Obama's Education Takeover

Lance T Izumi

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781594036286
• eBook ISBN: 9781594036293
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

President Obama has laid the groundwork for an unprecedented centralization of education policy under the guise of promoting educational innovation, accountability, and improved student achievement. In reality, Obama’s new national standards, curricula, and testing – in addition to huge spending commitments by the federal government ¬– shift the policymaking power from individuals and communities to the federal bureaucracy.In this Broadside, Lance Izumi examines Obama’s education policies and shows us why Americans must protect and promote the power of individuals, especially parents, to control children’s education. We should look to the revolutionary school-choice and parental-empowerment laws passed by key states and other nations such as Canada. While Obama is pushing American education in the wrong direction, we can steer it back to local control.

IN HIS LETTER introducing his proposal for revamping the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, otherwise known as the No Child Left Behind law, President Barack Obama said he was presenting an “outline for a re-envisioned federal role in education.” Although he acknowledged that “we must recognize the importance of communities and families in supporting their children’s education, because a parent is a child’s first teacher,” Obama’s key education policies have disempowered local communities and parents and centralized education policy and decision making in Washington.

Unlike Obama’s well-known and much-discussed health care policies, many Americans are unfamiliar with either the broad themes or the details of President Obama’s education policies. There is some awareness, however, that the president has increased federal spending on education through, for example, his stimulus plan, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Under ARRA, nearly two times the annual budget of the federal Department of Education (USDE) – about $100 billion – was allocated to improve the nation’s public school system. Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary, called this one-time allocation “absolutely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lift American education to a new level – and make us more competitive in the global economy.” Compared with such high-flown rhetoric, the results of this huge federal education spending spree were a bitter disappointment.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that instead of funding reforms and raising student achievement, the education-stimulus money simply went to “retaining staff and current education programs” – i.e., preserving the status quo. Other analyses of ARRA education funding have come to similar conclusions. Yet despite this massive failure, the administration’s most far-reaching and troubling education program cost a fraction of ARRA’s overall price tag.

Initially funded at $4.35 billion, Race to the Top (RTTT) is a federal competitive grant program that was a small part of the bigger ARRA allocation. In their grant applications, states had to address issues such as how they would increase teacher effectiveness, build data systems to measure student success, and turn around low-performing schools. However, it was the important extra points given to states that agreed to adopt common, or national, academic and college-and-career-readiness standards and assessments that raised a large red flag for anyone concerned about the potential nationalization of American education.

THE NATIONAL STANDARDS

Obama, Duncan, and other supporters of national academic-content standards argue that a single set of rigorous national standards and a single national test aligned with them are needed because the current system of individual state standards and tests has given the country a hodgepodge of standards of differing quality. Duncan has stated, “If we accomplish one thing in the coming years, it should be to eliminate the extreme variation in standards across America.” In order to accomplish this goal, Duncan and the president have chosen a strategy of unprecedented federal activism.

The New York Times has observed that Duncan “has far more money to dole out than any previous secretary of education, and he is using it in ways that extend the federal government’s reach into virtually every area of education, from pre-kindergarten to college.” Yet the Obama administration has tried to be stealthy about its activist and intrusive agenda.

Knowing that creating national standards inside the U.S. Department of Education would never fly, the administration decided to use a third-party product. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, both influential Washington-based organizations, collaborated to create the so-called Common Core standards. These subject-matter and college-and-career-readiness standards were then used as de facto national standards by the Obama administration.

The Obama administration has tried to be stealthy about its activist and intrusive agenda.

Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott condemned this stalking-horse tactic: “Having the federal government use Washington-based special interest groups and vendors as proxy for the USDE in setting national curriculum standards and then using ARRA federal discretionary funds to develop national tests for every child in the nation represents unprecedented intrusiveness by the federal government into the personal lives of our children and their families.”

States had to sign on to these Common Core national standards to earn critical points under Race to the Top, and these standards are emphasized in President Obama’s blueprint for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In addition, in early 2011, the president told the nation’s governors that he wanted states to adopt national standards as a precondition for receiving federal Title I funding for disadvantaged students.

To further camouflage its intentions, the Obama administration has constantly claimed that the Common Core standards are voluntary and are not mandated by the federal government. The administration argues that states could have chosen not to participate in Race to the Top and thus would not be subject to any national standards and testing. Both conservatives and liberals find this line of reasoning singularly unconvincing.

Andy Smarick, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of education under President George W. Bush, observed that “because states are still desperate for money, it’s doubtful that they will take a pass on the opportunity to compete for several hundred million dollars.”

From the Left, Anthony Cody, a liberal-leaning blogger for Education Week and a former teacher, writes, “In today’s fiscal climate, when state revenues have declined drastically, federal funding has become an absolute necessity. Though states and local districts technically have the option of refusing these funds, in practice they are totally dependent on them.” Eventually, “we may end with all of our states ‘volunteering’ to become centralized, with the [federal] Department of Education … at the helm.”

Not surprisingly, most states, with the exception of Texas and a few others, agreed to the Common Core national standards in their RTTT applications. As one Wisconsin state legislator opined, “This is a race for the money, not a race for the top.”

Texas Education Commissioner Scott harshly assessed the Obama administration’s stealth nationalization policies: “Originally sold to the states as voluntary, states have now been told that participation in national standards and national testing would be required as a condition of receiving federal discretionary grant funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act administered by the USDE. The effort has now become a cornerstone of the Administration’s education policy through the USDE’s prioritization of adoption of national standards and aligned national tests in receiving federal funds.”

The ultimate goal of President Obama’s national-standards-and-testing drive, Scott warned, is nothing less than the “federal takeover of the nation’s public schools.” Such a power grab, based on national standards and testing, would have terrible educational and governance consequences for America.

THE COST OF NATIONAL STANDARDS

Although they may have qualms about accepting national standards and testing, most revenue-starved states leaped at the chance to reel in more federal education bucks. Yet state lawmakers and officials may have made a huge fiscal miscalculation. While states were rushing headlong into the RTTT competition and its programmatic requirements, there were voices in the wilderness warning of the enormous cost of changing over to the new national-standards-and-testing system.

“The Common Core standards would further burden already overstrained state budgets,” said Lindsey Burke, education-policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation. “Developing and overhauling state accountability systems,” she warned, “will be far more costly and of questionable value during a time of budget shortfalls nationwide.”

Although they may have qualms about accepting national standards and testing, most revenue-starved states leaped at the chance to reel in more federal education bucks.

Frederick Hess, education policy director at the American Enterprise Institute, observes that “most state policymakers – who have been busy slashing outlays and who are eyeballing several tough budget cycles ahead – have no idea that supporting Common Core standards means that they’re signing up for large new outlays for implementation and assessment.”

“At this point the national standards are just a bunch of words on pieces of paper,” observes Jay Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He explains, “To make standards meaningful they have to be integrated with changes in curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy. Changing all that will take a ton of money since it involves changing textbooks, tests, professional development, teacher training, etc.” For most states, these costs come at a time when they can least afford them.

California had one of the nation’s top sets of state academic-content standards. Yet, bedeviled by massive, continuing budget deficits, the state decided to replace its high-rated state standards with the Common Core national standards when it applied for RTTT funding. Like most other states, California was a loser in the RTTT sweepstakes but is now saddled with the costly prospect of overhauling its standards-and-testing system.

The California Department of Education estimates that it will cost $759 million to implement the national standards. However, EdSource, a respected Northern California-based education-research organization, estimates that it will cost $800 million for new curriculum frameworks and $785 million for teacher and principal training, plus various costs for other items, resulting in a total of $1.6 billion to change over to the new national standards.

Doug Lasken, a consultant on state standards and a former teacher, noted that California’s slice of the RTTT money, if it won a grant, was estimated to be about $400 million, “though little of that money would have been dedicated to [Common Core standards] adoption costs.” He rightly wondered how such an amount “could cover an expense of $1.6 billion.” Because California lost its bid for RTTT funding, Lasken lamented, “We will, therefore, receive no federal money to cover the expense of replacing our standards.”

A report by the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Office in Washington State found that the cost just to buy new textbooks that align with the new national standards would be $122 million. Liv Finne, director of education at the Washington Policy Center, says that when all costs – including those to update the state’s testing system – are totaled, the amount exceeds $300 million. And, like California, Washington State failed to win an RTTT grant.

The Obama administration admits that the costs of implementing the new national standards and tests are very high. Education Week reported that Roberto Rodriguez, a key White House education adviser, “acknowledged that the cost of [teacher] professional development necessary to make common standards and assessments work the way they should is ‘huge.’” While he said the administration was “looking into” ways to help states with these costs, his vagueness makes it clear that Barack Obama and Arne Duncan have no real, concrete strategy to assist states with funding the full implementation of the national standards and tests.

THE NATIONAL STANDARDS ARE NOT HIGH STANDARDS

Obama-administration officials may concede that the states will have to bear significant costs, but they and their allies would likely retort that the price is worth it because the new national standards are much better than the current crop of state standards. The creators of Common Core, for example, claim their standards “are evidence-based, aligned with college and work expectations, include rigorous content and skills, and are informed by other top performing countries.” The evidence, however, fails to bear out this boast.

Various studies have been done comparing the rigor of the Common Core national standards with the state standards that they will replace. For national-standards advocates, the findings are disappointing.

A University of Pennsylvania study conducted by Andrew Porter, dean of the university’s graduate school of education, and several research colleagues compared the national math standards with 27 state math standards. They also compared the national English language arts standards with 24 state English standards. According to Porter, “What we found was unexpected and troubling.”

“Our research shows that the common-core standards do not represent a meaningful improvement over existing state standards,” says Porter. He points out that “in terms of mathematics and English language arts curricula focus, the results are just as disappointing: The common core has a greater focus than certain state standards, and a lesser focus than others.”

“What all this means is that the common-core standards don’t seem to build on what we’ve learned through decades of research and experience,” Porter concludes. “The common core is not a new gold standard – it’s firmly in the middle of the pack of current curricula.”

President Obama has said, “We will not be able to keep the American promise of equal opportunity if we fail to provide a world-class education to every child.” The national standards promoted by the president are supposed to help deliver that world-class education. The University of Pennsylvania study, however, also questioned the quality of the Common Core national standards compared with the standards of top-performing countries such as Finland, Japan, and New Zealand. It found that the standards in these countries put more emphasis on basic skills than the Common Core standards did. This does not bode well for the U.S., where l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• The National Standards
• Acknowledgment
• Encounter Broadsides Series
• Copyright