Localize Education- get rid of the Department of Education and Common Core

My thanks to Pro for instigating this discussion. Pro's argument hinges entirely on the mistaken assumption that the US Education system is a Federal education system. Pro wrongly supposes that the Dept. of Education is the architect of the US Education system and wrongly imagines that the Common Core initiative is a Federal instrument. In fact, The US school system is already what Pro argues it ought to be. Pro proposes 50 different school systems governed by 50 states among which competition ought to foster innovation and adaptation. But Pro demonstrates no awareness that the American school system is and always has been governed by a far more localized, granular, independent, and diverse set of political entities known as school districts. There are roughly 15,000 public school systems in the US, of which roughly 13,500 (90%) employ local school district governments to establish school curricula, budgets, and policies for 87% of K-12 schoolchildren. Most of these special-purpose local governments are overseen by independently elected school boards and the majority maintain significant discretionary powers to raise taxes, disperse funding, etc. Private schools and home schools educate the remaining 13% of children with even more independence and diversity. Most states reserve a fair amount of authority to establish educational standards, mandate testing, and maintain accountability within these local governments. [1] With a high degree of variability, school districts raise about 44% of funds themselves, another 44% comes from states, city, and county coffers and 12% comes from Federal dispersements. [2]Con maintains therefore that education in the US is already significantly localized and to a greater degree (by two orders of magnitude) than recommended by Pro. Con refutes the notion of a "one size fits all" Federal curriculum. In fact, the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act explicitly forbids the establishment of a national curriculum. [3] Pro correctly asserts that the 10th amendment limits Federal oversight of education. Con further refutes Pro's unsupported assertion that the Common Core initiative is either unconstitutional or irrational. Common Core standards and testing were developed by the National Governor's Association for the purpose of improving consistency and comparability between the wide diversity of school systems. This was in direct response to business leader's complaints regarding large regional and local educational deficiencies in graduated students. Constitutional restrictions on the Federal Government don't apply and moreover, the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act prohibits the Department of Education from attempting to influence, incentivize, or coerce State adoption of the Common Core State Standards. [4]Con's characterization of Common Core as "irrational" undermines his support of innovation through competition since competition without consistent benchmarking is non-determinative. To illustrate, let's employ a foot race metaphor in which each student is a runner. Teams are free to train, coach, and support runners as they see fit but require competition to evaluate performance relative to other teams. State Governments host competitions and serve as referees but if each referee uses a different set of standards, the results can't be compared nationally and local descrepencies cause some regional teams to never receive professional consideration. Therefore, a consistent set of standards (Common Core) is developed to allow the evaluation of competitors across the board. Losing teams are likely to find faults in the rules and some adjustment to the standards may prove necessary but such is the nature of competition and fault-finding doesn't make the necessity of standardization any less rational. The debate title suggests that the US do away with the Department of Education but the text of the debate does not take up that subject. Perhaps we'll see some arguments to support this proposal in the next round. If we were to place the Department of Education's role in the above metaphor, we might see that Department's function as the principal record-keeper and publisher of rules and results. Pro and Con agree that competition between a variety of educational curricula encourages innovation and improvement but Pro's characterization of education in the US as monolithic is simply not consistent with the facts. Competition exists today and serves to improve our present system. Removing (admittedly ammenable) devices designed to facilitate that competition such as Common Core or the Department of Education, would only weaken the competition Pro wishes to promote. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org...[2] https://www.newamerica.org...[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org...[4] http://www.usatoday.com...