While you were thinking about cooking turkey and how to survive your weird uncle, the White House was sliding information out into the public without you noticing.
They seem to have made it a tradition of dropping regulatory agendas into the public at the end of the week, right before holidays. This year was no different. On the Friday before Thanksgiving, the White House quietly released its plan for new regulations in 2015. As Common Core battles continue in multiple states, the Department of Education’s regulations prepare to gain ever more control over our kids’ education. Will Estrada, Director of Federal Relations for the Home School Legal Defense Association, says they’re concerned about three areas in particular:
1. Public School Education of Children with Special Needs: One regulation still being drafted proposes to “phase out the authority of states” in defining academic standards for special education. Though it only specifies special education right now, there’s no doubt this could expand to controlling all education.
2. The Training for Public School Teachers: The Department is still trying to regulate teachers’ certifications and training from D.C., despite blocked attempts in 1994 and 2001.
3. No Child Left Behind Waivers: Lastly, the government plans to continue using waivers for No Child Left Behind to forcibly convince states to adopt Common Core.
“The battle lines have been drawn,” Estrada said. States, local school districts, and parents have the constitutional authority over their children’s education – and it needs to stay that way.
These reports show what we already know. The federal government is preparing to encroach even further on the citizens’ lives, deciding what’s appropriate to teach the next generation of American citizens.
This isn’t the way our Founders envisioned it.
When they created this nation, they established a government that would act in specific ways: to protect life, liberty, and property. Over the years, however, things have changed. The federal government – like a cancer – has spread and encroached into every area of life. That means that this information dump, if anyone had noticed it, would cause people to endlessly debate the merits of No Child Left Behind, teachers’ certificates, and special education standards.
What is missing – what is almost always missing — is the question that gets to the heart of the matter. We need to stop endlessly debating the healthcare, economic, and educational policies that are handed down from on high. Decisions are best made as close to the home as possible, not in D.C. by a faraway bureaucrat who doesn’t live with the consequences of his choice.
Who decides?
According to the Constitution, we do. In other words, citizens should make crucial decisions that so affect our children.
We’re tired of being over-regulated and tired of the federal government’s machinery that creates more and more rules to keep itself going. (The Affordable Care Act passed four and a half years ago, and we’re still seeing regulations rolled out to enforce it.) Every law passed, every decision made, and every executive action taken needs still more regulation to make sense of it. Come to think of it, most government agencies that require these regulations to stay alive are themselves infringements on our liberties. It’s time for us to stand up and say “no” to a government that seeks to control everything from what vehicles we drive to who our doctor is to what our child learns in school.
The government has gotten good at creating more regulations and “dumping” them into the news when no one else is paying attention.
Prepare yourself for whatever they’ll announce right before Christmas.
’Tis the season!
