Education Department Violates Law, and States Say “No” to National Standards

Rachel Sheffield / May 18, 2011

Last week, more than 100 education leaders signed a manifesto against the federally supported national education standards and tests backed by the Obama Administration. And in recent weeks, two states—Minnesota and South Carolina—have proposed legislation to prohibit implementation of the standards.

While Minnesota has already adopted the English/language arts standards, the state has not adopted the math standards. The proposed legislation would “bar the state’s education commissioner from adopting the…standards during upcoming revisions of those documents,” Education Week reports. Additionally, South Carolina’s law would prohibit that state from implementing the already adopted standards, voiding any steps taken to implement them.

States’ action to protect themselves from heightened government control of their local schools is more than reasonable. National education standards would further open the doors for Washington to enter the nation’s schools, ceding power to federal bureaucrats to determine what is taught in the classroom. Moreover, the promotion and funding of national standards and curriculum by the Obama Administration appears to be “according to the U.S. Department of Education’s own description…in violation of the law by which [the Department] was created,” as Jay P. Greene recently noted. (more…)