Education is a huge and troubled sector of our economy (we spend over $600 billion annually) and society.  While most conservatives tend to favor local control and parental choice, Dr. Ben Carson is quite comfortable with Big Government’s role.

Carson’s views on education range from conservative goals such as advocating for school choice, parental involvement, and overturning Common Core to the other side of the spectrum, calling for “improving” the Department of Education, expanding the agency’s role to include withholding funds from universities involved in biased political speech, and making public schools more “equal”  through  “redistribution.” 

Last year, Carson focused on the disparities in educational opportunities between students attending schools in the inner city and those students in more affluent schools. 

In an April 2014 Politico article, Carson said that pooling resources and spreading the wealth around equally among school districts across the country is a viable solution.  From Politico:

If you happen to be in an affluent community, there’s a lot more money for the schools, better facilities, everything. All that does is perpetuate the situation.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the money in a pot and redistribute it throughout the country so that public schools are equal, whether you’re in a poor area or a wealthy area?

Might a wealthy person object to funding a school system in a poor community on the other side of the country?

Carson’s take on equality in education matches that of the Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission.

In 2013, the Commission, which includes John King, Obama’s pick to temporarily replace the Department of Education’s outgoing secretary Arne Duncan, released a report recommending federal policies that would address such disparities:

While some young Americans—most of them white and affluent— are getting a truly world-class education, those who attend schools in high poverty neighborhoods are getting an education that more closely approximates school in developing nations…First, we begin with a restructuring of the finance systems that underlie every decision about schools, focusing on equitable resources and their cost-effective use.

More recently, in his 2015 book, A More Perfect Union, Carson wrote that we should “improve” the Department of Education (4,400 employees and $68-billion budget), not abolish it.  The agency exists to set standards for “the best possible education for everyone, paying special attention to those mired in poverty.”  But just improving the Department of Education would most likely leave the bloated leviathan in place, which goes against the Republican mandate to, at the minimum, downsize government to cut wasteful spending.

Carson’s suggestion to redistribute taxpayer funds from affluent schools to those “mired in poverty” rests on the progressive assumption that more money can fix what is ailing inner-city public schools.  Not true.  Trenton, N.J., the third most expensive district ($20,663 per student), has a 41-percent graduation rate.  New York City, number seven on the most expensive list ($19,146), is at 51 percent, 26 percent lower than the national average.

Finally, while most Republicans want to shut down the Education Department, Carson told Glenn Beck last week, “I actually have something I would use the Department of Education to do.  It would be to monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding on that basis.”