Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education.

Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education. Neal P. McCluskey (Rowman & Littlefield).

In this volume, the Cato Institute's Neal McCluskey has penned an energetic attack on all things federal in K-12 schooling. He sets out to "lay bare the history of American education" and "the incursion of ever-bigger government into our nation's classrooms" and then offers something of a greatest hits compendium: going after the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, busing, the creation of the Department of Education, America 2000, and No Child Left Behind. He points out that the U.S. Constitution envisions no federal role in education, decries judicial activism in schooling, and closes by recommending more local control and school choice. He calls for dismantling the Department of Education, shifting the department's Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice, eliminating various federal education programs, and either zeroing out federal education-related expenditures or converting them to block grants. The volume provides a pedestrian but useful summary of the case against federal hubris--one that is timely as we debate the reauthorization of NCLB. While the tone is a bit strident and the sourcing disappointingly reliant on the readily Internet-accessible, McCluskey reminds readers why well-intentioned calls for federal leadership and shiny plans for national programs can ultimately prove treacherous.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]