Common Core and School Lunch Standards - Part of a Federal Grab to Control Education

There are many ways to co-opt American citizens. One way is to appeal to universal concerns by using false solutions. ~~~~~ Michelle Obama lobbied behind the scenes four years ago for the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which requires more fruit, vegetables and whole grains in school meals, along with less sodium, sugar and fat. It was hailed as a major achievement, the first update to school lunch rules in decades designed to make school meals more nutritious. But, the School Nutrition Association, the industry-backed group that represents school cafeteria workers and originally supported the standards, is now rejecting them. The SNA says it fully supports getting kids to eat healthier but says many districts are losing money because students aren't buying the healthier lunches. More than one million fewer students eat a program lunch each day since the first round of standards went into effect in 2012, following decades of steadily increasing participation, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokeswoman for the association. A second round of rules, including standards for school breakfasts, took effect July 1. Her group wants more flexibility for districts that are losing money. A House bill to fund the Agriculture Department next year would give districts a chance to apply to skip the requirements for one year. ~~~~~ How did federal school lunches start? FDR decided to pay mothers to cook and serve local school lunches as part of his New Deal, putting money in family pockets as America fought its way out of the Great Depression. In 1936, there were 350,000 children receiving these lunches. In 1942, there were 5,350,000 children. There was also an agricultural surplus and FDR and President Truman were looking for ways to subsidize farmers - Senator Rishard Russell Jr. proposed adding food to the school lunch program. Thus was born the US federal National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which provides low-cost or free school lunch meals to qualified students through subsidies to schools. The program was established as a way to prop up food prices by absorbing farm surpluses to keep them off the market, while at the same time providing food to school age children. It was named after Senator Russell and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman in 1946. The majority of the support provided to schools participating in the program even today comes in the form of a cash reimbursement for each meal served. Schools are also entitled to receive commodity foods and additional surplus commodity supplies as they become available. So, while Americans today may say 'of course we should feed undernourished children' - consider the result. In fiscal year 2013, federal school nutrition programs underwrote more than five billion lunches served to nearly 31 million students. Total funding for all nutrition programs was $16.3 billion in both cash and commodity payments in fiscal year 2014. School nutrition programs are one of the largest federal funding streams to schools. And how did this federal monster grow? Because state and local school boards failed to exercise their constitutional right and duty to control their schools, letting the federal government seize the initiative in a manner constitutionally questionable. And now, Michelle Obama is playing on the soft touch Americans are when it comes to children to convince us that school lunches are a problem to be managed federally -- does she think parents, local school boards and states are not competent to care for the school lunch needs of their own children? No. It is a federal power grab that meddles in affairs that the Constitution left in the hands of the states. ~~~~~ The farsighted Framers who gathered n Philadelphia in 1787 crafted a Constitution to establish a strong central government empowered to do certain jobs that the states could not manage effectively on their own. Federal duties include providing for a common defense, and ensuring that a contract signed in one state is binding in another. But the Framers also understood that there were many more jobs the federal government could not do better than the states, and so should not be entrusted with. Education was foremost among them. Education is necessarily a state and local concern. Most states, in fact, include education among the rights guaranteed in their state constitutions. But even if the subjects of education are the same everywhere - two plus two equals four in San Francisco just as it does in Boston - the needs and the character of any given community are often quite different from others’. Americans elect school boards locally because we believe local oversight is better than that of far-flung bureaucracies. And parents know what their children need better than officials in distant Washington. But, Washington seems to be trying to eliminate state control of education - and it may be possible because Americans generally have a poor understanding of what their rights are and how the state-federal division of powers works under the Constitution. The latest test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics found most of the nation’s high school seniors had only a “basic knowledge” of American government and a “limited understanding” of how it works. The result of such a limited understanding is an accumulation of power in Washington, DC, at the expense of state and local authority and responsibility. ~~~~~ For example, in education, 20 years ago the nation’s central government contributed approximately 5% of the funds devoted to public education in the United States. Today it’s closer to 19% and growing. And it should worry and anger Americans that the Obama administration has permitted the federal bureaucracy to develop national tests and certify public schools’ curricula under the Common Core, for the first time ever in the history of America. If Obama fully succeeds, federal bureaucrats will dictate what children all across the nation will read and how long they will read it. Local school administrators will become mere federal bureaucrats, regardless of who signs their paychecks. Locally elected school boards will be largely irrelevant. Parents will have fewer and fewer inputs into their childrens' education. Obama's Common Core is now on place in 46 states, but some states are now rethinking their buy-in as they realize that Common Core essentially puts education in the hands of the federal government. As more officials take a second look at Common Core, some are coming to the conclusion that the standards aren’t the common-sense measures that they are advertised to be, but instead represent giving up state and local control over schools to an unelected national bureaucracy. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said : “Just as we should not relinquish control of education to the federal government, neither should we cede it to the consensus of other states." Governor Haley wrote this in a letter expressing her opposition to Common Core and asking that the South Carolina legislature opt out of it. “I firmly believe that our government and our people should retain as much local control over programs as possible....Our children deserve swift action and the passage of a clean resolution that will allow our state to reclaim control of and responsibility for educating South Carolinians.” In 2012, Tom Loveless of the liberal Brookings Institution called into question whether the standards will have any effect, and said that they "have done little to equalize academic achievement within states." In response to the standards, the libertarian Cato Institute claimed that "it is not the least bit paranoid to say the federal government wants a national curriculum." Some conservatives and Reoublicans have assailed the program as a federal "top-down" takeover of state and local education systems. ~~~~~ Dear readers, we must be clear -- the idea that children should receive top quality education that prepares them for today's world is not the issue. The issue is who should be responsible for providing quality education for American children. The Constitution is clear - it is the responsibility of the states. The federal government has no role to play in childrens' education. It has finessed New Deal Great Depression programs and American citizens' concern about the quality of their childrens'education into a federal maze of payments, subsidies and "Common Core standards" that states have accepted, along with federal control, instead of assuming their constitutional responsibility to educate their childrens.