The Obama Administration is successfully orchestrating one of the largest federal overreaches into education policy since the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s. If this news is coming as a surprise, it’s because the Administration is maneuvering outside of normal legislative procedure, by way of Trojan-horse programs such as Race …
Last year, GM CEO Rick Wagoner “voluntarily” stepped aside when Washington took over his company. BP is “voluntarily” setting up a $20 billion escrow account. And now, states are being pushed to “voluntarily” adopt national education standards and tests. It all began when the Obama administration used its $4.35 billion …
In perhaps President Obama’s most stealth campaign to date, the federal government has been slowly tightening its grip on the education sector to little fanfare. Rather than working through the democratic legislative process, this Administration has circumvented Congress to enact an ill-conceived education agenda that will weaken accountability, reduce transparency and minimize …
The Obama administration’s Race to the Top program presents states with a choice: adopt national standards for academic performance, or refuse desperately-needed federal dollars. The problem? National standards only standardize mediocrity, while taking power over educational choices out of the hands of parents and local school boards and transferring it …
It’s not exactly news that the federal No Child Left Behind program has encouraged the states to define proficiency downward in order to avoid triggering various federal sanctions. But judging from Education Next’s recent grading of state proficiency standards, the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program is no fix. Here’s …
As Race to the Top – the Obama administration’s $4.35 billion grant program designed to spur education reform – becomes a summer-long marathon for the remaining states that did not win grants in the first round of competition, the U.S. Department of Education has added an additional contest to the …
The Obama Administration’s signature K-12 education program, Race to the Top, has gotten a lot of press in the last couple weeks with the announcement of first-round winners Tennessee and Delaware. But for all the hullabaloo and homework it’s created for states, Race to the Top represents only a small …
Monday’s announcement that Delaware and Tennessee would win the first round of Race to the Top funds put a reality check on the grand expectations for the grant competition’s potential for true reform. While many of the first round’s 16 finalists presented applications strongly committed to the specific grant requirements …
