You have proven me wrong on nothing.
Yes, I have.
This discussion is about federal control of education.
No, this discussion is about this statement:
We have had 100% decentralized local control education for well over a century now.
This is false, as I've shown.
State input is part of local control and always has been.
State requirements do not suggest local control. I don't even understand how you can possibly think this. When the state says you must have 4 credits of Communication Arts to graduate, that's not local control. When the state says the students must learn
X number of facts, that's not local control.
You are confusing a system in which schools are locally run with state input and federal input and dollars. Such a system is NOT the federal takeover of education that some in this thread seem to view as the boogeyman.
I'm not saying anything like that. You seem to be confusing me with others.
What I'm saying is that your statement that we've had 100% decentralized local control for over a century is definitively false. To pretend otherwise is simply dishonest.
AYP does NOT negate the reality that local school districts run local schools.
AYP is/was the federal requirements which the state was required to put into a working curriculum and test. AYP is/was used to determine if schools were meeting the federal standards of increasing proficiency.
Local schools have school boards which are legally empowered to make all sorts of decisions for their district including matters of staffing, curriculum, expenditures, policy, and many many other things.
Only ONE thing you mentioned there has to do with education. And even that one, curriculum, is not something local school boards have control over, because they are mandated to teach to the standards set forth by the state, as legally required by the federal government.
AYP is part of the Bush No Child Left Behind. States are now opting out of the program and giving up the federal funds which came with it. Many experts see this as the eventual demise of the law and the program.
The state can only be granted a waiver if they adopt Common Core standards.
In fact, one could make the case that with the opting out of NCLB, federal input in local schools may be decreasing - NOT increasing. You have presented no 'facts' which negate this.
Except that time when I did:
The state standards are set to align with the national standards, whether it is the quickly falling by the wayside NCLB or the new Common Core standards, whose adoption was a requirement for the NCLB waiver.
If you want to focus on the state destroying local control, there is some evidence of this done on a selective basis. In Michigan we have had state takeover of school districts that have been claimed to be financially challenged. This almost always takes place in districts where racial minority children are the majority and where school boards are dominated by African Americans. We have a law in Michigan which takes away the right of local people to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people and imposes state selected dictators over those districts. In fact, half of the African Americans in the state live in communities where these state dictators have been imposed while very few white residents are so impacted.
And you do understand the government takeover of the school district was part of the requirements of No Child Left Behind, correct?
You want to talk about the imposition of state control - that is the area to look at and then you are on solid ground. Outside of that, Michigan still enjoys local school districts with wide and significant powers running their schools with state input.
But they do not have input into what they teach. They do not have input into how long the school year is. They have limited input into how money can be spent. They don't even have the ability to determine their own graduation requirements.
Your statement was false. No matter how much you try to dance around it, your statement was false. We do not have 100% decentralized local control of schools.
