Control Over Education Modular 6:

¶ … Control Over Education

Modular 6: Discussion

The pros and cons of giving the states greater control over education 'Local control' of education has been a popular buzzword ever since the beginnings of the public education system in Colonial America (Miller, 2010, p.2). However, despite its advocacy of state's rights, the Bush Administration was instrumental in taking away some of that local control from school boards and other local institutions like PTAs and PTOs through its construction of 'No Child Left Behind' legislation, which linked allowances of federal money to student's performance on standardized exams (albeit state exams that were supposed to be uniquely tailored to the curriculums of specific states). This has been a constant debate in American education: some individuals argue that the more state or locally-based the school, the better able it is to tailor its curriculum to individual student needs. Others argue that to compete in the competitive global marketplace, America needs national standards, and more federal intervention.

The Obama Administration has continued the previous administration's emphasis on greater federal control of school quality in its 'Race to the Top' campaign, which also links federal aid to school performance, and penalizes low-performing schools. Yet advocates for students with special needs and non-English speaking students often say that any form of standardized exam cannot adequately evaluate unique children's performances. Federal educational mandates can also encourage schools to avoid serving the needs of local populations in general and merely 'teach to the test.' Additionally, low-performing schools might seem to be failing but actually have improved, based upon a poor past track record, yet be penalized in terms of federal grants. Thus greater state rather than federal oversight and funding may be more suited to addressing students as individuals.

However, advocates of federal control point out that without highlighting deficits in student preparation, these schools might never 'reach for the top' or even reach for improvement. Also, many school districts might resist striving to update their curricula in science and math, based upon local or regional parental religious objections to evolution, or pressure to normalize certain political beliefs (such as the controversial idea that the Second Amendment prohibits all forms of restriction over personal firearms). Furthermore, despite contentions that the United States' education system is based upon a schema of local and state control, advocates of a more nationalized approach point out that the father of public schools, Horace Mann, saw the "common schools" he created as "inspiring democratic advance over the state's hodgepodge of privately funded and charity schools" (Miller 2010, p.1).

Advocates of federal control also point to how centralized European and Asian school systems that show consistently higher levels of performance in United States schools have national curricula and tests. "The United States spends more than nearly every other nation on schools, but out of 29 developed countries in a 2003 assessment, we ranked 24th in math and in problem-solving, 18th in science, and 15th in reading. Half of all black and Latino students in the U.S. don't graduate on time (or ever) from high school. As of 2005, about 70% of eighth-graders were not proficient in reading. By the end of eighth grade, what passes for a math curriculum in America is two years behind that of other countries" (Miller, 2010, p.1). Not only has the U.S. fallen behind, but it has fallen behind in a fashion that negatively affects specific, historically discriminated-against population groups in districts that often lack adequate local funding yet cannot qualify for federal funding linked to performance on state exams.