PolicyGuy

Monday, February 28, 2005


Is No Child Left Behind Unconstitutional, But Still Good?
Those who hold that the federal government has no constitutional role in K-12 education have good reason to oppose the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) law.

But Craig Westover notes a school choice advocate who favors NCLB anyway. It's unclear whether Jerry Ewing (one of Westover's readers) thinks NCLB is unconstitutional or not.

Sooner or later (perhaps it has already happened), someone is going to make the analogy between school reform, NCLB, the federal government, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In other words: yes, it may be that a series of laws and legal doctrines were enacted that on the face of it violate some principles of federalism. But still, the law is justified because the states themselves were violating the civil rights of a class of people--and if federalism includes a commitment to civil rights, who will stand up for them but the federal government if states are the very parties violating those rights?

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"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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