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January 18, 2024

Our government has benefitted from momentum, but it can be stopped. Revamping the Department of Education (“DOE”) can show the way.

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Momentum is a physical phenomenon that is simply explained by the phrase ‘an object in motion tends to stay in motion; an object at rest tends to stay at rest.’ When entities are growing and thriving, momentum means those trends don’t stop.

The term is often used in sports to explain the success of a sports team, either in a game or over a season. Momentum is demonstrated in the business world by organizations like Google, Facebook, Tesla, and Apple, growing from startups to massive entities that seem to control nearly everything we see and do. Momentum is important, but nothing in sports or business compares to the momentum we see in government’s growth.

Big Government momentum started with the New Deal, which began in 1933 and marks the beginning of the federal government avalanche affecting our lives from ‘the cradle to the grave.’ When World War Two occurred, the flag of patriotism was planted at the front of that avalanche, while the Korean War spawned the birth of the ‘Military Industrial Complex.’ America’s “conservatives” were now in on the ride!

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The Johnson administration, recognizing that Democrat party was the more logical ally of Big Government, added to the avalanche in a massive way with the Great Society legislation enacted in 1964 and 1965. Even a so-called “conservative” president like Nixon sped up the avalanche with the creation of the EPA in 1970. Not to cede this catastrophe to the Republicans, Jimmy Carter created the DOE in 1979, thus ensuring future generations would be instructed in what to think!

Image: Department of Education building by Coolcaesar. CC BY-SA 3.0.

If you wonder how this plays out over the long term, the household survey reported a plunge in total US employment of approximately 680,000 jobs in 2023. Zero Hedge reports that the US Government added approximately 672,000 jobs in the same year, meaning that the private sector lost nearly 1.35 million jobs!

Currently, any attempt to slow Big Government’s expansion usually occurs during the comedy skit known as the Congressional Budget. As most of the budget already has growth codified by earlier legislative acts, thus confirming the benefits of momentum, the background noise that occurs is usually described as a ‘Hiroshima-like attack on American values’ and ends, as expected, with more money and bigger Government. This approach is the football equivalent of placing all the defensive players on the line to sack the quarterback, leaving all the receivers open!

But it doesn’t need to be that way. To stop the Big Government momentum, we do not need drama or even sacking the opposing quarterback. Instead, we need a plan that proves how and why smaller government can be beneficial. The target is so obvious that it is embarrassing to use the term ‘low hanging fruit’, but there it is: The DOE. The failure of the American education system is now a cliche!

Let’s look at reading scores in America. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, in 2022, only one-third of students in fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades are proficient in reading. When it comes to math, on the PISA exam given last year to 620,00 students in 81 countries, the US ranking plunged overall, with an all-time low in math. Even looking at the big picture, based upon the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, 71 percent of our students lack basic academic skills at the end of their 13-year Kindergarten through grade 12 education. This decline started not long after Jimmy Carter created the DOE.

But this is where insightful and strategic leadership is needed because any cut in the Government will be spun as destructive. Why? Because the alternative is never explained in a positive way. The way to fix the DOE’s failures is to redefine the agency’s mission.