In article , Ed Huntress says...

But the real issue is that standards and protocols are set by
local goverment. If it's screwed up, they're the ones that
should fix it. They already have the control there.

I don't know what you mean. They have almost no control over standards or
means of discipline. That goes on at the state level, and now, with our
state's-rights conservative President, it appears to be migrating to the
federal level.

OK, by local (in the context of this discussion) I should
have really said 'state' level. Because the alternative
being discussed is having the federal government take over
the whole shebang.

But *funding* of education often happens on a purely local
level - although not in NJ, as I well know. I'm not sure
if you were there in the early '70s, but I almost didn't
have to go back to high school one year because the NJ
supreme court decided that purely local funding of schools
violated the state constitution. So that was when the
NJ state income tax came into being, to try to equalize
the state of schools between, say, Newark, and Alpine.
I'm sure there are plenty of states where funding is
still done as it was in NJ, before (what was that?)
title 9.

As you suggest, it just blows me away to see folks who
will kick and scream whenever federal government takes over
another function, clamoring at full speed to get this -
federal control over schooling.

They are doing this because they know the federal government
is perfectly willing (at this point) to let public education
wither on the vine. But if a democratic administration
should ever get back in office, I am positive that the
first sound you will hear will be the wailing, whining,
and gnashing of teeth of the anti-education types. "We
want to get the big, bad, gummint's meddling ways out
of our local lives!"

Jim

==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================