Loco Control

We have a tradition of local control of the public schools in this country, but at this point almost all that's left is tradition - control is long gone. There is some logic to State or national control of education, but the system we have now, where school boards are nominally in charge but subject to all sorts of State and National mandates and incentives, is crazy.

The huge bureaucracies almost all school districts have today is driven in large part by the need to conform to mandates and compete for "grants." Because these mandates are driven by all sorts of special interests they are often mutually contradictory.

No child left behind is the latest and in many ways the most disruptive of these mandates. I think the country needs to make some choices about who controls what in the schools, and when they make those choices, make them in such a way that lines of control and responsibility are clear cut and obvious to all.

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