Whitley County Patriots

From The Heritage Foundation:

When Congressman John Kline (R–MN) served as a Marine, “one of [his] assignments was to carry the ‘football’—the package containing the nuclear launch codes—for presidents Carter and Reagan,” writes George Will in profile of the House Education and Workforce Committee chairman last week.

Now Kline is quarterbacking the House approach to the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which, Will says, “soon will be 10 years old and may not recognizably survive to see its 12th birthday.”

As Will reports, Kline “emphatically favors ‘a greatly reduced federal footprint’ in primary and secondary education”:

Kline promises that the current system for measuring “adequate yearly progress” “will not exist when we are done.” And he says “we have to get rid of this ‘highly qualified teacher’ thing” in NCLB. He thinks “qualified” is shorthand for teachers processed by the normal credentialing apparatus of education schools and departments. The stress, Kline says, should be on “highly effective teachers.”

He favors more charter schools—public schools operating outside union restrictions. He notes that when unions say these schools are “unfair” because “they work under different rules,” he tersely responds: “Precisely.”

The federal intervention into local schools began with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. NCLB is the eighth reauthorization of that law, which now includes dozens of programs, funded at $25 billion. This perpetual expansion and overhaul of programs has attempted to make federal intervention succeed where it has neither authority nor capacity.

From The Heritage Foundation:

The New York Times reports that 27 states are planning to adopt the set of national standards developed by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) — standards being backed by the Obama administration with federal funds.

Like so many of the president’s moves in the past year, this push to get states to adopt national standards has been an end-run around normal legislative procedure.

National standards — “federal norms” for what’s taught in your local school, as the Times puts it — represent a massive change in American education. Yet there has been virtually no public or legislative debate about this federal takeover. Indeed, the Obama administration has moved rapidly to press states to swallow the agenda.

The agenda has also been bank-rolled by some deep pockets. Last week, The Washington Post reported that the Gates Foundation gave more than $35 million to groups developing the national standards, including the NGA and CCSSO. Noting that the Obamaadministration cannot go further in funding the standards movement without it being seen as federally led, the Post writes that “The [Gates] foundation has stepped into the void, becoming the movement’s top funder.” Critics, they note, see the Gates Foundation as being so closely involved that it resembles “an arm of the government.”

One thing the Times gets right — and which explains why the president is wrong to call these “voluntary” standards — is this: “Those states that are not winners in the Race to the Top competition may also have less incentive to follow through in carrying out the standards.”

So it’s a catch-22 for the administration. What happens when states that don’t get Race to the Top funds (as most probably won’t) decide not to adopt the national standards?

Read the rest at The Heritage Foundation.

From Moonbattery:

We all know how well President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” worked — perhaps one of the best examples of good intentions gone horribly awry. Now we have an added insult to the injury that is our educational system: what can only be called ObamaEd.

President Obama has extended federal control over health care and is now trying to centralize education policy by imposing Washington’s dictates on states and local jurisdictions. Though aimed at improvement, the president’s agenda will weaken strong state standards, set in motion a domino effect of education nationalization, and marginalize ordinary Americans.

Obama-ed started with the president’s $4 billion Race to the Top (RTTT) competitive funding program, which required states to commit to adopt common, i.e. national, standards in core subjects. Next, Mr. Obama informed the nation’s governors that, if he has his way, states would have to adopt national standards to receive federal Title I funds for disadvantaged students.

Just as with nationalizing anything, this would spell the end of quality in America — in this case, of quality education.

Read the rest at Moonbattery.