Educators and the Constitution

President Obama's "Race to the Top" grant competition for public school systems has only recently released its guidelines, but already it appears to have brought about a miracle: It has turned teacher unions and other elements of the education establishment into Tenth Amendment conservatives who decry federal meddling in schools. ("Educators wary of federal grants," Nov. 16, Page A-1).

One can only hope this means California educators now will teach kids about Jeffersonian principles of limited government.

Actually, it couldn't really be the entanglement of federal spending that they detest. Under President Bush, federal education spending increased 34 percent and the feds required states for the first time to test kids' math and reading skills annually — yet the ed moguls' main complaint was that Bush was too stingy.

No, the real problem is that the education interests feel betrayed by a Democratic president's demanding hard-nosed reforms like factoring student achievement data into evaluations of teacher performance as a condition for a small part of their aid. They would prefer that the feds stick to self-esteem enhancement.

ROBERT HOLLAND
Senior fellow for Education Policy, The Heartland Institute
Chicago