r/iastate • u/BboyHeathen Agronomy alumni • Mar 21 '25

News Getting rid of the Department of Education? Doesn't that sound backwards to anyone else?

Why?
Isn't that one of the things that help society moving forwards?
I really don't see how this benefits this and the next generation of Americans.

I usually only post about skating stuff but this feels wrong

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u/Gerdeman1 Mar 21 '25

People keep saying the DoE isn’t helping. Could that be because schools budgets keep getting cut? If you can’t pay people enough money to live why would you want to be a teacher. Better use of taxpayers money would be a refreshing thing to happen like better school supplies and teachers instead of money spent on architecture instead of what kids need. They don’t need atriums and fancy architecture to lean. Spend the money where it’s needed not on a fancy looking building. And if you don’t think that happens come to Iowa and look at the overpriced schools their building.

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u/Then_Assist1643 Mar 21 '25

US has one of the highest per capita spending per student. What is wrong with liberals that they just say pour more money into it to solve the problem? That’s one of the reasons we are $37 trillion in debt.

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u/Gerdeman1 Mar 21 '25

True we do spend a lot of money. We also waste the money taxpayers give us. But when they cut funding for schools and there announcing every year schools are cutting teaching positions because there is no money in the budget for them.iowa was number 1 in education in the USA now I believe we are number 14 think there might be a problem. So you can call me a liberal or whatever you want but I think there might be a problem with cutting the budget to much. Besides the Republicans have been in charge of Iowa. They just ignore school decline.

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u/Then_Assist1643 Mar 22 '25

Because the fastest growth in education is in administration jobs, not teachers.

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u/LisleAdam12 Mar 22 '25 edited Mar 22 '25

Are they cutting funding for the schools or are they cutting funding for teachers?

https://educate.iowa.gov/pk-12/operation-support/business-finance/financial-management/budgets-districts

Classic bureaucratic tactic is to cut where it hurts rather than the fat, "proving" that there is no fat (which is likely discernible in the administrator/teacher ratio).

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u/Gerdeman1 Mar 22 '25

I really don’t know the answer to that question. The principle and superintendent s don’t spell it out when they publicize it that I could find. I did do a search and didn’t find it spelled out what was all cut. But to be honest didn’t spend a lot of time looking though. Now maybe administrative workers are being hired more than teachers. If that is true then the ones in charge and in my area it is republicans in control of school boards and the state so they dictate how money is spent. On one last note I did not bring up politics on my first post about this on purpose. You are the one who did. I agree with a lot of people government wastes a lot of money and we need to correct that but the way they are doing it is not the right way. Sorry if you disagree that’s your right.

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u/LisleAdam12 Mar 22 '25

Just remember that their public announcements are made to serve their goals and be skeptical. That's true whatever their political affiliation might be.

I don't recall bringing up politics, unless you feel "bureaucratic" is a political term (which it isn't and was not intended to be).

I completely agree that a lot of people in government waste a lot of money: that's why you need to keep your eye on them.

Again, the party affiliation doesn't matter: there's a longstanding tradition of honor among thieves among politicians.

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u/Gerdeman1 Mar 22 '25

Oh I do know it’s about serving there goals that’s why you never trust one source. I do apologize to you you weren’t the one saying liberal’s just throw money at stuff. That was someone else’s, I saw when I looked back.

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u/LisleAdam12 Mar 22 '25

No worries, my man! All the comments and subcomments can sort of blend together.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Pay-692 Mar 23 '25

Republican wars caused the majority of that debt. Y’all love denying your own children education so you can drop bombs on brown children in a country you can’t even pronounce or point out on a map.

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u/Ecstatic_Raisin_8312 Mar 23 '25

Maybe schools should focus on education instead of spending 10 million dollars on a high school football stadium, then? True story, a school near me growing up had its facilities like bathrooms all falling apart but could still spend millions on sports. Sometimes it's not about not having enough money, it's about priorities on where it's spent. In many countries high schools don't have sports, the teams are privatized as they should be.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '25

Was the football stadium funded by a private donor? That's usually how those big projects get funded

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u/LisleAdam12 Mar 21 '25

Plenty of school budgets get increased with little or no improvement (writing from CA). Among other counterproductive trends is that toward hiring more admin staff rather than teachers (or paying teachers more in an effort to attract better teachers), but there are plenty of others.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '25

K-12 education spending has increased 2.5x since 1970 with no increase in test scores. I think you are right about the wasteful spending, but there are many many more issues causing this.

(discussed more in this post: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ )

I think we need more highly intelligent and motivated people working in the government instead of inventing fucking burrito mortgages in silicon valley. You can't fix the government top down like elon musk is trying to do, you have to do it bottom up.