those who write and publish standardized tests, as well as the standardized textbooks that teach to the standardized tests.

Even though a 2007 poll (cited in the conservative Hoover Institution) found only 30 percent of Americans like “No Child Left Behind Act” as it is, its supporters can’t wait to export the idea to high schools and colleges, thanks to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

But there are Republicans willing to stand in her path toward yet another drive to bring the private sector under the government boot.  Former Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, now a Tennessee Senator, is one willing to speak out against the government takeover of higher education.

“The key to the quality of American higher education is that it is NOT one system,” Alexander said.  “It is a marketplace of more than 6,000 autonomous institutions regulated primarily by competition (for students, faculty and research dollars) and by consumer choice (federal dollars following students to institutions of their choosing). There is, in addition, an independent system of accreditation.”

In my next column, I’ll write more about Senator Alexander’s position, the folly of “No College Student Left Behind Act,” and a viable alternative to boosting the affordability and graduation rates in our nation’s higher education system that “the Gipper” himself came up with.