From Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:
If we walk away from responsibility as a country—if we make our national education responsibilities somehow optional—we would turn back the clock on educational progress, 15 years or more.
The Wall Street Journal, “Education Secretary Presses Central Federal Policy Role,” 1/13/15
What educational progress? We should be so lucky as to turn the clock back 15 years or more. Although the US is one of the world’s leaders in per capita education spending we are not one of the world’s leaders in educational attainment and student proficiency, and standardized test scores have essentially flat-lined for years, with statistically insignificant variations year-to-year. The latest federal “involvement” is Common Core: centralized one-size-fits-all education standards; mandated teaching methods that discard time-tested and successful teaching techniques in favor of faddish theories that confuse more than elucidate; all served up with a side dish of governmentally approved propaganda. In a better world, local administrators, teachers, and parents would control the public educational agenda and the federal government would stay out. It did for most of US history to no visible detriment to students, who once knew their multiplication tables cold by the end of first grade and graduated high school knowing how to diagram sentences (if you don’t know what diagraming a sentence means you’re proving my point) and write an essay. In a perfect world, education would be fully privatized and parents and students would enjoy the same diversity of educational choices and costs that are available for millions of goods and services on the internet, their local malls, and grocery stores.
