Posted on 03/23/2018 9:58:02 AM PDT by Signalman
Republicans, not to be confused with conservatives, have produced a $1.3 trillion with a “T” spending bill to direct the money we borrow from China. For all the crowing about reducing the unconstitutional federal footprint in education, funding for the Department of Education (USED) will receive an increase – that’s increase, not decrease – of $3.9 billion. Generally, increasing a department’s budget isn’t the preferred method of winding down its responsibilities.
So this budget reveals zero federal intention to restore local control in education. It also reveals critical information about the current debate on the latest fad: “evidence-based policymaking.” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), through their bill entitled “Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act” (FEPA), insist that the federal government needs ever more data on American citizens and ever more authority to mix and match that data.
They say this will allow the feds to determine which programs are working (almost none of them) and which aren’t (almost all of them).
Skeptics have pointed out for years that the actual effectiveness of a federal program – documented with reams of research – is apparently irrelevant in deciding whether to continue that program. (This point was made at a January hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee, called to examine the pros and cons of FEPA-type data-collection and -analysis.) Why, then, should we increase such data-mining if the government plans to ignore the results?
Exhibit A: the proposed spending deal’s increase in funding for (let’s take two at random) Head Start and after-school programs.
Head Start has been around since 1965, the year the federal government blew up the Constitution by taking over education policy. What do we know about the program’s effects on participants? From literally hundreds of studies (see compendia here and here), we know that Head Start is either ineffective or actually harmful to the children subjected to it.
Children’s verbal and math skills seem to be unaffected by Head Start participation; any positive effects seem to “fade out” by second or third grade; and children who emerge from Head Start actually demonstrate more problematic behaviors in kindergarten and first grade. Multiple studies on both Head Start and similar state programs have reached the unsurprising conclusion that young children tend to do better in school and in life when they spend more time with their parents and less in a government institution.
Might as well call it the Obamabus bill.
50% of the Federal programs could be axed and the average American would not even notice.
Too late. He signed.
Winning!
Down with MAGA, back to 1990’s Don the Con.
This is winning?
Sarcasm!
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