I have to cling to my theory that people aren't going all Mr. Burns "Ooh, if we dumb down the educational system then we can get rich with X, Y, and Z." Not *quite* that brutally direct.
Invoking my new fun term "Differently Evil", I think it's become more of a "Soft Science Scapeoat". To a point, (I know, fun exceptions abound), Math-Physics, Biology-Medicine, your choice of three other science pairs are "Hard Science", they basically "Just Work".
But something like Educational Theory gets all wishy-washy and only works in the aggregate and also only at about the Decade level. Unfortunately, Politics is all about micro-decisions where on VERY good days you have about a month tops to respond to something, and more often less than a week. So then someone gets in a snoot and wants to free up cash for something, and someone else wants a talking point, so they go all "yeah yeah let's cut education to pay for it!" Then of course it tends not to come back because when you restore it they go "you scumbag, you're taking away funding from __". Somehow, Think of the Children works ... until it's time to Think of the Children, at which point, having been used to try to sell SOPA, they get thrown back into the smelly fish barrel from my other post.
