On Wednesday, in his State of the Union address, President Bush said his 2006 budget will eliminate more than 150 government programs because of either inefficiency or duplication of services.
“The principle here is clear,” he said. “Taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely or not at all.”
That’s a good line. What boggles me is how he said it with a straight face right before transitioning into No Child Left Behind — talk about a waste of money.
George Bush was a powerhouse for education as governor of Texas. By requiring the use of phonics and tying school funding to performance, Texas raised its literacy rate, especially among minorities. Though it wasn’t a perfect plan, it was a great step forward for education in the Lone Star State.
In 2000, when Bush wanted to take his education plan national, I was optimistic, though soon disappointed. Since no one trusts statistics anyway, I’ll spare you the numbers and just suggest that the results for No Child Left Behind have been less than spectacular.
What works in Texas doesn’t work in Detroit. And what works in Connecticut doesn’t work in Oregon. Now, the problem is certainly more complicated than that, but that’s my point: The problems with education are complex matters that vary from city to city, state to state and region to region. There’s no cookie-cutter fix for the stupefaction of America. There’s no magic federal formula for tackling these issues. Although I don’t have the answers, I can assure you they are not going to be found in a federal bureaucracy.
A radical, though perhaps wise, solution would be to do away not only with No Child Left Behind, but with the entire federal Department of Education. Imagine if the $56 billion the federal government plans to spend on education next year was instead raised and spent locally, addressing local concerns and local priorities. It may not be as crazy as it sounds.
Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch has been celebrated as a guru of modern achievement. Taking the reigns of GE in the early ’80s, Welch engineered a turnaround that prepared GE to compete with well-financed and highly effective firms from overseas. One of the keys in GE’s strategy was to pull out of any market where GE was not either number one or number two.
Every year we spend more on education. But, as President Bush once asked: “Is our children learning?” Not really, especially compared to the rest of the industrialized world. American children speak only one language (and that only barely), can hardly do math and wouldn’t know the difference between Montaigne, Machiavelli or a hole in their heads.
The federal government’s quest to educate our young people is fairing only slightly better than its war on drugs. We’re not number one, we’re not number two. Maybe it’s time for Uncle Sam to get out of the
education game.
And while we’re on the subject of government waste, what’s the deal with the Post Office? Every year it loses more and more money. Meanwhile, FedEx and UPS are raking it in hand over fist. In fact, the delivery market has proved so profitable that there is now a third company trying to get in on the action.
Back in the day when mail was delivered by horse over insecure terrain, it was probably best for the government to take responsibility for delivering the mail. But now that multiple organizations have proved they can turn a profit in the delivery business, wouldn’t it make more sense to privatize the mail? That way companies like FedEx and UPS can do what they do best: deliver; and the government can do what it does best: regulate.
Of course, none of this will ever take place. One of the immutable laws of government is that it’s easy to expand yet almost impossible to shrink. The best we can hope for is to restrain growth and limit waste.
On a more local, politically realistic level, we can stop expecting the federal government to educate our children. These are local issues that require local solutions. And though no one likes to hear it, we’re probably going to have to open our wallets if education is something we really value.

[email protected]