It’s rare that I agree with the Right on anything besides the weather, but when it comes to education, I tend to agree with the desire to abolish the Department of Education, at least as it currently exists.
Arguments on the Right see the Department of Education (DOE) as a federal intrusion into something constitutionally granted to the states. For this reason, Ronald Reagan wanted to abolish it, before he ended up laying the groundwork for the standards-based education reform movement with the landmark A Nation at Risk report. In 1996, the Republican Party platform stated:
The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning.
Then came No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the unpopular re-authoriziation of the ESEA, a law that was originally enacted tin 1965 to provide federal funding mainly to improve education for poor children. NCLB was ESEA with strings attached. If states wanted to continue to receive federal money, they would have to test students in grades 3-8.
Enter Arne Duncan. The Bush Administration may have opened the door to federal educational policy extortion, but it was the Obama Administration that walked through and started charging a toll. Race to the Top (RTT), its signature law, pits states against each other in competition for grants. In these difficult economic times, many states have applied. Many were also turned down. RTT funds are a small, but significant fraction ($4 billion) of $70 billion proposed for the DOE this year. Like NCLB, the initiative’s objective, however, is in expressly against the law that states that “no officer of the federal government may ‘exercise any direction, supervision, or control’ over the curriculum or program of instruction of any school or school system.”
Duncan has expanded the role of the federal government in unprecedented ways. He seems not to know that education is the responsibility of state and local governments, as defined by the Tenth amendment to our Constitution. States and local school districts now look to Washington to tell them how to reform their schools and must seek permission to deviate from the regulations written by the U.S. Department of Education. George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) created the template for this growing federal control of education, but Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top has made it possible for Washington to dictate education policy across the nation…
Duncan has issued waivers to states that want to be relieved from NCLB’s impossible mandate of reaching 100 percent proficiency by 2014, but replaced that law’s demands with those of his own devising. Duncan says his waivers allow “flexibility,” but they serve simply to impose his own ideas about evaluating teachers, “transforming” low-performing schools (by firing staff or closing the schools), and adopting national standards in reading and mathematics. While very few people defendNCLB, which will write off almost every public school in the United States as a failure by 2014, it is still the law. Duncan has no authority to replace it with his own rules; cabinet members are not allowed to change the laws. Under our Constitution, Congress writes the laws, and the executive branch must enforce them, even as it seeks to change those that are onerous and misguided.
The truth is the day-to-day management IS still local – how well has THAT worked in many cases? MA should be used as a best-practice model since we get results, but IMO the federal government SHOULD be heavily involved. After all, when we we see rankings of how various places rank, it is not Massachusetts or any other individual state that suffers embarrassment by being so low; it is the UNITED STATES. I can’t think of any other country that wrings its hands over which level of government takes responsibility. They take the bull by the horns, set standards, and test to see that those standards are met. We can and should constantly re-evaluate what is working and what is not, but education and achieving results we can be proud of must be a goal at all levels. If you insist on finding an enumerated power for this (which I almost never do) you could try commerce (education strengthens oour economic power) or promoting useful arts and sciences (necessary and proper if you want Americans filing patents and copyrights), but I’m satisfied with this simply being a matter of promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty. As a loose consturctionist I see anything that could arguably pursue any of the six goals outlined in the preamble to the Constitution as fair game.
of Education’s empowering legislation states explicitly outlines the role of the Department of Education and limits its authority. I think it’s based on Constitutional, as well as political concerns:
I’m not sure it could be more clear than that.
NCLB expired last year without a successor law. This means that there is no real federal law governing education right now. Any noise about withholding grants or expected test scores is just noise without legal foundation. That hasn’t stopped Duncan, however — he’s just passing out tax money in whatever method tickles his fancy. The more vicious your attack on people in public education, the softer you are on private and quasi-private enterprises, the more bills should up in your account. Obama’s too busy ordering drone strikes and cutting corporate tax rates to notice.
the federal government should be in education.
Funding is good. But the idea of offering grants for pet policies is revolting.
Measuring progress is good, though I’d rather see NEAP and other measure rather than state tests used at the yardstick.