When the state Education Department made school districts around the state abandon high school mascots with Native American imagery, it could do so because it held all the trump cards when it comes to state funding.

School districts had little alternative but to capitulate.

The fight gets more interesting when the state doesn’t necessarily hold all the cards. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said recently she was giving New York 10 days to sign an agreement rescinding its mascot ban and apologizing to Native Americans for having discriminated against them and attempting to “erase” their history after the federal Education Department’s New York civil rights office found New York had violated Title VI of the federal civil rights law by issuing a statewide ban on the use of Native American mascots and logos. The department’s civil rights office found the state ban is discriminatory because names and mascots that are still permitted are also derived from other racial or ethnic groups, such as the “Dutchmen” and the “Huguenots.”

New York, predictably, is choosing to escalate the war of words, saying it will broaden its ban to any school mascot based on any “ethnic group.” What does that mean for Fredonia’s Hillbillies, a nickname derived from the school’s hilltop location but also a colloquialism for “an unsophisticated country person, associated originally with the remote regions of the Appalachians.” That’s a good question.

It makes us wonder if the better path for everyone would be to simply eliminate all school mascots and nicknames so no one is offended or feels they’ve been picked on.

The bigger issue, though, is that while New York is fighting over things like mascots, its schools’ often lackluster performance when it comes to education gets lost. If there’s a lesson New York’s school children can take from their state Education Department, it’s that loudly fighting battles that don’t amount to a hill of beans is more important than actually doing one’s job. In this case, the job is turning out students who are proficient at reading, writing and math.

The state Education Department has been failing in that endeavor for years. But it’s fighting the mascot fight like it’s Rocky Balboa. Much like Rocky’s fights, at least watching state Education Department officials fight with their federal counterparts is entertaining – because it’s not accomplishing much otherwise.