In May, 2011 Greg Forster explained perfectly how the feds have been able to takeover public education. In "Closing the Door on Innovation" he may have sounded panoid at the time, saying "The feds are working behind the scenes to nationalize K-12 curriculum, including a national test. This would be bad for schools, and disastrous for the culture." But he was right!
In the past, [nationalization of education] has usually produced a lot of fireworks but burned out pretty quickly. This year is very different. The nationalizers have learned from their past mistakes; they understand now that the American people don’t want the federal government to control schools. So they’ve adopted clever tactics to disguise what they’re doing and misdirect public attention, and as a result, they are already dangerously close to getting everything they want.
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Just the other day, Neal McCluskey @Cato posted an entry entitled "The Other Federal Takeover" in which he points out that
"the federal government is on the precipice of dictating the basic curriculum for every public school in America, and doing so without even the semblance of following the constitutional, legislative process. It’s not just a federal takeover, but an executive branch takeover."
And concludes, this "is why, after the ObamaCare Supreme Court arguments are over, we need to turn our attention to the other, almost complete, federal takeover: education."
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The EdWorkforce Committee is well aware of what this administration is doing, but they need to bring they need everyone's support in exercising their congressional and constitutional power to stop the wheels that are in motion.
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Sherena Arrington, a political consultant and policy researcher, issues a very timely warning to states in "An Uncommon Approach to Costly Common Core Education Standards"
The Common Core provides a perfect example of how quickly a state can lose control of its K-12 educational system. Obviously, curriculum is central to education. With Georgia supposedly locked into the Common Core as a condition of the Race to the Top federal grant as well as the No Child Left Behind waiver, it appears the state will simply become the administrative agent for a nationalized curriculum through the adoption of nationalized standards, and the citizens will pick up the expensive tab.
This is what should be called, “education without representation.” Such a hands-off approach to K-12 educational policy is an abandonment of the Legislature’s constitutional duty to keep the agencies of state government accountable to the people, especially so when it comes to an agency whose mission consumes at least $7 billion in state taxpayer funds and $6 billion in local taxes annually.
When you consider this information in tandem with a couple of other things that I ran across today, I hope that you will agree that it really is time to act.
FCC pushes for tablet computers in schools
Surely a Federal Agency isn't trying to influence the market!
White House to pour $200 million into data-mining technology
