Good to see you, Ed (I believe your name is Ed).
I think you've scrambled several arguments here. Let me unscramble them and try to address each. At least sketch a response and if you wish we can dig deeper into them.
My argument is that the testing evil, which appears to bother Steve the most, is advanced by other agencies than the federal government. And is, of course, a very new issue at the federal level. Steve also seemed to think that opposition to testing resided in local control. I don't think so. It's rather, at least in my experience, in professional teaching bodies.
I also raised another issue, which is inequality of funding, so long as it only comes from local taxes. In many states, perhaps most, state wide regulations and funding mitigate the extremes of resource allocation which springs from only local funding. In NJ that means the state watches that the money is well spent (corruption, strange to say that in Jersey but there are some, however few, bright spots on that score) and worries less about content. But should it do so, that would not be a problem from my point of view, because the state agencies are heavily populated by education professionals.
Finally, on the national standards issue, which I think is the one troubling you, I suspect we do disagree. I think, to take one step back, first, that nationally we would be better off if the states were required to meet some minimal funding standards for public k-12 education. That's not content. But the abysmal education provided in some quarters of some states is not only a collective moral issue but it's a self interest issue.
You may recall that Robert Reich's old arguments about globalization were that the US should not try to limit free trade but rather to address the unemployment consequences by improving education. More people with better skills.
And, then finally, to the content standards. And I think here is the nub of the disagreement. I think there are certain education minimums without which it's difficult if not impossible to function in the modern, complex, post-industrial, highly globalized, yada, yada world. I think that's a national issue and one in which, if folk in Texas or Oklahoma wish to opt out, the rest of the country needs to say something like "we're in this together." |
