WND EXCLUSIVE

TED CRUZ: ABOLISH DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Schooling 'too important' to leave to 'unelected bureaucrats'

Bob Unruh

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says that, if elected, one of his strategies to return America to its constitutional moorings would be to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.

“I don’t think the federal government should have any role in education,” he said. “I am a constitutionalist, and I have spent my entire adult life fighting to defend the Constitution and fighting to defend the Bill of Rights. We ought to block-grant that money, send it back to the states, send it to the local governments,” he said in a recent radio interview with Mike Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association.

“You know, sometimes folks in the press will characterize those of us who want to end the federal role in education as somehow being opposed to education,” he said. “But you know, Mike, it’s exactly the opposite. Education is too important, I believe, for it to be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Washington.

“It needs to be at the state level, or even better at the local level, where parents have direct control over the education of our kids.”

Cruz was interviewed on HSLDA’s “Homeschool Heartbeat” radio program, which also interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., about the issue.

Cruz outlined his hopes for the country.

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“We have gotten away from the principles and values that built this country. We have gotten away from the free-market principles and constitutional liberties and Judeo-Christian values that have been the foundation of making America the greatest nation in the history of the world. … I’m running to bring us back to the principles that built America, and to reignite the promise of America.”

He also affirmed his Christian faith.

“I became a Christian when I was 8 years old at the summer youth camp of Clay Road Baptist Church. And it is – being born again, being saved by the redeeming blood of Jesus – is central to who I am. … That being said, I am running for public office, and the public office that I’m running for is not to be pastor-in-chief.”

He explained that a civic official is not charged with propagating his faith, which is “our responsibility individually as Christians, the responsibility of pastors and of the church.”

His responsibility as an elected official is to “defend the constitutional rights of every American,” he said.

HSLDA is the world’s premiere organization advocating for homeschooling and homeschool rights.

Cruz told the group the federal government should not “have any role in education.”

“I believe we should abolish the federal Department of Education altogether,” he said.

“Under the Tenth Amendment, the powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states and to the people. And so if I’m elected president, in the very first days in office, I intend to instruct the federal Department of Education that Common Core ends that day.”

He said the federal government should not get in the way of parents.

“I think all of the forms of school choice are choices that parents are entitled to make, that they should be able to make, and that the federal government should not be doing anything to frustrate their ability to ensure that their children get the very best education possible,” he said.

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In Farris’ interview with Rubio, the Florida senator said there’s a role for government in higher education, through grants and students loans.

But he said pre-K through grade 12 is “primarily almost entirely a local government function, of school boards.”

“I think parents need to be the final and ultimate arbiter of what their children learn, where they learn, and how.”

He said homeschooling not only is valid, “you see from the empirical evidence that homeschool children are outperforming many children attending traditional schools.”

Rubio said he views homeschooling, and “especially the explosion of homeschooling in American over the last 15 years, as a great development.”

Regarding Common Core, he said states and parents need to be making curriculum choices.

“What I don’t want to see is the federal government decides: ‘Here’s the set of standards. And you’re either going to follow this set of standards that we’ve decided at the federal level, or you’re going to lose your federal funding.’ I don’t want to see that happen at all.”

He also described his Christian faith as “the single greatest influence in my life.”

He said as president, he “can’t impose my beliefs” but would view issues “through the lens of my faith that says that I am to glorify God in everything I do.”

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Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/ted-cruz-abolish-department-of-education/#psCVPS507ryZ3G8h.99

My comments: Ted Cruz is right, the Federal Department of Education should be abolished.