Texas Insider

12:30 pm CST - February 08, 2010

The Misguided Race to Federalize Education

EducationNews.org

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call their $4 billion program of education reform grants the Race to the Top. A more accurate title would be the Race to Washington, because their program culminates a stunning decade in which school policy decisions have been wrested from local and state control to become matters of federal oversight.

With the possible exception of Texas – where Gov. Rick Perry is resisting federal education grants with all their strings – no state has been left behind in the race to federalize education.

It’s easy to miss this important power shift because few of us notice, much less worry about, constitutional processes during a crisis. But, as presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” because, he continued, it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before. And that’s precisely what is happening in education as we complete a transfer of money and power to Washington to oversee our schools, in violation of the 10th Amendment, a couple of hundred years of history and common sense.

There is a disturbing pattern of Washington using crises to consolidate power. First we declare war on a problem, which shifts things into crisis mode. Remember the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on terror? Now we have a war on underperforming schools, so naturally Washington needs to step in and nationalize standards and tests.

It started when two former “education governors,” Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, took some of their education ideas to the White House and now, in the name of spending stimulus money and curing the ailing economy, we spend billions in federal grants on schools, all with policy strings attached.
You could call it bribery, offering cash-starved states extra billions if only they would follow federal curricular standards and testing regimes.

You could definitely call it unconstitutional, because nothing in the Constitution gives the federal government a role in education, and the 10th Amendment says powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the people and the states. Even the highly elastic commerce clause doesn’t stretch far enough to cover education. To make matters worse, these federal grants are permitted to go directly to school districts, further eroding the role of states.

But beyond the constitutional question, why would we object to shifting educational control from local and state governments to Washington? For one thing, most of the promising experiments in K-12 educational reform – charter schools, parent councils or the creation of regional sub districts – shift power down toward local principals and parents, not up toward a more distant bureaucracy.

For another, needing to win over local and state leaders one at a time slows the embrace of policy fads. For example, after the celebration when Sen. Edward Kennedy and Bush joined hands to “leave no child behind,” we were left instead with a problematic testing regime now desperately in need of repair. Further, education experts who have examined federal education standards say they are more lax than the ones most states now employ.

One of the problems with education, health care, federal regulation of banks and executive compensation: It’s an enormous expansion of the federal enterprise. And, like the New Deal enacted in the crisis of the Great Depression, it will never be turned back. The era of big government isn’t over; it’s just beginning.

David Davenport is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Gordon Lloyd is professor of public policy at Pepperdine University.

8 Comments

sonny
2:04 pm CST
February 08, 2010

When are they going to impeach this socialist President? he already qualfies for it due to incompetence and not following the Constitution.

SJK
5:38 pm CST
February 08, 2010

If we can get a majority of conservatives in both Houses in 2010. we the people can demand that these fools that are destroying our country be impeached!

I do not want the education of our children in the government’s control in Washington! They need to keep their dirty, slimey hands and radical textbooks away from our kids! President Obama—BACK OFF ON OUR CHILDREN!!!! This is not the :”Race to the Top” it is the lowest of the low race to Obama’s evil black hole of Socialism hell! IThis is wrong for everybody’s children!

CWJensen
8:32 pm CST
February 08, 2010

FIRST ORDER of Business SHUT DOWN THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION before
Arne (Goebbels) Duncan has the Obama youth corps revive Nationalsozialismus .

BJ
11:55 pm CST
February 08, 2010

Have you read the latest? Dear Michelle is GOING AFTER OUR KIDS and GRANDKIDS, TOO! This was the headline on FoxNews.com this morning. The comments there were very angry! They were saying the same thing that SJK is saying. BACK OFF ON OUR CHILDREN. AMEN TO THAT!

First Lady to Launch Anti-Childhood Obesity Campaign

Anne
5:52 am CST
February 08, 2010

So far, the comments say not much of anything related to the article. I felt it was wrong for the federal gov’t to be sticking their noses in the schools since JFK decided we weren’t fit enough in the 1960’s and we were all required to take PE. As someone not even educated in this country, I think Obama is barking up the wrong tree when he starts taking on the education system but I thought the same thing when Bush decided that “No Child Left Behind” was a good thing.

First, we need to get the kids with severe mental and physical handicaps out of the mainstream school system. All we have done is make our schools into a tax-payer paid babysitting service for people with handicapped kids because there must be one teacher’s aide for every handicapped kid in the school system and there are so many who are ineducable that it is a waste of money and man hours, not to mention putting the handicapped kids in danger of conrtacting whatever communicable diseases are going around in the schools!

Next, we need to get back to teaching basic skills and leave the incidental stuff that is more just a matter of personal interest up to the kids to learn on their own. Kids have so much information thrown at them in a day that their brains will be totally fried if they ever finish high school.

Then there is the problem of the danger of going to school at all in most cities. I lived in El Paso and I can tell you right now, if I were a kid in school there having to watch my back because of the infestation of gang members and troublemakers, I’d be reluctant to get out of bed in the morning and I was the kind of student who was ticked off if I couldn’t go to school because I was sick.

If the gov’t actually wants to do something about the school system, they should ditch the cookie cutter send education back under the auspices of the locality and provide guidelines, not dictate the cirriculum. What works for Chicago probably isn’t going to work for Four Oaks, NC and the sooner the gov’t realizes that, the better off our education system will be.

Info Warrior
7:37 am CST
February 08, 2010

Well said, Anne.

CWJensen
9:20 am CST
February 08, 2010

So far, the comments say not much of anything related to the article.
Sorry Anne but I have to disagree:
Main Idea
“President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call their $4 billion program of education reform grants the Race to the Top. A more accurate title would be the Race to Washington, because their program culminates a stunning decade in which school policy decisions have been wrested from local and state control to become matters of federal oversight. ”

We all have posted multiple reasons in the past why the federal governments involvement in Education has continued to destroy our ability to successfully educate our children.
The Obama administration has raised the bar and without stopping the BEAST in WASHINGTON and it’s uncontrolled appetite for CONTROL we will NEVER return schools where teachers parents and students together find and implement successful programs for learning.

UNLESS we send a CLEAR MESSAGE to Washington by using the VOTE to remove politicians that hunger for CONTROL we will never stop it.
BTW:
GOD BLESS RICK PERRY for standing STRONG and REFUSING to ACCEPT the race to the BOTTOM.

R. G. Blair
3:24 am CST
February 08, 2010

As always, CWJensen has it exactly right. Hope and pray our congress is listening. God bless Rick Perry and we hope he is re-elected Governor! We surely don’t want any part of Kay Bailey Hutchison ~ she is a controling RINO and would be a disaster for Texas, like she has been in Washington, D. C.