Blogging at The New York Times, Pacific Research Institute senior fellow Lance Izumi writes on the future of conservative education policy:
Republicans have always favored, at least philosophically, decision-making at the most practical and effective level of government closest to the people. They abandoned this concept during the Bush years, especially in education with the mandate-heavy federal No Child Left Behind Act. Republicans need to get back to their original principles and push for decentralizing education policymaking back down to the state and local level.
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Dan Lips, an education analyst at the Heritage Foundation, notes that federal Title I dollars, which are supposed to go to disadvantaged students but because of complicated financing formulas result in wide per-student funding differences from school to school, “could be delivered through a simple formula based on the number of low-income students in a state” and “states could be allowed to use Title I funds in ways that make it follow the child.” The result would be a “simple and transparent system of school funding.”