States Need Not Fear Bush's Signature Education Law, DOE Advisor Says
by Jim Brown
March 4, 2004
(AgapePress) - The counselor to the U.S. Secretary of Education has an explanation for the opposition from state legislators and school administrators to President Bush's signature education initiative.Several state legislatures have been rebelling against the No Child Left Behind Act by adopting resolutions denouncing the law or considering bills that would exempt them from its requirements. This opposition has been an area of concern for Secretary of Education Rod Paige, but one senior advisor in his department has an idea about why there has been so much resistance to the Bush education plan.
Ron Tomalis oversees elementary and secondary education for the Department of Education. In some states, he says, legislators have principled concerns about the federal government getting too involved in local school districts. He says they understand that, historically, federal involvement in education has maintained certain boundaries.
"The paramount responsibility for educating children in our public education system rests at that level, and it should," Tomalis says, "and the federal government's role, relatively limited in history, has been to supply supplemental educational resources to our most disadvantaged children."
The education advisor concedes that those Republican lawmakers who view the initiative as a federal intrusion into state rights have legitimate concerns, but can be assured that the Department of Education takes state's rights seriously. "We pay great deference to this principle of federalism in allowing states huge latitude in determining these major issues," he says.
"One of our jobs that we have do is to make sure that, when all the organizations and other entities that are out there stirring up some dust -- sometimes intentionally -- as to what really is in the law, we have to go back and explain, 'No, you're really in control of this aspect of the law,' or 'No, the law doesn't say certain things will happen,'" Tomalis says.
The counselor to the Education Secretary says another problem creating opposition is the high level of misinformation circulating about what No Child Left Behind requires of states, and how much control those states still have to set the destiny of their public education system. However, he notes that many of the act's requirements were part of the federal education law that dates back to 1994.
