Flunking grades for government schools.(Correction, Please!)

ITEM: Fox News reported on October 5 that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings "recently told reporters that that law ['No Child Left Behind'] is 'like Ivory soap: It's 99.9 percent pure or something.' Spellings later said she was referring to the core principles of the law and is willing to consider improvements to the law."

ITEM: The Wall Street Journal for October 25, in an article entitled "As Tuition Soars, Federal Aid to College Students Falls," reported: "The College Board's latest annual reports on federal aid and college pricing find that over the past five years tuition at public four-year universities has soared by a record-breaking 35% when adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, spending on Pell Grants--the biggest source of federal aid for low-income students--fell for the first time in six years."

ITEM: In an op-ed called "Why We Need a National School Test," in the Washington Post for September 21, former Education secretaries William Bennett and Rod Paige, who both served in Republican administrations, commented: "Out of respect for federalism and mistrust of Washington, much of the GOP has expected individual states to set their own academic standards and devise their own tests and accountability systems. That was the approach of the No Child Left Behind Act--which moved as boldly as it could while still achieving bipartisan support. It sounds good, but it is working badly."

So what to do? The former secretaries contended: "Greater federal interference is not the answer--but neither is a naive commitment to 'states' rights.' A new model--standards set nationally, daily decisions made locally--strikes the best balance."

CORRECTION: The underlying problem with education in the United States, whether at the elementary, secondary, or university level, is not too little government involvement. Yet, in the items noted above, the solution being held out, either explicitly or implicitly, is to inflate the participation of the federal government, in dollars and/or in direction.

It wasn't all that long ago when leading Republicans vowed to abolish the Department of Education--because federal involvement in education isn't remotely constitutional--and came out swinging against Democratic President Bill Clinton's pitch to institute national educational standards. Now, however, politicians in both major parties compete to plant the federal government deeper into educational matters. Indeed, the "conservative" champions cited above, who were Education secretaries, go so far as to scoff at the Constitution by ridiculing a "naive commitment to 'states' rights.'"

Looking at the multitude of troubles with public schooling, Bennett and Paige say, "Most states have deployed mediocre standards, and there's increasing evidence that some are playing games with their tests and accountability systems." No doubt. But the ills of some state policies don't mean that federal concoctions are the cure. Nationalizing education drives the schools even further from local and parental control. And anyone who actually thinks that the federal government will pay the freight without weighing down the system with a load of Washington engineers is truly naive.