One National Curriculum Standard, Yes or No?

[txlibdem]

Isn't it about time that we standardize the learning requirements for the nation. After all, many students from Texas eventually go to college in Oregon, or Virginia, or who-knows-where. But since there are more educational standards than there are school buses how are students to know if they are educationally prepared to go to Virginia Tech instead of Texas Tech??? How will a student know if they will succeed at Brown University or Brigham Young???

I think it's high time that we enact federal legislation to establish a single curriculum standard for the nation.

[DontTreadOnMe]

1. Can't we give Texas back to Mexico?

Ok, kidding fellow American Texans.. :)

[TheWraith]

2. I'll admit I haven't looked this over extensively, so I don't know the ups and downs.

On first glance though, it seems to me like a reasonable and rational idea. Different curricula might have made sense at a time when kids were going to stay close to home, go to work in the same factory or on the same farm, etcetera. But these days there's too much mobility and too much in common for it to really make that much of a difference. How different of a primary education do you need if you're going to school in California versus Nebraska? Why is it so different? And there's too much opportunity for states to bugger things up, which is no longer a problem that just affects them. If schools in Texas are turning out uneducated kids, those kids don't stay there, they go to Nevada, or Oregon, or Virginia, or elsewhere.

[txlibdem]

5. My point exactly

10 right wing nutjobs are on the curriculum panel for Texas and they tossed Thomas Jefferson *out* of the history books, rewrote a few things so that "disaster capitalism" and invading other countries to set up puppet regimes (who stay in power with brutal, deadly force) is now "helping spread Democracy" and other nonsensical garbage.

For me, that was the last straw.

[TBMASE]

3. I'm fairly certain that the Federal Government doesn't have that power, constitutionally

[txlibdem]

6. It's wonderful to get access to a constitutional scholar every now and again

Please tell me... what would happen if all the states opted in to a single educational standard?

Also, isn't that part of the fed's job: to protect our borders, keep the nation strong, ensure a robust economy, etc., and tell me if well educated citizens harms or helps in those federal imperatives.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. No

There is no Federal authority and instead of becoming the floor, it will become all that is offered.

States like CA have things at the state level that would be hard to get at the Fed level like GLBT history

[txlibdem]

7. I agree. States rights are a vital part of the "Progressive" platform...

We don't want to stop the states from doing what they want...

Get the sense that I have more faith in the federal government than the local yocals at the state level??? Not every state is CA!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

8. States rights is very much a mixed bag

Look at what it has done to GLBT rights and protections and abortions.

My real concern is that a standard intended as a floor would become the ceiling as well. Public education would teach to the minimum federal standard and no more. Additional items would be dropped or somehow charged for.

[Goblinmonger]

9. States have the right to not be CA.

That is the heart of federalism. Especially now, you have the ability to move pretty easily (poverty issues aside, I know).

Education needs to stay a local/state issue. What they heck do politicians in DC know about the students in my classroom and what they need?