Another brick in the wall

ThinkProgress is reporting that 111 Republicans running for Congress want to abolish the federal Department of Education. Before we all get too excited (one way or the other), it's worth noting that this has been even a plank of the Republican Party platform before, but it's never gotten enough support from actually serving, actually elected representatives and senators to get it passed. No telling if it will this time.
Also, per the comments following the ThinkProgress post, let's keep even this in some perspective. The federal education department was created as part of President Johnson's War on Poverty; that makes it a fairly new federal department. Even if the Republicans did muster the votes to elminate the federal DoE, this would not somehow magically make education in the United States vanish. We did have education in this country prior to the 1960's! Education is largely--though less so now than fifteen years ago--managed, controlled, and even funded by state and local governments. Losing funding would hurt communities with heavy Title I enrollments (like Worcester), but in the scope of education funding nationally, the federal government is a relatively minor player, even after the $4 billion of Race to the Top.
This is not, I hasten to add, to say that I think we cut the DoE off. The original argument for the creation of the department--that national equity in education is lacking, and it's in the interest of the American people as a whole to change that--is still a valid one. I'd say we need to work on how we're doing it, as some of the policies currently being pursued increase, rather than decrease, inequity.