The Dept of Education should be eliminated. Education should be left to the States. Common Core is an opportunity for the Federal Government to indoctrinate students nationwide. They already have enough propaganda to deal with.

The academia-jet set coalition is attempting to tame the American character by the deliberate breeding of helplessness and resignation in those incubators of lethargy known as Progressive schools, which are dedicated to the task of crippling a child's mind by arresting his cognitive development. (See The Comprachicos in my book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.) It appears, however, that the progressive rich will be the first victims of their own social theories: it is the children of the well-to-do who emerge from expensive nursery schools and colleges as hippies, and destroy the remnants of their paralyzed brains by means of drugs.

The middle class has created an antidote which is perhaps the most hopeful movement of recent years: the spontaneous, unorganized, grass-roots revival of the Montessori system of education.a system aimed at the development of a child's cognitive, i.e., rational, faculty.

Ayn Rand

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/education.html

In a letter to John Adams entitled "The Natural Aristocracy"(1813), Jefferson states that in the first session of the Virginia State Legislature after the Declaration of Independence, laws were passed to undermine a "pseudo-aristocracy" based on wealth. However, his last effort to bring about a new social stratification, the "Bill for a more general diffusion of learning" (Jefferson, 549), was rejected. According to the bill those students with better abilities continued to higher education regardless of class, thereby allowing for the rise of qualified, natural leaders, which would accordingly nullify class rule.

Jefferson's rejected scheme was based on the principle that universal education results in a population of good citizens. The plan involved an educational progression that started with elementary school. These schools would be free to all children and be established within a day's ride of every citizen; however, attendance would not be compulsory. Subjects taught at elementary schools would include reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography. The six objectives of primary education according to Jewett (1997) were as follows:

to give citizens the knowledge needed to conduct personal business
to allow the citizen to calculate, express, and preserve ideas and accounts in writing
to improve morals and faculties through reading
to comprehend the citizen's duties to his neighbors and country
to know rights and develop prudence in their administration
to act with intelligence and faithfulness in social relations.

The students demonstrating greater academic aptitude in elementary education then enrolled in higher grades at regional institutions. These schools provided professional preparation through instruction in sciences and languages. From these district schools, the most promising students could enroll in the university, which represented a combination of professional schools. The proposed university was visionary in that it included an elective system within a course of study, had no religious ties, substituted classical curriculum with practical subjects, and instituted a liberalization of disciplinary codes. According to Jefferson elementary education was more important than university learning because it was safer to have all the population enlightened rather than a select few as in Europe (Jewett, 1997). In Paris, as the U.S. Minister to France, Jefferson was appalled by the "ignorance, poverty, and oppression of the masses of people" (Peterson, 360).

By 1818, Jefferson acquired partial passage of his Bill, as the Legislature approved a $45,000 expenditure for elementary education of the poor and another $15,000 to support the development of a university. Jefferson eventually established the University of Virginia, but did not see the passage of universal education at the public expense. However, Jefferson is recognized as the first advocate of free education in common schools supported by local taxation (Jewett, 1997).

B-b-b-b-but what would the State do with those Children growing up without it's benevolent guidance? :sarcasm intended:

"As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. ~ Adolf Hitler

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." - John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." - Joseph Stalin

"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion." - Joseph Goebbels