Missouri Education Watchdog is a wonderful blog that I discovered only recently.

 

In this post, these questions are raised: why doesn’t the U.S. Department of Education know about the tenth amendment to the Constitution? Why, under Arne Duncan, is the DOE unaware of federalism? Why is the DOE constantly overstepping its bounds, trying to impose its ideas not only on states but on districts? Don’t the leaders and lawyers know that they are breaking the law? The law is clear: no employee of the U.S. government is supposed to influence, control or direct the curriculum or instruction in the nation’s public schools. Democrats and Republicans agreed on that provision; neither wanted the other to interfere in what is a state and local responsibility.

 

The most recent transgression is an initiative called “The Future Ready,” in which the DOE is bypassing states and going right to the districts to hawk technology.

 

“The main goal of this initiative is to get districts, charters and private schools to commit to maximizing their use of digital learning and broadband access to the internet. They want schools to fund the resources necessary to “leverage their maximum impact on student learning… to develop the human capacity, digital materials, and device access to use the new bandwidth wisely and effectively.” In other words, buy more devices so you can meet our Race To The Top goal of 1:1 student:device ratio so you can purchase more digital learning services and supplies. They have a lot of high powered (well funded) friends of Washington who produce educational supplies and services who need to be repaid for helping get the right people in office so the bureaucrats could get an appointment.

 

“They want districts to “transition to effective digital learning,” to “achieve tangible outcomes for the students they serve.” So here we all still are on the outcomes based education bandwagon.

 

“It’s a nice little system. Millions of students with no other education option, will be pushed into using a private company’s product which will in turn continuously collect data on their use to improve said product. And who benefits from this? The private company. How many of our Superintendents will gladly be team players and sign this little pledge without any careful consideration of the costs of such an action? If history is any example, it unfortunately will be many.

 

“Among other things, the pledge commits districts to helping support home internet access. Since when is this the job of a school district? If it is, then shouldn’t they also support efforts to get every child a nice desk and chair at which to study? Shouldn’t they also be in the business of making sure every child has a nice bed since sleep is critical to learning readiness? Where does the school district’s responsibility end when it comes to a child’s education? And since when is it the job of the education department of the federal government to make sure that internet is available in the home? Sure the internet is useful, but is this how we want our education dollars spent – paying for school officials to work on these kinds of ancillary projects? Aren’t we in fact turning our district personnel into free lobbyists for all the private companies who will benefit financially from the district’s use of technology?”