You Can’t Buy Smarts

Rand Paul knows the education system is failing

"I believe in more local control over education where states, localities, and parents can play a much more significant role in their children's schooling. That's one of the reasons I want to abolish the Department of Education," Paul said.

“Money can’t buy smarts,” said the Ghost of Teachers Past.

Not so long ago, what would have been a commonsense statement now looks like an esoteric prophecy from the Old Testament. What happened?

In the early 2000s, the U.S. Department of Education adopted a model that pledged to “jumpstart the performance of failing students and hold teachers and administrators accountable.”

By 2021, even left-leaning publications like Salon were decrying the “market-based strategy” all the rage in education that turned students into commodities and learning into an algorithm. The scheme dehumanized students by treating them like machines that could be souped up with the latest costly gadgets to come off the corporate assembly line. Failure was inevitable.

But the fog o…