{"id":441492,"date":"2010-03-18T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/2010\/03\/18\/2614987\/dont-let-feds-control-local-education.html#mi_rss=Opinion"},"modified":"2010-03-18T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T07:00:00","slug":"viewpoints-dont-let-feds-control-local-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/441492","title":{"rendered":"Viewpoints: Don’t let feds control local education"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tBen Boychuk<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A standardized national curriculum wouldn’t make California’s kids smarter or well equipped to compete in the global economy, or even better citizens. But a national, one-size-fits-all curriculum would be highly political, beset by special interest lobbying, and almost certainly diluted by teachers unions and education bureaucrats unaccountable to parents and voters. <\/p>\n

Yet President Barack Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, 48 governors – including Arnold Schwarzenegger – and a host of education “reform” groups are rushing headlong to embrace the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The coalition of state governors and state school superintendents last week released its draft reading and math standards for kindergarten through 12th grade. <\/p>\n

The standards are billed as “voluntary,” but that’s a joke. The Obama administration has already announced plans to make $14 billion in federal Title I funds and another $15 billion in future Race to the Top grants contingent on states adopting the national standards. In short, the standards would be as “voluntary” as reporting personal income to the IRS, regulating the drinking age or maintaining the speed limit. Just try to opt out and see what happens. <\/p>\n

The standards are also supposed to be “flexible,” but it’s difficult to see how. The draft reading and math requirements include detailed, year-by-year prescriptions for every child, regardless of ability. A student who struggles with reading, writing or arithmetic would have an even tougher time keeping up, as teachers would face mounting pressure to cover all the material in federally sanctioned lesson plans. <\/p>\n

Of course, that assumes the final standards won’t be homogenized and dumbed down to the point they would be considered “high standards” in name only. Judging by history, that’s probably a bad assumption. <\/p>\n

One thing’s for sure: Transforming common core standards into a common curriculum would turn an already contentious policy issue into a brawl as bruising and divisive as the fight over health care reform. Where health care is about our bodies, education is about our children’s minds. <\/p>\n

Texas provides an idea of how the fight over a national curriculum might play out. The Lone Star State happens to be the second-largest textbook market in the United States. Thanks to California’s budget woes, which preclude the state from buying new textbooks until at least 2016, Texas is poised to reshape the content of U.S. history books for the next decade or so. The State Board of Education, bitterly split along ideological lines, has been overrun with demands from every interest group imaginable to render history into a politically correct mishmash. <\/p>\n

Ironically, Texas was one of two states that refused to join the CCSSI. (The other was Alaska.) Texas also sat out of the competition for a slice of the $4 billion in Race to the Top grant money. “Our states and our communities must reserve the right to decide how we educate our children and not surrender that control to a federal bureaucracy,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, said in January. <\/p>\n

California could learn something from Texas’ declaration of independence from the ever-widening federal dictates over education policy. When arguments about curriculum are hashed out at the state level, at least somebody can be held accountable. <\/p>\n

Federal government education bureaucrats and teachers union officials aren’t accountable to voters or taxpayers. <\/p>\n

An honest effort to create good standards would allow for extensive public input. Instead the CCSSI has given the public until April 2 to comment on the draft language and math standards. <\/p>\n

What’s the hurry? Could it be the standards’ authors fear that a long public conversation would lead to changes reflecting the public’s concerns? <\/p>\n

Truly voluntary national standards would let states reject them without fear of punishment or sanction. Why should California, which has exemplary mathematics standards, submit to a document that puts political consensus above educational excellence? Why should Massachusetts, which experts generally acknowledge as having the best standards of any state, have to settle for less? <\/p>\n

The problem with the proposed national standards is the same thing that bedeviled No Child Left Behind and nearly every reform since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965: The remorseless needs of bureaucracy always trump the needs of children. Educators, parents and children deserve choices, not uniformly dismal dictates from Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Boychuk A standardized national curriculum wouldn’t make California’s kids smarter or well equipped to compete in the global economy, or even better citizens. But a national, one-size-fits-all curriculum would be highly political, beset by special interest lobbying, and almost certainly diluted by teachers unions and education bureaucrats unaccountable to parents and voters. Yet President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}