THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 21, 1996 TAG: 9604190014
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
Columnist Guy Friddell criticizes Governor Allen for turning down Goals 2000 funds from Washington, saying that the governor is actually turning down former President George Bush's program. This is flat wrong! President Bush's education-reform plan was America 2000, and it was very different from the Clinton Goals 2000 program. The Bush America 2000 plan was state- and local-government oriented. The Clinton plan is a federal-government-oriented top-down plan that implies throughout that Washington knows best.
Mr. Friddell says that the strings attached to Goals 2000 are no worse than the strings attached to any other federal program. Wrong again! Goals 2000 raises the potential of much greater federal intrusion in Virginia's education affairs than any federal program under which Virginia currently receives funding. Other programs focus on a particular topic or a particular group of students to be served. Goals 2000 affects everything that goes on in elementary and secondary education in Virginia.
For example, to receive money under Goals 2000, Virginia would have to appoint a special panel of individuals, as directed by the federal Goals 2000 statute, to develop an education-reform plan for elementary and secondary education in our state, which we would then have to submit to Washington for the U.S. secretary of education to approve. Any time we wanted to make any significant change to ``our'' plan, we would need to notify Washington and again get the approval of the U.S. secretary of education. This is not minor federal meddling. This is a ratcheting up of federal intrusiveness beyond anything we now have in Virginia. No wonder the State Board of Education voted overwhelmingly to ask Governor Allen to veto the section of the appropriations bill requiring Virginia to participate in Goals 2000.
Or course, Clinton and the federal bureaucrats want us to believe that the requirements mandated by Goals 2000 are really voluntary and that Goals 2000 is offering only some federal incentives to encourage local control. Why then does it take the statute more than 150 pages to simply offer local control to Virginia and the other states? If Goals 2000 is really all about local control and the setting of high academic standards (which we have already done in Virginia), why doesn't the federal government just cut Virginia a check for the Goals 2000 money without requiring Virginia to submit its education-reform plan to Washington for approval?
Mr. Friddell harshly accuses Governor Allen of being ``like a bully'' when it is George Allen who has had the courage of standing up to a bullying federal government and its defenders, like Guy Friddell, who want Virginia to accept unprecedented federal intrusion in our schools in exchange for the equivalent of less than four pennies per day per student.
EDWARD L. SCHROCK
Member, Virginia Senate
7th District
Virginia Beach, April 10, 1996 by CNB