"Texas will not compete for a potential $700 million in federal grant funding for schools, Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday, because it could give Washington too much say in deciding what the state's students should learn.
His decision to forgo the money available in the Race to the Top grant competition defied pleas from local school leaders who said their districts could use it. But Perry, joined by state Education Commissioner Robert Scott, said the funding came with too many federal strings — such as having to adopt national curriculum standards.
“Our states and our communities must reserve the right to decide how we educate our children and not surrender that control to a federal bureaucracy,” Perry said in Houston, where many superintendents had lobbied for his support of the grant."