Senator Mullin: Democrats' Approach to Education is Insanity

The Department of Education's Ineffectiveness

• 💡 Senator Mullin argues that the current approach to the Department of Education exemplifies the definition of insanity by repeating the same actions and expecting different results.
• 🎯 Since the department's inception in 1979, when the U.S. ranked first in education, it now ranks 34th, despite over a trillion dollars spent and thousands of employees.
• 📉 If the Department of Education were a business, it would have been shut down long ago due to its lack of improvement.

Federal Overreach and Bureaucracy

• 🏛️ Federal requirements mandate teachers to teach to tests, and student councils must be student-led, diminishing local control.
• 🚫 School boards are hindered from running their schools effectively due to the fear of lawsuits handed down from the Department of Education.
• 📞 The Education Department's help center failed to answer 4 million calls from students, despite managing $1.5 trillion in federal student loans.
• 📈 While federal student loan debt grew, the number of school administrators and bureaucrats soared by 700%, far outpacing the growth in the number of teachers.

Restoring Local Control in Education

• 🔑 President Trump and Secretary DeVos aim to return control of schools to local communities and educators.
• 🗣️ Mullin advocates for a return to the pre-1979 model, where teachers and local governments had the autonomy to decide what was best for their students.
• 🌍 This decentralized approach allowed communities, whether in Oklahoma or New York, to tailor education to their specific needs, leading to greater success.
• ⚔️ He notes that the U.S. achieved significant victories like World War I and World War II without a federal Department of Education.