Two friends were going back and forth on the local versus centralized role of government in education. 

I look to Milton Friedman for guidance on such matters.  Basically I agree with him that role should be limited to financing but not administration.
 
"Education is a simple case. It isn't the public purpose to build brick schools and have students taught there. The public purpose is to provide education. Think of it this way: If you want to subsidize the production of a product, there are two ways you can do it. You can subsidize the producer or you can subsidize the consumer. In education, we subsidize the producer—the school. If you subsidize the student instead—the consumer—you will have competition. The student could choose the school he attends and that would force schools to improve and to meet the demands of their students."
        - Milton Friedman
 
The longer the educratic status quo manages to sustain the illusion that funding and administration are one in the same, the longer it will remain the status quo. 
        - Me
 
I will be forever mystified as to how otherwise intelligent people, many teacher friends for example, are so willing to put more faith in nameless bureaucrats in Washington than their own neighbors down the street, i.e. local school boards.  It can't possibly be justified on past performance.  So far as I can tell the entire Department of Education, in it’s entire history, has actually educated fewer people than have drowned in Ted Kennedy's car.  
 
I would beseech them to point to the phrase in our constitution that makes education a federal concern.  Per the 10th amendment items not specifically enumerated are up to the states, i.e. local.  Surprise, surprise health care isn't mentioned either, but then again, neither is social security. 
 
I agree that funding for schools is imperfect.  That most of the property tax from a senior citizen who hasn't had a kid in school for 40 years goes to schools makes no sense at all, and the childless by choice folks get screwed even worse.  How can fairness and equality advocates reconcile this?  I would support switching to sales tax revenues, so long as it is accompanied by a corresponding property tax decrease, and at least half the proceeds would be available in vouchers, you know, to make it fair. 
 
Key to maintaining the status quo is a steadfast refusal to acknowledge that more funding does not translate to higher quality.  Washington DC is highest per pupil cost at nearly 20K+ and Milwaukee at 14K is highest in WI.  Nevertheless, they are among the worst performing systems in the nation and state.  Here in Milwaukee charter school vouchers, at $5k, are less than half, yet the results are at least as good and usually better.
 
The country, due to a combination of apathy and its fat ugly stepsister entitlement mindset, opted for and maintains a monopoly system over a competitive education market.  In spite of compulsory participation and confiscatory funding advantages, government monopoly schools are consistently outperformed by private schools.  Home schoolers, the most local of all, outperform both. 
 
This shows an inversely proportionate relationship between the quality of education and government entanglement.  This is no coincidence.  It is the law of economics that an increase in choices invariably results in an increase in quality.  (A private sector example would be the explosion of the telecommunications industry, which is still expanding from deregulation more than 20 years ago; the negative corollary would be the railroad system, strangled to death by the dark tag team of union and government.) 
 
Speaking of choice, this is one of several tenets of left/lib theology that leaves me scratching my head; choice is a non-negotiable demand when it comes to having a kid, but nowhere to be found when it comes to educating them.  WTF is up with that?  Democrats: we put the “in here” in incoherence.

Conversely, it is glaring proof that centralization does not work and that more funding can’t change that.  The obstinate persistence of misdirecting funds only makes it worse.

Money spent locally, be it on education or groceries, always serves the community better.  The current education system is a case in point that the further you send your money the less value it has, and the less control you keep.

Even with the overwhelming roadblocks and regulatory disadvantages competition and choice keeps proving it is the superior model.  We can only imagine how better off the kids would be should those burdens ever be removed.  Perhaps not in my lifetime, but if current trends continue it will be today’s home schooled and charter kids that finally level the playing field. 

 
Further reading:
Milton Friedman is known as the father of school vouchers.
 
This is his seminal article on the subject.  It rings just as true as it did in 1955.
http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/fried1.htm