Nixing Education Funds Proper Move By Perry

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is right to refuse to "compete" for federal "Race to the Top" education funds. Applying for and "winning" the $700 million would mean abandoning state control of education and ceding it to the federal government.

And that's not the federal government's job.

"This administration's attempt to bait states into adopting national standards is an effort to undermine states' authority to determine how their students are educated, and is clearly aimed at circumventing laws prohibiting national standards," Gov. Perry said on June 1. "Abandoning state standards and adopting new nationalized standards would cost Texas taxpayers $3 billion, and would likely weaken the rigorous college- and career-ready standards and assessments already in place in our state."

The Race to the Top program pits states against each other in an unseemly competition.

"The $4.5 billion federal program aims to spur innovation by rewarding states that promote charter schools, adopt rigorous learning standards, tie teacher pay to student achievement and intervene in chronically low-performing schools," the

Wall Street Journal reports. "Forty states applied for the first round of the competition. Only Delaware and Tennessee won funds. They received a combined $600 million."

The Obama administration claims Race to the Top has "advanced" education by spurring states to enact their own reforms.

"But Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, said many of the changes -- especially on the charter school front -- have been 'inconsequential,'" the

Journal reports. "In New York, lawmakers pushed through legislation Friday afternoon that eased the cap on charter schools from 200 to 460. But it placed restrictions on the schools by barring for-profit organizations from opening new ones."

Mississippi also passed a charter school law,

"but it prohibits the creation of charters in the traditional sense," the

Journal adds. "The law doesn't allow private groups to open new charters. It simply allows low-performing schools to convert to charters if parents vote for it. Parents would run the school, but budget and curriculum decisions could be overridden by state or district officials."

There's nothing wrong with the idea of national standards -- a key part of Race to the Top and an important reason why Texas won't seek the funds.

But in practice, national standards would inevitably fall short -- because of politics.

Nothing at the federal level will be done without union involvement. The teachers' unions will inevitably have a big say in what the standards are, how they're measured and the penalties for poorly performing teachers and schools.

And politics will be involved -- just look at the recent flap on the Texas State Board of Education over the content of textbooks. Imagine the unions getting involved in something like that at the federal level.

But the most fundamental argument against national standards remains the U.S. Constitution itself. Education is simply not an enumerated power of the federal government -- nor should it be.

Children are educated by local schools, local teachers and local districts -- not by bureaucrats in Washington.

Perry is right to keep control of Texas schools in Texas.

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