The Core Knowledge Blog

It’s time to finish what Horace Mann started in 1843 and end local control of schools. Writing in The Atlantic, Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, says we must carry the insights of Mann, the father of public education to their logical end and nationalize our schools to some degree.

Describing local control of schools as a uniquely American obsession, Miller convincingly analogizes, “It’s as if after Pearl Harbor, FDR had suggested we prepare for war through the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of small factories. They’d know what kinds of planes and tanks were needed, right?”

When states are allowed to set their own standards, they set the bar low, as the Fordham Foundation’s essential The Proficiency Illusion conclusively proved. Local control also leads to fiscal inequity, Miller argues, since wealthy communities can tax themselves at low rates and still generate more dollars per pupil than poor communities that tax themselves to death. But Miller really hits it on R&D. Local control means there are 15,000 curriculum departments in the U.S., none of which can afford to invest heavily in research. The federal government “now spends $28 billion annually on research at the National Institutes of Health, but only $260 million—not even 1% of that amount—on R&D for education,” Miller writes.

Can’t happen, right? Republicans will reject national standards like a body rejecting a baboon liver. Democrats hate standards, right? Wrong. Miller quotes former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta who believes the public is far ahead of the conventional wisdom.

“Once upon a time a national role in retirement funding was anathema; then suddenly, after the Depression, we had Social Security. Once a federal role in health care would have been rejected as socialism; now, federal money accounts for half of what we spend on health care,” writes Miller. “We started down this road on schooling a long time ago. Time now to finish the journey.”