Do we need the federal Department of Education?

From time to time, I read that some conservatives want to dump the federal Department of Education because of the poor performance of our public schools. But before moving on that, one should take a look at the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of that department. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe? And "take a look" is the right phrase because it is a very confusing maze of tables, charts, graphs, essays, compilations, and mismatched years. The latest date of the report is 2023, which actually is for 2021, and various sections within the report contain the latest data for 2016.

I won't get into the weeds, but will note the report's priorities. The second item in the report after demographics (make up of families, race, enrollment) is crime. Not math or science or even attendance. The drop out rate is buried elsewhere--that's the one that uses 2016 data. Do we need drop out data that is 7 years old to hold schools accountable?

The crime rate is more up to date than drop out; it uses 2020-21 data, and the stats are a bit confusing because many students weren't on campus during the pandemic. That said, crime on school campuses had significantly dropped since 2000. So the definition changed by adding in cyber bullying and sexual assaults, moving the statistics back up. Also, school shootings statistics weren't too useful since it includes incidents AT school and AWAY from school. In the tiniest footnotes possible, I read that school shootings include all incidents that guns are brandished or fired on school property or a bullet hits school property for any reason, even if the number hit was zero. It can be any time of day or week or reason, even domestic violence or gangs. All the information on crime in schools in this federal report comes from a private database created by one private citizen, the K-12 School Shooting Database.
Also, the racialists are losing ground in this report. Hispanic (a term coined in 1980 by an HHS employee) enrollment is almost double that of Black in school enrollment, and yet because so many Hispanics are white by anyone's eyeball guess, the activists stirring up trouble about Jim Crow 2.0 will increasingly have to dig up micro-aggressions to vilify whiteness.

The report does include salary information: Annual base salary of full-time public school teachers (10 months) is $66,000--it's $69,000 in latest BLS statistics. Remember, that's base salary, for 10 months.

And one more thing. Abraham Lincoln had one year of public schooling yet became one of the most famous public speakers in the country, and then became the most famous, eloquent and successful president of all time.