Alaska won't run!
Alaska's Commissioner of Education, Larry LeDoux, with a half dozen other states, has informed the federal government that we will not be competing to win up to $75 million in the Race to the Top sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. LeDoux is to be commended for his position.
The U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has roughly $4.5 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to give to states that will jump through the required hoops to "Race to the Top."
Dispersing the funds outside the intent of the law, President Obama can take over a large part of the nation's educational system without passing enabling legislation as required for health care reform.
To compete and win, a state must turn over its education system to the feds. The feds will control the school's standards, charter schools, teacher and principal evaluation and the careers that students are educated to enter.
Millions were spent by the various states to prepare for the first round in the race yet only two states won. School Reform News quoted Eric Fry, a spokesman for Alaska's Department of Education, "It's also quite expensive to apply." He said, " -- it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to apply. We didn't want to spend a lot of money on a losing battle."
Alaska and other states bemoan the costs and burdens of the federal program. In a letter written last January to Secretary Duncan, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said, "I will not commit Texas taxpayers to unfunded federal obligations or to the adoption of unproven, cost-prohibitive national standards and tests."
I have been associated with schools from Barrow to Ketchikan since 1966. I have never observed any unique genius originating in Washington, D.C., regarding what or how Alaska students should be taught. The one-shoe fix cannot work for Chicago and Little Diomede.
We need to abolish the federal Department of Education, terminating the U.S. Secretary of Education and returning to an educational system that was constitutional and the envy of the world.
Our public schools educated the talent that designed and constructed the ships, airplanes, and military bases that won World War II and sent man to the moon. That educational system increased literacy levels, assimilated millions of immigrants and improved the standard of living for the entire population. That the feds had anything to offer K-12 schooling in those times simply had no traction.
The federal Constitution makes no more mention of schooling than it does of health care.
It is interesting that politicians, educators, and the generally conservative voter who charge the federal government with overreach in the health-care program have stood by and even supported the federal takeover of schools. It was the Bush administration that solicited Sen. Ted Kennedy's authorship of "No Child Left Behind." One decade before President George W. Bush the Republicans were advocating the abolishment of the federal Department of Education.
The 10 percent of the total school budget nationwide provided by the feds buys their way into every school district and classroom in the country. State and federal bureaucracies take their cut reducing the funding that shows up in the classrooms.
One could conclude that the "Race to the Top" is a back door way to further the federal takeover of the state's public schools while anointing Obama the national school superintendent and Congress as the national Board of Education. It is time for Alaska to draw a line and notify the Obama administration that we will not be a participant in any race that allows the feds to officiate until there is reform that returns the affairs of schools back to the states and local school districts.
Darroll Hargraves is a retired Alaskan school superintendent. He is now a management consultant and real estate developer near Wasilla. E-mail, countryridge@gci.net
By DARROLL HARGRAVES