Hello, Heather Andrews Williamson. I am glad to see you are so comfortable posting on my timeline so that we can have this dialogue. I am not sure I know you directly (other than through Facebook), so I hope I can meet you in person soon as well. I too, along with Mike Kennedy, received the letter from Congressman Bishop in my mail, and I was so pleased to see that Rep. Bishop is fighting to reduce the federal role in education (for readers reference, Ms. Williamson has posted the full letter below). Unfortunately, Rep. Bishops Republican colleagues for years did not share this philosophy, and so we got stuck with federal mandates and funding ties that literally demoralized and worsened our schools in Utah, initiated by Republican administrations. That is one of the dangers of being an opportunistic federalist -- most Republicans unfortunately dont mind expanding the federal role over many areas of policy as long as it is their own leader and not Barack Obama in the White House. This has been true of Republicans (and Democrats) for many decades. The question is, when state governments get stuck with these unconstitutional, overreaching education mandates from the federal government, how are they supposed to play with the hand they have been dealt? Due to my strong convictions in favor of preserving constitutional principles of federalism, beginning from my undergraduate days and culminating in both my master’s thesis and Ph.D. dissertation on this topic, I myself probably would not have voted to apply for the Race to the Top funds connected to Common Core. But I don’t think I can necessarily blame the Utah State Board of Education for doing so, under the circumstances that faced them. The funding carrot of RTTT was dangled by the federal government in 2009 right at the time of the worst economic and fiscal crisis that our state and country has faced since the Great Depression. Here in Utah, our fiscal situation was dire, with nearly one billion dollars in potential cuts looming to our state budget, hitting primarily public education. As you may know, one of the only things the voters of Utah hate worse than cuts to funding for public education is the federal government taking a large share of our hard-earned tax dollars and Utahns not getting those dollars back. That is why even the Republican-dominated Utah Legislature accepted the federal education stimulus money that year. I strongly applaud and encourage Rob Bishop in his vigorous fight to eliminate the federal role in education. I even think he needs to keep writing letters like this to make us know he is not giving up this fight. But it is my guess that if Rob were still in the Legislature with us, he would have voted to do the same thing we did under those circumstances. Basically, we have different roles. He needs to do all he can to change federal policy toward education, but we meanwhile have to govern the state back home. Accepting federal education stimulus funds, applying for RTTT, and applying for waivers from No Child Left Behind were all the best things we could do given the misguided, unconstitutional federal education policies in place. Rep. Bishop’s letter also strongly condemns the newest Education Department initiative, RTTT for districts, and I wholeheartedly agree. Federal funding ties and policy relationships directly with school districts, bypassing state governments and state school boards, are an unconstitutional perversion of the principles of American federalism and a recipe for disaster. I believe that any school district in Utah that accepts these direct federal-to-district funds, and the strings attached, should have its funding allocation from the state education budget cut by that same amount. The only part of Congressman Bishop’s letter that I do not accept is his recommendation that Utah state officials should do something about the travesty that is federal education policy. The reason I cannot accept that part is that Rep. Bishop does not say what it is that he wants us to do. He seems to suggest that we jettison one unconstitutional power grab by the Obama administration (the breathtaking and illegal implementation of NCLB waivers by executive fiat, with no approval by Congress, a description with which I concur) for another unconstitutional program, No Child Left Behind. Those are two pretty terrible options, but, given what I know about the good work that has been done on Common Core by experts in many states, and that Utah is allowed to adapt the Common Core standards to our own liking, and given the fact that Utah is not accepting any money from the federal government specifically for implementing Common Core, and that the CC standards are much more beneficial for our kids’ education than the reckless requirements of NCLB, I think that, until Rep. Bishop can get his federal colleagues, Republican and Democrat, to keep their noses out of our state’s education system completely, I will play the hand that they have dealt us by sticking with the wise and calculated decision that has been made by our State Board of Education to adopt Common Core in Utah.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 02:32:54 +0000