Educating students is no easy task, so the last thing schools need is Washington bureaucrats telling them what to do. Unfortunately, federal red tape has increased with every passing decade since the enactment of the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 (today known as No Child Left Behind). That’s why Senators Jim DeMint (R–SC) and John Cornyn (R–TX) introduced the A–PLUS Act: a conservative approach to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This new legislation, introduced April 14, would allow states to opt out of the notorious compliance burden …
On Tuesday, the House Education and the Workforce Committee held a full committee hearing on the impact of the federal government’s role in education; the mandates handed down from Washington, the associated paperwork burden, and the hurdles created for teachers and schools as a result. (If that sounds like a handful, it is.) The hearing’s $64,000 question was whether these regulations have led to improvements in academic achievement. The answer, not surprisingly, seems to be no. Congressman John Kline (R–MN), chairman of the committee, stated during the hearing:
Yesterday, the Arizona House Education Committee voted unanimously to support a resolution calling on Congress to pass the federal A-PLUS Act, which would allow states to opt-out of No Child Left Behind. The unanimous vote was bipartisan—with five Democrats and five Republicans voting in favor. The resolution now moves to the floor. Heritage has written extensively about the benefits of the reform approach embodied in the A-PLUS Act. Dr. Matthew Ladner of the Goldwater Institute, who co-authored a report for Heritage on this topic last year, testified in favor on …
