Boris Kortiak <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> <irony>
> Wait a minute.  I'm sure I heard George Bush say, just this morning
> again, that he wants to return schools back to local control.  I'm
> sure you missed it when the panzer division came through your
> town and took over you schools.  I know I did.
> </irony>

Irony aside, it wasn't that blatant.  It was more along the lines of the
method that the Federal government used to control the states' speed limits
when they required 55 mph or the states would lose their Federal funding.
The Federal government has required schools to kowtow to their idea of
education if they want to feed at the Federal money trough.

Also, <[log in to unmask]> amended:

> Department of Energy, not the Department of Education. Looking at the
> Department of Education's web site at http://www.ed.gov/stats.html, I
read:
> Continuing a tradition that began in 1867 with the creation of the
original
> U.S. Department of Education,

This does not surprise me since the US at that time was bitterly contesting
states' rights versus federalism, and federalism won out.  Education wasn't
always a Federal, state or even local government concern.  In frontier
times, all children were home-schooled.  It was only later when there were
enough children in a neighborhood (or village) to warrant the hiring of a
school teacher that "professional" educators were brought in and parents
entrusted the education of their children to a third-party.  Even then, it
was a group of local parents (I guess that's local government at the most
fundamental level) that did the hiring and firing.  School boards came later
as representatives of local parents.

Jim Phillips                           Information Systems Manager
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