Issues > Education

The No Child Left Behind Act is further evidence that the federal government is out of its element when it comes to education. In attempting to create national standards of review and expectation for a country of 300 million people, the program has succeeded in seemingly pleasing no one.

This is the same essential flaw in the U.S. Department of Education, which has only existed since 1980. Twenty-six years of greater federal oversight and expenditure on education later, and we have little to show for it. The quality of American education has certainly not improved at the pace that federal spending has escalated.

Schools are far more suited to being run at the local level. Local school boards can better target the needs and demands of their students, and they can respond to pressing needs with greater efficiency and expediency than a national agency.

One aspect of education that Americans should demand of their school boards, and of public education, is a reguired class on personal finance at the high school level. Think micro-micro-economics. Before they head out into the adult world of work and paychecks, they can learn the basics about budgeting and saving, about credit and interest, about investing and borrowing, and so on. These are money matters that every responsible adult needs a good grasp on to be financially stable and successful, but which many people fail to learn until it's too late. Requiring instruction in these matters before setting our students loose on the world will make for an America that's more financially literate, and in less need of federal oversight over our wallets and pocketbooks.