I think John Stossel sums it up well.

"The department doesn’t teach kids or pay teachers. It comes up with studies, test requirements, and one-size-fits-all rules that limit what schools can do if they want federal money. That money gets taken from states and shipped to Washington, D.C., which then ships it back to states if they do something the department likes. On that long journey, plenty of the money disappears into the hands of bureaucrats.

Turn education back over to local governments, the way it was not so long ago. Let entrepreneurs and local governments compete to improve schools."

OMG, im arguing with a person who would sooner look at a work of fiction as if its real, Try side stepping and using strawman tactics to desprove "REAL" problems a country is facing, Mis quotes Martin Luther Jr King more then he should, and thinks its ok for people to go around attacking innocent people, smashing up peoples homes,cars,shops etc.

I live in europe and was planning on going to Paris this year to bring my kids to Disney Land, With the way things are going over there at the moment that might not be possible.

Plus unlike you i can see whats happening in france as being wrong on so many levels, im not the one making up excuses for why Rioting and attacking innocent people, destorying their cars and homes and shops as being "OK" . I can see whats going on with my own eyes since the is plenty of videos thats "Not" "Fiction" .

You on the other hand keep commenting on european problems and denying whats right in front of your eyes, or trying to make up excuses with mis quotes and lies as to why its ok. You also ignore parts of peoples comments that you cant answer and try direct the conversation in a whole different direction.

This alone makes it impossible to talk with you on such subjects, and thats why it would be better if you just stopped talking about european problems in the first place...

Anyway i've had enough of going over this with you as its clear what you are doing, so have a good day and good luck to you..

I could be sold on the idea of abolishing the federal department of education, but no viable alternative has been provided.  Local governments already have the bulk of the educational funds, and for the most part have the discretion to do what they want.  There are incentives to doing things like adopting common core standards or nclb standards, but these are actually not mandated.  As a teacher, the stuff that the federal DOE is a distant fourth concern after city, district, and state standards.

Entreprenuers running schools has been rife with fraud and abuse.  Not that this DOESN'T happen in public schools to an extent, but the degree of fraud in charter schools has been utterly obscene in some cases.  If entreprenuers are involved, then you need strict oversight, which would require a department of eductation in some capacity.  

 If schools are funded 100% by municipal government, that's going to exacerbate the already huge difference between schools in high income and low income areas.  Ideally, the federal DOE would do more to correct this imbalance.  For instance, the quality of eductation that exists in Long Island is typically far better than what is in NYC because of the fact that education funding is almost exclusively based on property taxes.  There needs to be some corrective force, which the federal DOE can serve as, although as you rightly point out, it has not been effective in this. 

So, I agree with the problem, but the solution you're endorsing does not fix it.

Im sick of you talking about the problems Europe is facing as if you live here.

School choice can help rid of failing schools, more competition could lead to better oversight of corruption, and schools can still get federal funding without huge, useless department doing it.

DOE hasn't existed very long and hasn't made things better. Essentially, get rid of it completely or reduce what it does signficantly.

So far, school choice hasn't done those things.  

School choice, in the form of charter schools, has been rife with abuse.  The oversight has simply not been there, and competition hasn't done anything to help.  Competition between schools, whether public, charter, or private, has mostly served as motivation to fudge numbers and to eliminate the lowest performers.  

School choice hasn't had a chance to thrive yet so lets not pretend competition truly exist. School unions have been at war with charter schools and hindered their progress.

Public schools often like to ignore test scores but national tests show which are doing a poor job. Either way the direction Trump seems to be moving things can't be worse. We keep spending more on K-12 eductation with no results.