It's not so much that federally funded public education wouldn't be valuable or beneficial, it's more that the Constitution enumerates powers to the Federal government (Article 1 Section 8), and any power not enumerated to the Federal government is left to the states (10th ammendment).
Accepting funds from the federal government tends to come with strings attached, and such attachments tend not to work well over the generalization of the entire population (see the OP's about standards being added/dropped for everyone when it probably should have been considered from a local or hyperlocal perspective).
The strings-attached conditionality shifts power to the federal government, which is something to be avoided at all costs.
Edit: to enunerate to the Federal government the power of education, the constitution would have to be amended. Totally doable, but a requirement nonetheless.
Ah, I see. Your argument derives from an ideological reading of the US Constitution in lieu of a focus on impact, benefit, legality/precedent, ethics, and need.
It is more ideological that the courts knowingly reinterpreted the clause to allow for spending outside the scope of the Constitution, which immediately removed all restrictions on the federal government.
What is the point of enumerated powers if the gov is allowed to ignore them?
I'm not too concerned with the red herring of whether enumerated powers improve the capacity of local school systems; the current system tends to work okay when we centralize things that perform well when centralized, like educational standards and often funding. Clearly, Madison would be open to the current policy approach, regardless whether we arrived to and improve from here through judicial review or through a do-nothing Congress/ratification process explicitly enumerating (which process has proven to be insufficient in governing the modern United States, hence the rise of the administrative state), because Madison was willing to support a revolution to ensure people had realistic, capable governance (which in his time meant throwing out the king, and in our time means reasonable bounds of the administrative state).
Now, would you please address the core question: can you help me understand what part of mathematics, science, language arts, music, or most other extracurriculars change across state lines?
Or perhaps the sister question: if they don't, and the only reason we don't approach it that way is artificial due to gaps in the governance structure, then I trust you would support correcting the governance structure or supporting the governance structure that allows it?
I am wary of granting any additional power to a government on any level, state or federal.
Although your assertion that state lines do not change the nature of core fields like mathematics is correct, they do present a change wherein the funds to pay for education sold as a public good are sourced. And my contention is that the federal government is not granted the power to provide funds for public education.
States are left that power, so to the extent that states want to provide/force education to be a public good, they can do so. It is preferable as people could relocate to another state which does not raise tax revenue to publicize education if they so chose to. States, after all, are not prohibited from direct taxiation.
The entire point of the revolution was to shed rule-by-decree systems by imposing the separation of powers through a system of checks and balances. I do not believe that Madison would be of the favor of a federal subsidiary on public education, even in the modern era.
Of course the Constitutional system creates unequal outcomes. Of course it creates unequal opportunities. But those are problems for citizens to solve amongst themselves locally, up to the state level. The federal government is not to squabble in such affairs.
It's not like education didn't exist in the 1700s. The founders were well aware of it and explicitly left it out. The same is true of a federalized Healthcare system.
I genuinely believe that, given no public funding of education at any level whatsoever, we would still see localities mobilize to provide it, as the benefit would likely outweigh the cost. An educated society is preferred, after all. I also believe the solution would be more efficient in resource usage and allocation.
I'm not trying to be difficult, but I think you may have accidently pasted the quoted text from my comment instead of the link in your above reply.
I'd be happy to read any link you send. My leanings toward extremely limited government have exponentially increased lately so I'd be happy to be brought back down to earth.
Accepting funds from the federal government tends to come with strings attached, and such attachments tend not to work well over the generalization of the entire population (see the OP's about standards being added/dropped for everyone when it probably should have been considered from a local or hyperlocal perspective).
The strings-attached conditionality shifts power to the federal government, which is something to be avoided at all costs.
Edit: to enunerate to the Federal government the power of education, the constitution would have to be amended. Totally doable, but a requirement nonetheless.