Increased federal role in education

At Center for American Progress session on the role of federal government in education.

Very interesting that all of the panelists are strongly in favor of increasing the federal role. Particularly Paul Pastorek from Louisiana. I find it interesting that the panelists: (Cami Anderson, Superintendent, Newark Public Schools; Rayne Martin, Executive Director, Stand for Children-Louisiana; Paul Pastorek, Chief Administrative Officer, Counsel, and Corporate Secretary, EADS North America, and Emeritus Member, Chiefs for Change; and Amy Wilkins, Vice President for Government Affairs and Communications, The Education Trust) all seem to be avoiding the reality of federalism and local control. The fact it, much of federal regulation creates much more noise and fragmentation than actual coherence. Expectations are good - but regulations and "guidelines" represent the an overextension of the federal government that leads to silos and fragmentation.

I guess that I find it hard to extrapolate from the Recovery School District to other districts across the nation. The situation there required such dramatic intervention....

Finally - we get to the role of the district, and Newark in particular. Where there are 20 schools where 70 percent of students are below proficient in ELA. Ah - what Cami Anderson said is that charters are allowed to pick their teachers but traditional schools are not. So Paul says that the answer is to go charter across the district. But no one is mentioning the fact that state legislatures can CHANGE LAWS and create policies that dramatically impact the ability of schools to do what they need to do - so that they have the conditions in place to realize dramatic change.