Assuming that the Department of Education has "failed" depends entirely on what you assume the mission of the Department of Education is. If you hold that the Department of Educations purpose is to well educate the children of the country such that they are able to use critical thinking to make sense of the world around them, then it has indeed utterly failed. However, if you use the precept of POSIWID (the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does), then the success or failure of the Department of Education is shown in a different light. The Department of Educations purpose is not to educate the children of the country. In the typically Orwellian (not for no reason) fashion, the true purpose of the Department of Education is virtually the inverse of its naive meaning. It exists to PREVENT the children of the country from learning the critical thinking skills necessary to make sense of the world, such that they will be largely helpless, and therefore in need of rescue from "the government". When you see that some large, long running and incredibly expensive government program has "failed", always consider in what frame it is said to have "failed". It is more common that it has succeeded, but that its true purpose is very different to what is "on the box".