If you support the Department of Education, please tell me WHY?

As a homeschooling mom, I suppose it's in my DNA to oppose the existence of the Department of Education but I do so with conviction and facts to back up my beliefs. Of all of the things we've entrusted to our government (retirement, health care, the environment, charity, etc. etc.) perhaps the most shocking, to me, is the education of our children.

Most of us can agree that government is, in a word, INEPT. Yet, we are expected to trust that the Department of Education has everything taken care of when it comes to educational standards, benchmarks, facilities and schedules. Why? Where does this blind trust come from? We have become so dependant that most parents feel completely unable to assume responsibility for their child's education (or, perhaps, they just don't want to. It is easier, after all, to just leave it all to the government).

People think I'm crazy when I speak of my disgust for the Department of Education but few are able to articulate the reasons why they support its existence. I am a reasonable person able to make decisions based on facts. So, if I am overlooking actual (and by actual, I mean real) facts, I am open to hearing them.

The latest issue of Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College, addresses this very issue. If you haven't already, please read this piece from Charles Murray, the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Murray makes the case that the Department of Education is unconstitutional, spends ridiculous amounts of money with virtually no measurable improvement to education and is basically at the mercy of the education lobby groups. Since its inception in 1980, the state of education has not improved and we continue to churn out college graduates who have learned nothing, are in debt and are often unemployable. Is this system worth maintaining? Help me out. If you believe in the Department of Education, please tell me why.

Just FYI, "The American Enterprise Institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise. AEI pursues these unchanging ideals through independent thinking, open debate, reasoned argument, facts and the highest standards of research and exposition. Without regard for politics or prevailing fashion, we dedicate our work to a more prosperous, safer and more democratic nation and world."