That's a big IF. Right now the feds want charter schools. That's the
federal policy.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- From: "Wojtek S" <wsoko52 at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 7:00:56 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] More "school reform" nonsense
[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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>
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