Part 1 of a Series By Carole Hornsby Haynes Ph.D.
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Signaling Dont Mess with Texas" in the November 2010 Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) Meeting outgoing member Cynthia Dunbar offered a resolution declaring the U.S. Department of Education an unconstitutional bureaucracy operating outside the purview of the federal government. If we are really serious about restoring American education to the best in the world we must demand the end of federal control.
Education reform in America must begin by solving the root problem not continuing to heap worthless fixes on top of worthless fixes. This means abolishing the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) a bloated bureaucracy created by the liberal Carter administration.
Not only is the USDOE unconstitutional but it serves absolutely no useful purpose.
Nowhere in our Constitution is control over education a power delegated to the federal government. Therefore under the 10th Amendment the control of education is a power reserved to the States respectively or to the people."
Texas is fortunate to have courageous leaders willing to stand up to the bullies in Washington when they demanded compliance in accepting national standards.
Dunbars resolution puts the federal Department of Education on notice that any unconstitutional directives to the SBOE will be nullified. Through nullification 
Texas may deem federal laws imposed upon the state to be unconstitutional and thus unacceptable.
The Dunbar resolution may be considered in January when the 15-member board including its five new members next meets.
Although attempts have been made over the decades to abolish the USDOE it grows ever stronger and more invasive with its tentacles reaching now into our personal and family lives.
The USDOE has created centralized policies and programs that were historically controlled by local schools. Local monetary resources have been diverted in order to comply with federal dictates and worthless programs.
Since every state has its own well-staffed department of education with statutes edicts and directives why is a U.S. Department of Education necessary?
The answer is simple: to gain control of our children and their minds and thus control of our nation.
To achieve control over a nation of people statism must be imposed. The most powerful and significant expression of statism is a State education system. Without it statism is impossible. With it the State can and has become all powerful.
State control over American elementary secondary & post-secondary education became a reality with the passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1959 (NDEA) and the Elementary & Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA).
These two federal statutes form the bedrock of the current extensive federal education control.
Their passage was achieved through extensive misrepresentation and deception of the bills substance and the political and economic circumstances that supposedly justified their passage.
Here as elsewhere in 20th century expansion of U.S. government over its citizens can be found deception by politicians and their determination to transform our nation to a liberal ideology.
The manner in which liberal politicians passed the NDEA and ESEA rings familiar.
Dont let a crisis go to waste" was the rallying cry of liberal politicians even then. To secure passage of legislation intended to serve as the foundation for future federal control a major national defense crisis was created.
The need for the NDEA was touted as being necessary after the successful launch of the first Soviet earth-orbiting satellite in 1957 followed shortly thereafter by the launch of Sputnik II.
Numerous expert witnesses testified before Congress that no national crisis existed and that U.S. military capabilities exceeded those of the Soviet Union. Still Congress used the Sputnik crisis" as a sales argument and passed the legislation as supposed security and defense measures for a nation under a state 
of emergency".
Even though Senators and Congressmen voted for the bill they recognized the Sputnik crisis was a sham and understood the real intent was to increase federal control over education.
Because of the widespread public fear of expanding federal authority over education legislators included a provision in the NDEA expressly prohibiting federal control of education. However their understanding of the provisions real intent was quite different from the explanation they gave to the public.
During the Johnson administration another liberal lie was foisted upon the public to secure passage of The Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. This time it was not a Sputnik crisis but a war on poverty." Legislators promoted passage of the bill as necessary to provide better educational opportunities of low-income children.
The supposed benefits to low-income children however were only a sales gimmick akin to the defense rhetoric used to ram the NDEA through Congress. The poor were never intended to be the beneficiaries but rather the wealthy so the ESEA was drawn to disproportionately benefit them.
The liberals strategy was to make the ESEAs education expenditures politically irresistible thus creating nationwide entitlements.
The ESEA was rushed through Congress in less than three months amid much deception and numerous private dinners for off-the-record discussion. A Gallup poll conducted in early 1965 showed less than half of the adult population approved of the action taken.
In spite of public resistance liberals defied their constituents wishes and with intentional misrepresentation passed both the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the Elementary & Secondary Education Act of 1965.
These two statutes and the manner in which our elected officials acted dramatically altered our U.S. institutions and over time changed public perceptions to one of acceptance of a ballooning and all powerful central government.
Senator Goldwater correctly predicted that the NDEA would prove to be the proverbial camels nose" of the central government in the tent of education.
The camel moved further into the tent when in 1979 President Carter created the United States Department of Education (USDOE) as a payoff to one of the 
Democrat Partys main power brokers for their support of his campaign: the teachers union.
Today hundreds of federal programs and mandates have moved the camel entirely inside the education tent and created a staggering federal budget.
Liberal legislators have a slobbering love affair" with any large central government agency no matter what the cost or damage. In this case … the children be damned.
And has the USDOE improved our American education?
Not one wit.
In fact academic achievement has slid steadily downward. But of course the liberal politicians are quite certain that we only need to throw more taxpayer dollars toward the problems and create more federal agencies mandates and regulations to solve our literacy problem.
And of course the mother of all liberal tactics to gain total control of American education is the Race to the Top" (RttT) and National Standards.
The Obama administration is pulling out all stops to nationalize K-12 education just as they did health care. Deception and strong arm tactics continue to be the order of the day. Flush with their success in federalizing health care using bribes the Obama administration dangled the money carrot again.
In February 2010 it was announced that states seeking to win juicy shares of $4.35 billion in 1-time education grants had to agree to adopt a set of national education standards and a national test. This meant states had to largely junk their own standards and assessments and accept the national curriculumsight unseen since the standards have not been written if they wanted the federal largess.
It worked! Only Texas and Alaska refused to take the bait or bend to the bully tactics.
To cover their stealth plan to federalize education and secure total control of our schools liberal politicians have created a new national crisis. They are setting off 
public alarms about the ranking of the U.S. on international student achievement scores in math and science.
Of course the fact that liberals have been instrumental in dumbing down our school curricula to such an extent that our literacy rate has plummeted is swept under the rug.
Our intellectually superior" politicians point out that countries scoring higher than the U.S. have national standards. Thus it is crucial that a national standard be adopted so the U.S. can regain educational superiority in the world and avert this national education crisis.
In their hypothetical correlation liberals ignore the fact that most countries scoring lower than the U.S. also have national standards. Furthermore they ignore the fact that Finland and China which outperform us are socialist and communist countries respectively with vastly different cultures and political systems.
Casting further doubt on the hypothetical correlation is the fact that Canada which far outscores the U.S. also does not have national standards.
Common sense tells us that with a centralized education system schools will no longer be accountable to families but rather to the federal government.
National standards and testing will not empower parents as the intellectual elitists would have us believe. Indeed parents and taxpayers will surrender a powerful means for improving our schools:
- Control of Academic Standards
- Content and
- Testing
Contact the Texas State Board of Education members to let them know you support the Dunbar Resolution" that Texas will nullify any unconstitutional federal laws imposed upon Texas. www.tea.state.tx.us
Next contact your State & Federal representatives to let them know unequivocally that you will no longer tolerate federal intrusion into our state & local education.
Working at the local level is important but it will provide only temporary changes. To make substantive and permanent changes we also must fight at the state and national levels. By raising our voices in unison holding rallies and marches throughout the nation and placing millions of calls to our elected representatives letting them
know how we expect them to vote we are indeed making a difference in both Washington and state politics.
Now we must do the same for education if we expect to bring about effective reform.
Together we can and will end federal control by dismantling and abolishing the U.S. Department of Education and all its agencies and begin to restore American education to its greatness.
Carole Hornsby Haynes welcomes comments at chaynes@teapartyforkids.org. Additional information is available by visiting www.TeaPartyForKids.org
