Lessons For Donald Trump From The Common Core
From Forbes.com
By 2009, the latest version of 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act,, known as No Child Left Behind, was overdue for replacement. When Congress balked, President Obama and his education secretary Arne Duncan launched Race To The Top.
Race To The Top was marked by competitive grants and waivers from the increasingly unachievable student test score requirements of NCLB, based on meeting certain federal requirements. Most notable of these was the requirement to adopt certain standards, and while states were free to come up with standards of their own, the Common Core was sold as ready-made, fully-approved standards.
The backlash was huge, and it included complaints that the federal government had overstepped its authority, violating the law by trying to dictate local curriculum from DC. In 2015, Congress finally put together sufficient consensus to re-authorize ESEA, and that consensus was informed by RTTT and Common Core backlash from both the left and the right. The Every Student Succeeds Act includes specific language telling the feds to keep their hands off,
No officer or employee of the Federal Government shall, through grants, contracts, or other cooperative agreements, mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s specific instructional content, academic standards and assessments, curricula, or program of instruction developed and implemented to meet the requirements of this chapter.
The law forbids Common Core standards specifically, but at several points makes it clear that nobody in the federal government is to use any sort of directive or leverage to "mandate, direct, control, or review" state or local “instructional content, curriculum, or related activities.” ESSA set out to deliberately limit federal power to dictate state and local education.
All of this would seem to pose an obstacle to Donald Trump’s intent, now in executive order form, to control certain aspects of education in every local school in the country.