The Miseducation Of Rand Paul

Among the many crazy items Rand Paul wants to get accomplished as Senator is to kill the US Department of Education, which would take hundreds of millions of dollars away from Kentucky schools.  Nobody seems to mind, apparently.

Students from poor families would feel the most pain if calls by Kentucky Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul and fellow Tea Party movement conservatives to abolish the U.S. Department of Education are successful, officials and policy experts say.

"Although federal funding makes up a comparatively small portion of the total funding for public (preschool-12th grade) education in Kentucky, many of our schools rely heavily on these monies to serve their most at-risk students," said Lisa Gross, spokeswoman with the Kentucky Department of Education.

States traditionally get 10 percent of their education dollars from the federal government — $429 million in Kentucky, according to the state.

In Fayette County, that translates to $25 million, nearly 65 percent of which is used to help level the academic playing field for disadvantaged and challenged students through smaller class sizes, reading and math enrichment programs, and classroom assistants.

I wonder who Rand Paul expects to make up that difference.   The Kentucky taxpayer?  Kentucky is one of the poorest states in the nation and without education it will stay that way.  Doesn't seem to bother Rand Paul any.  Guess he figures the state should turn to homeschooling.

At a gathering last week for young Republicans at Henry Clay High School in Lexington, Paul reiterated his support for "sending less money to Washington" and returning control of education solely to states and local communities. Paul made similar comments earlier this month at a Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce function in Covington.

"The Department of Education, I think, should be done away with," Paul told the chamber in a speech recorded by cn|2 Politics. "It doesn't mean we won't still be involved with education, it would just be done at the local and state level. There is no constitutional mandate for the federal government to be involved in education."

Send less money to Washington?  Kentucky gets $1.51 in federal benefits for every dollar it sends to Washington.  Rand Paul apparently thinks its unfair for Kentucky to get that, so he wants Kentucky to get less money from the feds, I suppose.

How that will make Kentucky more competitive in the future, I have no clue.  Of course, neither does Rand Paul.