Duncan Donuts

Arne Duncan, our overly-lauded Secretary of Education, has requested that the educational standards that were put in place with "No Child Left Behind" now be left behind in all of our 50 (or is it 57?) states (see The Department of Non-Education).  This is after hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money have been lavished on the Department of Education since 2009 ... including even on a SWAT team that is specific to this department (Arne's Army?).  If you don't believe me on this, please read Mark Styne's comments on this ridiculously spendthrift item ... Swat the SWAT Team.  Even The Barry's 2009 economic stimulus program allocated $100 billion to America's educational lushness (see Government Numbers).

Lest you forget, our Department of Education educates not one child.  All it does is create layers after layers of bureaucratic fluff that mollifies liberals into believing that we are serious about fixing our flawed educational system.  And this is despite the fact that we already are spending more money on educating our children that any other country ... and keep getting sub-par results (see: Spending and Results).  Perhaps the lesson of Atlanta (see: Atlanta Scandal ) should be taken seriously ... effective education cannot be a top-down process.  We must first re-learn how to teach our children and this is not a function of spending more money.  It may well require that we sweep out many of the educational administrators and focus instead on how we teach our teachers (the "what" they teach much more than the "how" they teach) ... and burn everything that Albert Shanker, the former head of the American Federation of Teachers, ever wrote.

Afterward: The reason I say this spiteful thing is that Albert Shanker, past president of the American Federation of Teachers (now deceased),  was once asked why he didn't pay more attention to the slipping educational results for our children. His response was, in effect, "When they start paying union dues." Yuck!!