Steve Farrell
Saturday, Nov. 20, 2004

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  They’re referring to unfunded mandates.

Now, just in case some of you aren’t sure what that means, an unfunded mandate is when the federal government tells the states: “Here’s a new law. Comply with it or else. And oh, by the way, YOU have to pay for it!”

But in this particular case, what Democrats and some states are calling “unfunded mandates” have nevertheless been backed up with, by far, the most federal money ever given to the states for education.

It’s hard to say, then, whether we are really having a debate over unfunded mandates or incompetence, but the debate goes on.

In some respects, you really have to take your hat off to the idea behind the president’s program.

“No Child Left Behind” pegs federal dollars to performance, something every capitalist can identify with. If your school and your state do well, they get more money. If your school or state does poorly, it gets less money. And the way the feds find out who’s been naughty or nice is through aggressive and repetitive standardized testing.

You could put it this way: “No Child Left Behind” rewards success and punishes failure, and that’s the American way.

Perhaps.

Perhaps not. For starters, to some on the losing end in this era of victims and crybabies, performance is a four-letter word. It smacks of racism, they say, and inequality. They need more money, indeed much more money, to make things fair, to level the playing field.

I wonder how these highly educated, tenured, union-protected towering powerhouses of learning explain the millions of parents who, without degrees and without federal and state monies, consistently produce homeschooled kids who crank out test results that are 150 percent to 175 percent of the national public school average in nationally standardized exams.

It seems that parochial parents know how to raise the bar, but tenured teachers do not.

They stand as an in-our-face testimony that the problem with continued failure in the public schools is not about money, and never has been. And really, even though the president has attempted to raise the bar and his intention may deserve a little praise, he, like every social planner before him, has missed the mark.

You and I know the truth. The decline in public education began the day the federal government took upon itself the unconstitutional duty to ‘help out’ the states, ‘help out’ the poor, ‘help out’ the minorities with their education.

They ‘helped out’, all right.

First, the feds ‘generously’ sent the states money, which they can only do by first TAKING IT AWAY from the states. Were we stupid?

Second, since we were, in fact, stupid, it was easy for us to next fall for the ploy that the feds were the ‘trustees’ of the money they stole from us, and as such, had the right to dictate how it would be spent.

Are we starting to see the picture? First the federal camel got his nose in the tent, and next, he moved in and took it over.

Third, once in control, the damnable animal unveiled a flair for revolution that no one could have foreseen. He kicked God, morality and creationism out of the educational tent and filled the void with Socialism, Humanism, and Evolutionism.

He missed nothing.

Eternal truth was replaced with relativism, reason with emotion, justice with tolerance, high standards with standardized mediocrity, independent thinking with the memorization of rubbish. The bar was set so diabolically low by this beastly new schoolmaster that our schools have never recovered. More importantly, kids who once believed themselves to be children of God called unto perfection now believe themselves the offspring of apes, pre-wired to succumb to every passion.

Does anyone in their right mind really believe that “No Child Left Behind” – a plan which empowers the federal educational establishment as never before – will fix this mess?

It seems to me true reform requires that we first kick the camel out. Anything less is smoke and mirrors.

Contact Steve

NewsMax pundit Steve Farrell is associate professor of political economy at George Wythe College, press agent for Defend Marriage (a project of United Families International), and the author of the highly praised, inspirational nove, “Dark Rose” (available at amazon.com).

For you West Coast night owls, every Monday you can catch Steve on Mark Edwards’ “Wake up America!” talk radio show on 50,000-Watt KDWN, 720 AM, 10 p.m. to midnight.

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