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.

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.