The Feds Bypass the State and Come Directly to Districts Asking Them To Commit To Federal Goals
Someone please sign everyone at the USDoEd up for a refresher course on the constitution. They are really struggling with the concept of the 10th amendment.
The latest from Arne Duncan et al continues the tradition of the federal government inserting its nose into local school district decisions which the constitution does not allow for and ESEA expressly forbids. They are now going directly to local school districts and asking 16,000 Superintendent across the country to sign THEIR Future Ready technology pledge.
From the letter sent to Superintendents,
The U.S. Department of Education seeks to encourage and support superintendents who commit to taking a leadership role in this transition with recognition and resources to help facilitate this transition to digital learning.
The main goal of this initiative is to get districts, charters and private schools to commit to maximizing their use of digital learning and broadband access to the internet. They want schools to fund the resources necessary to “leverage their maximum impact on student learning… to develop the human capacity, digital materials, and device access to use the new bandwidth wisely and effectively.” In other words, buy more devices so you can meet our Race To The Top goal of 1:1 student:device ratio so you can purchase more digital learning services and supplies. They have a lot of high powered (well funded) friends of Washington who produce educational supplies and services who need to be repaid for helping get the right people in office so the bureaucrats could get an appointment.
They want districts to “transition to effective digital learning,” to “achieve tangible outcomes for the students they serve.” So here we all still are on the outcomes based education bandwagon.
It’s a nice little system. Millions of students with no other education option, will be pushed into using a private company’s product which will in turn continuously collect data on their use to improve said product. And who benefits from this? The private company. How many of our Superintendents will gladly be team players and sign this little pledge without any careful consideration of the costs of such an action? If history is any example, it unfortunately will be many (see photo above.)
Among other things, the pledge commits districts to helping support home internet access. Since when is this the job of a school district? If it is, then shouldn’t they also support efforts to get every child a nice desk and chair at which to study? Shouldn’t they also be in the business of making sure every child has a nice bed since sleep is critical to learning readiness? Where does the school district’s responsibility end when it comes to a child’s education? And since when is it the job of the education department of the federal government to make sure that internet is available in the The Feds Bypass the State and Come Directly to Districts Asking Them To Commit To Federal Goals | Missouri Education Watchdog:
