When “states signed on to common core standards, they did not realize…that they were transferring control of the school curriculum to the federal government,” said Sandra Stotsky, 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality at the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform, speaking at The Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. Stotsky and four other education scholars from around the nation met to discuss the Obama Administration’s growing push for Common Core national education standards and why states should resist Washington’s attempt to further centralize education. The Obama Administration’s press for common … More
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No Child Left Behind, the eighth reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, is 600-plus pages in length and contains programs that cost taxpayers $25 billion per year. The Office of Management and Budget has estimated that states are annually burdened with 7 million hours worth of paperwork as a result of No Child Left Behind. After the passage of No Child Left Behind, several states released calculations comparing the administrative cost of compliance to the amount of federal money they receive under the law. In 2005, … More
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No Child Left Behind, the eighth reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, is 600-plus pages in length and contains programs that cost taxpayers $25 billion per year. The Office of Management and Budget has estimated that states are annually burdened with 7 million hours worth of paperwork as a result of No Child Left Behind. After the passage of No Child Left Behind, several states released calculations comparing the administrative cost of compliance to the amount of federal money they receive under the law. In 2005, … More
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The push to nationalize the content taught in public schools across the country should be of great concern to state leaders. The Common Core national standards effort represents a massive federal overreach into what is taught in local schools, further removing parents from the educational decision-making process, and likely to cost state taxpayers $16 billion over seven years just to implement. As more details emerge about the content and quality of the Common Core national standards backed by federal funding and the Obama Administration, questions about the coherence, international competitiveness, … More
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During the course of Obamacare oral arguments in late March, an interesting exchange between Justice Samuel Alito and U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli illuminated the Administration’s education overreach vis-à-vis national standards. Education Week reports: For the U.S. Supreme Court, the closely watched six hours of arguments last week were all about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. So how did the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, teacher tenure, curriculum, Title IX, and other education topics become part of the discussion? They came up as the justices debated whether the … More
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“Budgets are about choices,” stated President Obama in recent remarks to governors about his massive fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the Administration’s priorities than Obama’s decision to once again place the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP) on the chopping block while simultaneously growing the Department of Education’s (DOE) budget more than any other federal agency. In so doing, President Obama is showing low-income D.C. families that his priority is maintaining the unacceptable status quo—at least when it comes to other programs—while bowing to special … More
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By Andrew J. Coulson
In this new TEDx video, University of Newcastle (England) lecturer Pauline Dixon takes viewers on a tour of schools serving some of the poorest people on Earth. Private schools … that charge fees … that are paid for by the poor parents themselves … and that outperform local government schools spending far more per pupil. [...]
TED Goes to School is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Since 2009, public education has been both free and required for all children between the ages of six and 14. Yet many families in Mumbai slums, where they lack even toilets and basic sanitation, save up their meager earnings to pay for private school education for their kids. A recent Economist article states that between a quarter and a third of school children in India attend private schools. In India’s cities, experts estimate as many as 85 percent of children attend private schools. According to another report, 73 percent of … More
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Last year, the Obama Administration began making pacts with states that agreed to implement the White House’s preferred education policies, circumventing Congress to grant waivers to No Child Left Behind policy. Some states, like Texas and California, have refused to agree to such terms with the Department of Education and are instead demanding genuine relief from No Child Left Behind. The Department of Education has responded with the announcement that it will begin offering separate policy terms to individual school districts—circumventing not just Congress, but also the authority of states … More
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By Andrew J. Coulson
I’m no theologian, but when a religious group asks God to bless something, I’m pretty sure that’s a sign they like it. So if some other folks show up and say they love that same thing, we’ve got a clear case of mutual agreement. They’re not going to fight over whether the thing in question [...]
How to Make ‘Bless’ and ‘Love’ Fighting Words is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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