Barack Hussein Obama and his ilk are all about empowerment as long as it’s their own. Obama and his ilk are all about choice if it’s the right to choose between life and murder.

When it comes down to educating your child they are against parents deciding what is best for their children and allowing the states of the United States manage their school systems on a local level. It’s all about standards, control, power and educating children the Obama way which may not be the way any child should received an education or brainwashing.

The Obama is using the carrot and stick approach, like everything else when they want to take over an entity such as General Motors or “shaking down” BP, states are being pushed to “voluntarily” adopt national education standards and tests. The incentive is money.

Race to the Top is a competitive grant fund used as an incentive for states to adopt standards under development by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. To put it plainly this initiative has nothing to do with child or parent empowerment.

Texas and Alaska were first to opt-out of Race to the Top and now Minnesota and Virginia are getting cold feet after joining 48 states in agreeing to accept federal money to adopt the national standards.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry stated that the Obama administration’s requirement that states adopt national standards “is an effort to undermine states’ authority to determine how their students are educated, and is clearly aimed at circumventing laws prohibiting national standards.”

Obama has ridiculed No Child Left Behind mostly because this was an initiative of George W. Bush but now wishes to reauthorize the program with the US Education Department releasing a “blueprint” for reauthorizing that program. The blueprint language indicates the administration will try to tie $14.5 billion in money for low-income school districts to a state’s adoption of national standards. This is more about sending good money chasing bad and propping up failed schools with failing teachers and unions.

Once again the federal government is proclaiming they know better and wish to take over another facet of people lives, of states’ rights and provide themselves with more control with no positive impact on student learning via national standards as the following demonstrates:

Misconception #1: National standards are necessary so parents can understand how their children compare with other children across the country.  The information parents need is already available. State tests let parents know how well their children have mastered the curriculum. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, currently administered to samples of students in each state, provides an external audit of state tests. If transparency about that data has been insufficient, it does not merit a national standards and testing regime. It calls for better transparency and accountability to parents.

Misconception #2: National standards would make American students more competitive with their international peers. While it’s true that many of the countries that outperform the United States on international tests have national standards, so do most of the countries that score lower than the United States. Even when it comes to state standards, the relationship between academic performance and the quality of those standards is inconsistent.

Misconception #3: National standards are necessary because state standards vary in quality. While it’s true that some state standards are better than others, the same pressures that drive down state standards would likely plague national standards. For that reason, national standards will tend to decline toward the average among states, undercutting states with higher standards, such as Massachusetts. Ultimately, the goal of uniformity would result in the standardization of mediocrity.

One large goal of Obama is to remove parents from the equation of family, to indoctrinate children within the school systems with command and control over the curriculum. When Washington controls education nationally parents will have no local school board to petition or lobby, they will be left with the bureaucrats in the beltway to have a voice, a very distant one that won’t be heard.

Education begins in the home and Obama and his Progressive friends wish to remove parents for having a say in their child’s education and remove the ability for them to examine performance standards locally by taking away any transparency, something Obama promised along with his Marxist speaker in the House.

The “race to the top” is only a catch phrase for Obama’s race to complete and total power. This time he is using children as an end to his sick ideology.

Obama’s “Race to the Top” is a planned “Race to the Bottom” for parents and educating their children. Indeed!

Join the Discussion or comment below

Liberally Conservative appreciates your comments that abide by our guidelines: