Opinion
Is Federalizing Education a Good Idea?
By
Feb 11, 2010, 09:44

David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd ask on San Francisco Chronicle this week if we REALLY want to shift more of the responsibility of educating our nation's children from the states to the Federal Government:

...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?

Continue reading The misguided race to federalize education >>