Photo credit to www.goodcall.com
I've been saying this since 2011. This may be the way conspiracy theorists tend to see things only as they fit into their structures, but almost everything I've seen over the past five years has flowed into this line of thinking.
In 2001, the Elementary & Secondary Education Act received amendments and a subtitle, No Child Left Behind. The federal government leveraged its funding to states. It dictated policy in broad, general, simple, and reasonable terms. States often over-reacted. Even where states didn't overreact, a shift in educational focus took place. We moved from an imperfect system to one focused on testing and accountability--one that resulted in a narrowed curriculum and institutionalized answers to very personal issues. With the new Every Student Succeeds Act (official announcements here), we saw a quasi-admission that NCLB just didn't work very well.
Today we see similar approaches to higher education. Over the next few posts, I will illustrate my points to this end. This will start with the characters in the story and be followed by the results of the moves to this point. This subject could fill an entire book. However, American education is about to take a sharp turn--we just don't know which direction. Further writing would need to wait until Betsy Devos--or Becky DeVos--not to be confused with this poor soul--has had time to work past her passion for school vouchers and turn attention to higher education. Further, writing needs to wait until we see what the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act will bring. In the meantime, we can investigate what is happening now and where it could lead potentially.
