While it seems many have seen the DOE as superfluous or egregious since President Carter (no relation) established it in 1979, Dr. Thomas -- a progressive voice mind you -- says it is finally time to kill this beast:
Speaking as a witness from within the bowels of the Ronald Reagan administration when President Reagan gave the committee responsible for A Nation at Risk their prime directives, Gerald Holton ended with Reagan’s emphatic “And please abolish that abomination, the Department of Education.”
About thirty years later, we must now admit it is time to invoke the Reagan directive because the USDOE cannot be any other kind of government than the very worst kind....While Reagan’s characterizing the USDOE as an “abomination” may have been premature in the early 1980s, we must admit now that Reagan was prescient."
Thomas decries the devolution of the DOE under No Child Left Behind and states that under President Obama and Arne Duncan, even the best of NCLB has been lost. Well, warped, really. A bastion of rhetorical double-speak, half-truths formulated on the least viable evidence and supported by those least capable and credible in vetting it (read "those with little-to-no teaching experience or expertise in education research), and Communistic government over-reach, the Department of Education serves no purpose which can accurately be described as serving the public interest (private interests? That's another story!) nor the greater good. So, it has to go.
Please read the entirely of Thomas' piece *here.* Note also that he has a great one-stop list of recent links regarding Value-Added Measures proposals designed to transform teacher education for the worse, which is a plan in step with pretty much every other destructive policy Arne Duncan has enacted or supported in his role as The Arne-bomination.
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| The DOE's evolution under the Anre-bomination is a devolution. Devil-ution? |
Long-time readers of Marvel comics know their character the Abomination is a formidable opponent. He's actually a nemesis of the Hulk -- The HULK, for goodness' sakes -- and is smarter, sneakier, stronger, and less bound by conscience and science than Ol' Jade Jaws. He is dead-set upon destroying the Hulk, but, thankfully, despite his vast resources, many government-funded, he fails more than he succeeds.
It strikes me that one could see the entirety of the anti-ed reform community as a slumbering Hulk, a juggernaut that can take down this sly abomination, if only it accepts the bravery it takes to engage the enemy and draws on the strength of its hundreds of thousands of would-be warriors. One reason why Hulk bests Abomination is while Abomination's strength begins as superior to Hulk's -- by some accounts twice that of Pugilistic Purple Pants -- but it is optimized. As the Hulk channels his anger into action, his strength increases exponentially, giving him more than enough raw power to banish the wrong-doer. His enemy may be an abomination, but Hulk is a confederation, a conglomerate, a coalition. Within one brave organizing body, there are multitudes enough to bring down the admittedly powerful but misguided Abomination.
So too is there power to abolish the Arne-bomination that is the Department of Education.
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