The thing I recall most vividly from the first Presidential Election "debate" between Kennedy and Nixon was the discussion of Federal Aid to Education. Kennedy was for it. He was convinced that the Federal Government could improve student performance. Nixon said you can spend a lot of money, and create a lot of bureaucracy, but student performance won't improve. It turns out that Nixon was correct. Here is a discussion about the situation in Kansas City where the government, judges requiring more money to be spent, etc. has resulted in total failure of the system. One issue that Liberals need to learn to live with is the so-called "black-white" performance gap. The sooner Liberals accept that it is a matter of genetics, and so far no one has been able to figure out how to get blacks to, on average, perform as well on IQ tests as whites do, on average. I don't understand the problem. Jews perform better than East Asians, who perform better than whites, who perform better than Hispanics, who perform better than blacks. That's the way it is. We can strive to better educate everyone, but we may not be able to close the "gap" and we need to develop strategies to deal with reality. No amount of education or spending on training will turn a person with an IQ of 100 into a nuclear physicist or even a medical doctor. At the same time a person with an IQ of 160 probably doesn't want to be a plumber. There are a lot more people with an IQ of 100 than with an IQ of 160. So that works out because society needs a lot more plumbers than nuclear physicists. This may seem unfair because being a nuclear physicist may be more prestigious than a plumber (but may not make much more money these days). But, closing the gap shopuldn't be our goal because as President Kennedy said, "Life is unfair."