It's Time to Reform Federal Education Policy
Before there was a U.S. Constitution and a federal government, a national government, in the form of the Confederation Congress, passed legislation known as the Land Ordinance of 1784. Its purpose was to facilitate the development of the Northwest Territories, and it also referenced the promotion of education by the new territories. Earlier, Founders like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson also had sought to incorporate language advancing education into their state constitutions. Adams was able, in Massachusetts, to write in articles related to the provision of basic education. Jefferson’s Plan for the General Diffusion of Knowledge, while not adopted in full in Virginia, has become one of his enduring legacies.
Over the next 100 years, states developed public education systems, some of which became the envy of the world. Their accomplishments for the nation are legendary: rising literacy rates, the assimilation of millions of immigrants, a standard of living never seen before in the history of humanity. The idea of a federal system of education had no traction. It just did not fit within our system of governance. War, interstate commerce, and foreign diplomacy were federal responsibilities. States focused on law enforcement and on infrastructure, including schools and colleges. To this day, the U.S. Constitution does not mention education.
We now find ourselves at a critical juncture. Remarkably, state after state is handing over its education policy apparatus to the federal government, in exchange for what amounts to small change. Estimates of combined national spending for prekindergarten through high school hover around $650 billion, of which about 10 percent comes from the federal government. Despite this lopsided funding arrangement, federal policy now reaches into every school district and classroom in the country. States routinely submit plans to the federal government about who will teach in their schools and when children will be tested. Teachers are fired and schools closed based on policy procedures set...
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