RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
- Posts
- 9,358
Should the Federal Government be setting a national core curriculum? As you may recall, the "No Child Left Behind" law, co-sponsored by that noted right-wing idealogue Teddy Kennedy, let states set minimum standards and then set a number of carrots and sticks (incentives and punishments) for schools that didn't meet the standards that were set by their state education administration. This gave states great flexibility in how they set their standards and gave some flexibility in the carrots and sticks.
The motivation behind this law was to improve our schools across the board through a variety of means including bringing more consequences to schools who didn't meet the minimum standards for serving their communities. One of the more controversial elements of it was that after a period of years of consistent failure, the first step would be state takeover and additional funding and later, if there wasn't improvement, the parents would have the chance to opt out of the schools (school choice) and take their kids to other schools, a stipulation that the teacher's unions found great umbridge with.
At any rate, as noted below, the formation of the Department of Education as well as the "No child left behind" law both stipulated that the federal government would not dictate a central core curriculum. This emphasis on decentralization was done for many reasons which I note, are mostly based on the concern for maintaining a level of freedom for our citizens consistent with the Constitution and with some concern about how other countries have used education for propaganda.
I can see how there'd be some national interest in setting a core curriculum, but does this further incursion onto our freedoms and our concerns about an overbearing government trump this need?
For those of you liberals who might cheer this as an means of "straightening out" those states that you disagree with on curriculum (choice of courses, books, etc), will you be equally enthusiastic when a conservative administration comes in and makes massive changes? Will the core curriculum bounce back and forth as administrations change? If it does, what will be the impact on the kids? The costs to the schools? The sanity of the teachers?
This is an interesting article....some good references too.
Those pesky things called laws
By George F. Will
Published: March 9
Washington Post
Two policies of the Obama administration illustrate an axiom: As government expands, its lawfulness contracts. Consider the administration’s desire to continue funding UNESCO and to develop a national curriculum for primary and secondary education.
In 1994, Congress stipulated that no U.S. funds shall go to “any affiliated organization” of the United Nations that “grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.” Last October, UNESCO (the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)voted to confer membership on Palestine. Although there are waiver provisions in most laws restricting executive discretion in foreign relations, the 107 national delegations that voted to extend membership to Palestine were told there is no such provision in the pertinent law. The United States immediately cut off funding, which is 22 percent of UNESCO’s budget.
But President Obama’s 2013 budget seeks $78,968,000 for UNESCO and says: “The Department of State intends to work with Congress to seek legislation that would provide authority to waive restrictions on paying the U.S. assessed contributions to UNESCO.” The administration regards the 18-year-old statute as an evanescent inconvenience — that Congress will obediently tug its forelock and grant a waiver provision enabling the executive branch to slip the leash of law.
Meanwhile, the Education Department is pretending that three laws do not mean what they clearly say. This is documented in the Pioneer Institute’s report “The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers” by Robert S. Eitel, Kent D. Talbert and Williamson M. Evers, all former senior officials in the Education Department.
The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) — No Child Left Behind is its ninth iteration — intruded the federal government into this traditionally state and local responsibility. It said that “nothing in this act” shall authorize any federal official to “mandate, direct, or control” a state’s, local educational agency’s or school’s curriculum. The General Education Provisions Act of 1970, which supposedly controls federal education programs, stipulates that “no provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize” any federal agency or official “to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction” or selection of “instructional materials” by “any educational institution or school system.”
The 1979 law establishing the Education Department forbids it from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum” or “program of instruction” of any school or school system. The ESEA as amended goes further: No funds provided to the Education Department “may be used . . . to endorse, approve, or sanction any curriculum designed to be used in” kindergarten through 12th grade.
However . . .
What authors Eitel, Talbert and Evers call the Education Department’s “incremental march down the road to a national curriculum” begins with the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS). It is an initiative not of any state legislature but of a governors association, state school officials and private foundations. This push advanced when the Race to the Top Fund (RTTT, part of the 2009 stimulus) said that peer reviewers of applications for money should favor those states that join a majority of states in developing and adopting common standards. The 11 states and the District of Columbia that won Race to the Top funding had adopted or indicated an intention to adopt the CCSS, which will require changes in curricula.
An Education Department synopsis of discussions with members of the public about priorities in competition for RTTT money says “the goal of common K-12 standards is to replace the existing patchwork of state standards.” Progressives celebrate diversity in everything but thought.
The Obama administration is granting conditional waivers to states chafing under No Child Left Behind’s unrealistic accountability requirements. The waivers are contingent on each state adopting certain standards “that are common to a significant number of states,” or the state may adopt standards endorsed by its institutions of higher education — if those standards are consistent with the Education Department’s guidelines.
We have been warned. Joseph Califano, secretary of health, education and welfare in the Carter administration, noted that “in its most extreme form, national control of curriculum is a form of national control of ideas.”
Here again laws are cobwebs. As government becomes bigger, it becomes more lawless. As the regulatory state’s micromanagement of society metastasizes, inconvenient laws are construed — by those the laws are supposed to restrain — as porous and permissive, enabling the executive branch to render them nullities.
The motivation behind this law was to improve our schools across the board through a variety of means including bringing more consequences to schools who didn't meet the minimum standards for serving their communities. One of the more controversial elements of it was that after a period of years of consistent failure, the first step would be state takeover and additional funding and later, if there wasn't improvement, the parents would have the chance to opt out of the schools (school choice) and take their kids to other schools, a stipulation that the teacher's unions found great umbridge with.
At any rate, as noted below, the formation of the Department of Education as well as the "No child left behind" law both stipulated that the federal government would not dictate a central core curriculum. This emphasis on decentralization was done for many reasons which I note, are mostly based on the concern for maintaining a level of freedom for our citizens consistent with the Constitution and with some concern about how other countries have used education for propaganda.
I can see how there'd be some national interest in setting a core curriculum, but does this further incursion onto our freedoms and our concerns about an overbearing government trump this need?
For those of you liberals who might cheer this as an means of "straightening out" those states that you disagree with on curriculum (choice of courses, books, etc), will you be equally enthusiastic when a conservative administration comes in and makes massive changes? Will the core curriculum bounce back and forth as administrations change? If it does, what will be the impact on the kids? The costs to the schools? The sanity of the teachers?
This is an interesting article....some good references too.
Those pesky things called laws
By George F. Will
Published: March 9
Washington Post
Two policies of the Obama administration illustrate an axiom: As government expands, its lawfulness contracts. Consider the administration’s desire to continue funding UNESCO and to develop a national curriculum for primary and secondary education.
In 1994, Congress stipulated that no U.S. funds shall go to “any affiliated organization” of the United Nations that “grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.” Last October, UNESCO (the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)voted to confer membership on Palestine. Although there are waiver provisions in most laws restricting executive discretion in foreign relations, the 107 national delegations that voted to extend membership to Palestine were told there is no such provision in the pertinent law. The United States immediately cut off funding, which is 22 percent of UNESCO’s budget.
But President Obama’s 2013 budget seeks $78,968,000 for UNESCO and says: “The Department of State intends to work with Congress to seek legislation that would provide authority to waive restrictions on paying the U.S. assessed contributions to UNESCO.” The administration regards the 18-year-old statute as an evanescent inconvenience — that Congress will obediently tug its forelock and grant a waiver provision enabling the executive branch to slip the leash of law.
Meanwhile, the Education Department is pretending that three laws do not mean what they clearly say. This is documented in the Pioneer Institute’s report “The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers” by Robert S. Eitel, Kent D. Talbert and Williamson M. Evers, all former senior officials in the Education Department.
The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) — No Child Left Behind is its ninth iteration — intruded the federal government into this traditionally state and local responsibility. It said that “nothing in this act” shall authorize any federal official to “mandate, direct, or control” a state’s, local educational agency’s or school’s curriculum. The General Education Provisions Act of 1970, which supposedly controls federal education programs, stipulates that “no provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize” any federal agency or official “to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction” or selection of “instructional materials” by “any educational institution or school system.”
The 1979 law establishing the Education Department forbids it from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum” or “program of instruction” of any school or school system. The ESEA as amended goes further: No funds provided to the Education Department “may be used . . . to endorse, approve, or sanction any curriculum designed to be used in” kindergarten through 12th grade.
However . . .
What authors Eitel, Talbert and Evers call the Education Department’s “incremental march down the road to a national curriculum” begins with the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS). It is an initiative not of any state legislature but of a governors association, state school officials and private foundations. This push advanced when the Race to the Top Fund (RTTT, part of the 2009 stimulus) said that peer reviewers of applications for money should favor those states that join a majority of states in developing and adopting common standards. The 11 states and the District of Columbia that won Race to the Top funding had adopted or indicated an intention to adopt the CCSS, which will require changes in curricula.
An Education Department synopsis of discussions with members of the public about priorities in competition for RTTT money says “the goal of common K-12 standards is to replace the existing patchwork of state standards.” Progressives celebrate diversity in everything but thought.
The Obama administration is granting conditional waivers to states chafing under No Child Left Behind’s unrealistic accountability requirements. The waivers are contingent on each state adopting certain standards “that are common to a significant number of states,” or the state may adopt standards endorsed by its institutions of higher education — if those standards are consistent with the Education Department’s guidelines.
We have been warned. Joseph Califano, secretary of health, education and welfare in the Carter administration, noted that “in its most extreme form, national control of curriculum is a form of national control of ideas.”
Here again laws are cobwebs. As government becomes bigger, it becomes more lawless. As the regulatory state’s micromanagement of society metastasizes, inconvenient laws are construed — by those the laws are supposed to restrain — as porous and permissive, enabling the executive branch to render them nullities.
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