NSBA: Dems Support Federal Control of Education

[duffyduff]

From Diane Ravitch's blog, a disastrous proposal being pushed by Democrats like Tom Harkin:

Without doubt the fulcrum of debate at the mark-up was the proper role of the federal government in education. Unfortunately, the partisan gap continues on what that role should be. Chairman Harkin characterized the bill as “a new partnership of shared responsibility,” and passed an amendment clarifying that states and districts could refuse Title I, Part A funds, and thereby be free of federal requirements. Meanwhile, Ranking Member Lamar Alexander (R-TN) repeatedly asserted that S. 1094 creates “a national school board.”

The partisan gap prevailed in the Committee’s efforts to address all major issues. Of the 23 amendments offered, all but one Republican amendment was rejected, whereas all but 1 of the Democratic amendments were accepted to the base bill. This was despite recognition – acknowledged by Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) himself – that the Department of Education has exceeded its authority on ESEA waivers, and Congress has exacerbated the problem by failing to reauthorize ESEA. For example:

Role of the Secretary: The role of the Secretary of Education appears to have increased substantially in S. 1094. Throughout the bill, the Secretary is authorized to determine the overall quality and effectiveness of greatly expanded state plan requirements that will, in turn, impact the local level. The Secretary would appear to be involved in the design of programs, directing the specifics, for example, in addressing parent/community engagement and extensive data collection. In the case of data, the bill calls for multiple cross tabulations of a wide range of academic and non-academic student data that we believe will be overwhelming for many school systems to produce. The same can be said of new local plan requirements. Amendments described by their sponsors as attempts to eliminate new or onerous reporting and federal oversight requirements were rejected by the Committee. In fact, amendments were approved to create additional reporting requirements on military children, interscholastic sports, and career and technical education.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/19/nsba-dems-support-federsl-control-of-education/comment-page-1/#comment-191677

No Republican could have done that bad as to come up with the idea of Duncan being a "national superintendent."

This crap stems from the notion peddled by some like Bill Gates that since European countries, which have tiny populations compared to the U.S. and are less diverse, have national standards, then the U.S. should have them, too.

This shit needs to be defeated.

[Igel]

1. Don't know.

But there's a tendency at the top to

(1) Assume that if there's a problem, we can know the solution and implement the same solution everywhere to great success. This is just plain arrogant. Civil servants should have both civility and humility.

(2) Distrust others, esp. local-yokels. They have to be ignorant bumpkins, after all, otherwise *they* would be Ed Sec. Those local-yokels are, in usual terms, "constituents," when you need their votes.

It's matched by two local tendencies:

(1) To assume that locals, because they haven't solved the problem, don't want to and are actively trying to hurt.

(2) To distrust locals, esp. if there's a past record of some sort of institutionalized distrust, and to assume that people that differ but little in genetics and IQ but who are a thousand miles away must be more trustworthy in general. Sort of "familiarity" breeds contempt and hoping for a knight in shining armor to come and perform a heroic rescue--and not just with lots of $.