[lbo-talk] More "school reform" nonsense

[Wojtek S]

[WS:]  But that is exactly the problem.  If schools were federally funded on
the per-student basis, schools in poor districts would receive the same
funding as schools in wealthy district - which would be a great
redistribution mechanism.  Furthermore, federal curriculum would eliminate
the need for standardized testing - or at least a big chunk of it, which
again is an improvement over the status quo.  Finally, federally mandated
curriculum would reduce if not eliminate the influence of flat earth
ideologues and religious cooks - again a significant improvement over the
status quo.

Somebody on this list once commented that the quality of the federal justice
system is far superior to the state justice systems in most if not all
states.  The same applies to education, imho.  What is more, there is a good
reason for federal rather than local funding of education.  Education is a
public good - it benefits society as a whole not just a particular
locality.  A person educated in one locality is likely to move to another
locality after completing his/her schooling - so the local funding of
his/her education is in fact subsidizing other localities.  Federal funding
would eliminate that.

I understand that this argument goes against the idiotic infatuation of the
American public with everything that appears "gemuetlich" and
non-institutional - but that is another story.

Wojtek

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 9:37 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:


>
> [WS:]
>
> I think that the root cause of this mess is the local control of education
> -
> if you replace it with federal control and funding, a great deal of the
> current woes would disappear.
>
> This is not the case. Many school districts have lost total control, the
> poorer ones, the ones that don't ace the standard tests. That gives the feds
> or state pols who are in the pockets of the curriculum/testing industry the
> power to take over and make hay.
>
> NCLB and Race to the Top are both federal programs.
>
> Joanna
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