Obama's Blueprint for Total Federal Control in Public Education
As America jusfifiably writhes over passage of Obamacare into law by hook or crook, the Obama administration is quietly poising itself to take over public education on a scale that makes No Child Left Behind look meaningless by Lew Cypher
(libertarian)
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Win or lose with healthcare "reform", there is another socialist crisis looming, thanks to the Obama administration, but one that most conservatives and many libertarians will not only go along with but actually applaud, until it is forever too late. The battle over education has been being lost for more than a decade and often with as much political effort from the right as the left. Many conservatives simply do not understand how U.S. Representative George Miller and the late Senator Edward Kennedy pulled one over on President George W. Bush and the GOP with No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Granted, Bush was a "big government" conservative but his objectives got lost in the weeds of the bill while those of the "big government" liberals live on, enshrined in law. The defining impact of NCLB was not what it imposed on the nation's public schools but that it opened the door to direct Federal control of one of the most intimately local institutions in American history and culture (George Will, 2007).
Federal control of the schools is precisely why Democrats who railed against the law for its first four years did not overturn it after taking control of Congress in 2007, when the law first came up for renewal. Democrats may not like details within NCLB but they apparently like the idea of federal control of the schools more than they dislike the current law, considering that they have left NCLB unchanged until Obama has proposed his "Blueprint for Education" (Dorie Turner). Many of the same people who bitterly opposed Obama on healthcare will now jump through all his various hoops to help him further take over the nation's schools on a federal level by accepting his shiny false lure of blaming education's ills on so-called "bad" teachers (Ruben Navarrette). The proof of the falsehood in the lure to punish "bad" teachers is in which states won first approval under Obama's first canary in the coal mine for federal takeover of the schools, also known as Race To The Top; states whose teachers unions agreed to the so-called reforms (Nick Anderson & Bill Turque).
Teachers unions, rather than tenure itself, are the primary obstacle to removing ineffective teachers from the classroom. Weakening teacher tenure will only strengthen, not weaken the unions which now control many local schools (Lew Cypher, March 13, 2010). The weakening of tenure is vital to federal takeover of the schools, however, since tenure is a purely local relationship between the school district and the teacher. Tenure has no place in a federal school system, if teachers are to eventually become employees of the state or the federal government. Thus, weakening or doing away with tenure has little to do with teacher performance and everything to do with federal control of the schools. If local schools cannot or will not take action against "bad" teachers, then the state or the feds will supposedly take action for them (Steve Chapman).
And in fact, many local schools do not really have local control. Even the administrators of some unionized districts act as puppets for the teachers union, such as in the situation with California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in 2002 when he volunteered as a teacher in high school (Debra J. Saunders). Poizner worked as an unpaid volunteer teacher for one semester and apparently made some inroads toward turning around underperforming students, but it did not sit well with the local union and the high school administrator revealed herself to be a union lap dog in trying to rebuff his claims to success (Saunders).
So how is further weakening local schools and individual teachers going to end the union control of these schools? Most forms of currently proposed school reform do not impress teachers as helpful to the cause (Greg Toppo), even as some local schools flaunt new facilities and new electronic teaching tools as the "solution" (Chris Collins). However, what all the experts fail to understand but is still revealed in that exhaustive survey is that there is a huge divide between what teachers think about their role in education and what the union portrays that role to be. The Race To The Top (RTTT) winners were not states that surveyed and listened to teachers, but ones that listened to the teachers unions (Anderson & Torque). But RTTT is only a canary in the coal mine to what Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have in mind for radically transforming America's schools (David S. Broder). Even before RTTT was announced, Duncan has been doing his best to assert federal primacy in the local school, even to dictating who pays for what in local voluntary school activities (Marc Benjamin).
Clearly, Democrats envision a federal school system, controlled almost entirely from Washington, D.C,, with a little help from the teachers unions. National teacher unions express "disappointment" with President Obama's Blueprint for Education only to give themselves a fig leaf as they still work to push a liberal, big government agenda (American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association). Local notions of control, such as teacher tenure and the school boards that can grant and/or revoke tenure are in the way of this grand vision. So, Obama distracts everyone by pretending to agree with "big government" conservatives who view teachers as mere technicians and not real professionals (Lew Cypher, March 6, 2010). Obama and conservatives both want to undermine teacher tenure but for very, very different reasons (Navarrette).
As an allusion to Fox New's Bill O'Reilly, teachers are caught between a "Barack and a hard place", since their only voice in the game appears to be the same unions that ignore them to curry favor from the political left (Debbie Pfeiffer Trunnell). Even Poizner's one semester stint in the classroom shows that all educational success or failure comes down to the teachers and their relationship to the students, along with student and parent expectations, yet "big government" Republicans, like Poizer, are the same ones to most likely support Obama's "blueprint" for reform (Lisa Schiff). Given how George Bush's signature No Child Left Behind has turned out, whose "vision" for America's schools is likely to succeed by Republican cooperation with Obama over school reform (Diane Ravitch)?
The simple real solution is also the currently least likely, simply stop or reduce the federal role in public education. From the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965, to the present, federal dollars and federal interference in the local schools have failed to improve education (George Will, 2008). Let local communities not only succeed or fail on their own, but also determine their own standards for success, based on both local values and challenges. Local schools can hardly do worse for themselves than the federal government has attempted to do for them (George Will, 2010).
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Brevity can be the sign of true genius, but more often than not, it merely confuses. However, on the other hand, a very little sarcasm goes a long way.
Small, rural schools have worked very well without either state or federal intrusion for a very long time. Large urban schools have not always faired as well, whether independently or as "clients" of the state or the feds. The most common and most easily identified ill of the urban school is administrative overhang in the institutional organization. The more remote to the classroom the ultimate administrative power is, the more problems abound at point of service in the classroom, because the classroom stops being the focus of the process and merely a biproduct of the greater organization. Size really does matter in education but never in a good way. Instead of trying to mandate individual weight control, the government itself needs to go on a fiscal diet. Money equals power equals abuse of power. That is a formula as old as the oldest empires and yet a lesson humans resist learning.
