Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts??last night jolted the political world, and may spell the end for President Obama's health care legislation. But Flypaper readers want to know: what are the edu-implications? My take is this: before yesterday it seemed conceivable, even likely, that the federal role in education would continue to grow indefinitely. With states desperate for cash, the feds capable of borrowing it from China, and the apparent success of the Race to the Top in pushing a broad reform agenda, a new era of federal dominance in education seemed to be upon us. It??appeared quite possible that within a few years the federal share of education spending could go up to 20 or even 30 percent, and lots of strings would come along with it.
All of that might still happen; the states are going to remain broke for the foreseeable future, and the public isn't keen on seeing class sizes rise or their favorite teachers laid off. But if Brown's election represents a widespread backlash to big government, and in particular big, costly federal government, then this expanded federal role in education could be washed away along with universal health care. This anti-big-government revolt also makes it all the trickier for the national standards effort to thread the needle politically.
Here's my prediction: the Obama Administration will go out of its way, with its ESEA reauthorization proposal, to show that it is returning significant authority to states and local districts, to get out front of this wave. (Or maybe that's just my wishful thinking.)
UPDATE 1/20/10: The Washington Post's Jay Matthews riffs on this blog post in his own blog post.
-Mike Petrilli
Image from Wikipedia Commons
