I agree with you Paleocon, but it should go further. First of all, the U.S. Department of Education should be abolished. This department was created by Jimmy Carter as a Payback and Gift to the National Teacher Unions who were primarily responsible for the election of this incompetent socialist.

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. Department now has an annual budge of over 200 billion dollars, and not one cent of that goes to pay a teacher salary.  Under the Obama Education Plan, which was crafted by Bill Ayers, his old communist terrorist buddy back in Chicago, the local and state governments are stripped of their last vestiges of autonomy and local control.  Under the Obama Education Plan, they plan to have Mandatory Attendance Laws passed that start at age 2.  Yes, you heard that right.  Obama wants to implement policy that will Make It Mandatory that Parents Relinquish and Turn Over Their children as early as age 2 to Government Day Care Centers, euphemistically called Early Childhood Learning Centers.  Their aim is to insure that not Even One Child Is Left Behind, who might on the off chance go un-brainwashed, and dumbed down by a public, government run school system.

I have long advocated for the abolishment of the U.S. Department of Education, which would end the Teacher Union's stranglehold on Public Schools.  But, in the interim, I have encouraged parents at every local level in the country, to march on their schools and school boards and Tell Them That They, the Citizens, are taking Charge of their Local Schools, and then the schools would be run in a way that Reflect Local Traditions, Customs, Values, Language, Ethics, Civic Responsibility, etc.

The California Leftists and other Anti-American, Anti-Family communists and assorted perverts have all but destroyed the public education system, and it has a direct correlation to the U.S. Dept. of Education and Teacher Union controls.  If we are to save our nation, we have to take Back Our Children and our Schools and put them under Local Control where they belong.