BCT Editorial – 9/14/06

This page was last updated on September 21, 2006.

Eroding; Editorial; Beaver County Times; September 14, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“With the adoption five years ago of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which marked the massive intrusion of the federal government into what has always been the traditional domain of state and local governments, you knew it wouldn't be long before someone would start pushing for national testing.

“Well, that time has come. The Washington Post reported there is ‘growing talk of national testing and standards.’

“Whatever happened to the principle of federalism?

“If this keeps up, states and local governments won't be of any more importance to governance than voters are in many congressional elections because of gerrymandering and special-interest money.”

[RWC] This editorial represents both crocodile tears and memory impaired by Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS).

Regarding “the principle of federalism,” the editorial cries crocodile tears. When has the Times seriously supported this principle? For example, in a recent editorial bashing the feds about Hurricane Katrina, the Times asserted the primary failure was with the feds. We also have federalism at the state level. Most editorials lobby for the state to provide an ever-greater proportion of K-12 funding. That’s not federalism.

Here’s another example of the Times anti-federalism stance. In an editorial entitled “Street smart,” the Times supports a scheme in which the commonwealth taxpayer would pay “$225 million to fund half the cost of hiring 10,000 new police officers in municipalities across Pennsylvania … a municipality would pick up 20% of the cost and the county the remaining 30%.”

Regarding the assertion that the NCLBA “marked the massive intrusion of the federal government into what has always been the traditional domain of state and local governments,” apparently the author’s memory only goes back to President Bush’s inauguration day. As I noted the last time the Times made this ridiculous claim, “Where has the Times been since 1965 when the Democrat Congress and president enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act? The NCLBA is only the most recent update.”

If tomorrow President Bush advocated for the elimination of the Department of Education, how long do you believe it would be before we’d be reading an editorial decrying the action?

Don’t get me wrong. As I’ve written often before, I oppose any federal involvement in education and I believe NCLBA was a mistake. The point of the critique was to point out the editorial’s inconsistencies with positions regularly taken by Times editorials.