The Reich's Education Takeover

The Statist-in-Chief is not only trampling the First Amendment.  The Tenth is also on the block.

The constitutional, statutory and philosophical abuses by the Obama administration continue piling up. Last week, two of the top former lawyers for the federal Department of Education released a peer-reviewed report showing the administration violating or evading three separate federal laws by pressuring states to adopt a national core curriculum. Those laws exist for good reason: Control of educational content by the national government risks creating a national system of indoctrination, without local recourse to diversity of thought.

It was not a conservative but the Democratic former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, Jr. (an aide to both Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter), who warned that “In its most extreme form, national control of curriculum is a form of national control of ideas.” To protect against such dangers, local control of public education always has been a touchstone of the American system.

So?

...without statutory authority, the authors explain how the Obama administration has begun issuing “waivers” of expensive federal mandates, along with providing cash grants, in return for adoption of national standards. The administration then defines the national standards in such a way that only one initiative actually fits the definition – namely, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a supposedly voluntary national effort that easily morphs into a form of compulsion.