INEZ FELTSCHER STEPMAN: States have simple message for incoming administration on education: Get out of our way.

Forty-three states (plus the District of Columbia), including California, allow choice within the public system through the authorization of charter schools. Twenty-seven states and the District have enacted at least one form of private educational choice, whether that choice comes through vouchers, tax-credit scholarships or education savings accounts. Education savings accounts, enacted in five states so far, hold particular promise, providing a truly individualized education for every child.

By contrast, the federal education record looks bleak. Since the first major federal incursion into education under President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, interventions designed to help struggling students have shown little academic progress, wasted taxpayer dollars and state man-hours, and crippled real reform. Federal per-pupil expenditures have tripled in the ensuing decades, but promised results — better academic performance, narrower achievement gaps — have remained elusive.

Meanwhile, the average federal bureaucrat working for the Department of Education makes a six-figure salary.

Well, that’s the important part.