Obama Administration: The Problem With Education Is Too Much Local Control
According to President Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the problem with education in America is that we have all these uppity parents and local school board members who think they know what’s best for their kids’ education.
Education in the U.S. is a state and local responsibility, but “[i]nsuring educational equity is at the heart of the federal role in education,” Duncan said. “It opens doors for all students as long as we make sure that the students most in need have access.”
Duncan noted that “American education is decentralized,” consisting of 15,000 school districts and 95,000 public schools “independently deciding how to teach, and in many cases, what to teach.”
Local parents and policy makers coming together to decide what sort of things their kids should be taught?
Why, that’s awful. Clearly we need a top-down, one-size-fits-all solution for education with bureaucrats in Washington DC setting curriculum for every single student in the country. Because we all know that sort of solution always works best.
Tags: arne duncan, Barack Obama, Education, local control
