Obama imposing national school curriculum, ‘The department has simply paid others to do what which it is forbidden’

ArneBarack32
A new report compiled by several former Education Department insiders for the Pioneer Institute warns that the Obama administration is imposing a national school curriculum, even though the law doesn’t allow it, by making trades with districts seeking waivers from other program requirements.
“In three short years, the present administration has placed the nation on the road to a national curriculum,” said the authors of the reported called “The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers.”

“By leveraging funds through its Race to the Top fund and the Race to the Top Assessment Programs, the [Education] Department has accelerated the implementation of common standards in English language arts and mathematics and the development of common assessments based on those standards,” the authors said. “These standards and assessments will create content for state K-12 curriculum and instructional materials.
“The department has simply paid others to do that which it is forbidden to do,” the report continued. “This tactic should not inoculate the department against the curriculum prohibitions imposed by Congress.”
The authors are Robert S. Eitel and Kent D. Talbert, with help from Williamson M. Evers.
Eitel is a founding member of Talbert & Eitel, an education law firm in Washington, and he advises clients on education-related legislation, regulations and cases. From 2006 to 2009 he was deputy general counsel of the U.S. Department of Education.
Talbert is co-founder of Talbert & Eitel, and provides legal services to colleges and universities, accrediting agencies and professional organizations. He was from 2006-2009 general counsel to the Education Department.
Evers is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and specializes in research on education issues. He was from 2007-2009 the U.S. assistant secretary of education for planning, evaluation and policy development. He also was a senior adviser to then-Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.
The Pioneer Institute is an independent, nonpartisan, privately funded research group that supports scholarship on Massachusetts public policy issues.
The authors said the federal agency is using “waiver conditions” for various requirements – “a power that Congress has not granted” – to set up the national standards.