Among the changes the administration says it will pursue are more widespread and uniform sex education in public schools, creation of an Internet immunization registry for children that doctors can check and significant expansion of programs to test for H.I.V. and give away syringes and condoms.
Perhaps even more ironic, in a week when even some Republican members of Congress have come out in support of the Safe Schools Improvement Act, Pennsylvania's Republicans, led by entrenched Governor Tom Corbett, have created a budget that should be entitled the Unsafe Schools Creation Act by maintaining nearly $1 billion in drastic cuts to education funding.
The lawsuit accuses the department of "utilizing its powers over school creation to alter attendance zones unilaterally without the consent or involvement of the people the community school serves," and adds that it "continues to act by fiat".
What they are actually doing is going against the principles of No Child Left Behind, the very law that essentially has given them a free hand in charter school creation.
Their work focuses on the issues of new school creation, accountability, talent development, early childhood education, and building a broad and deep public demand for excellence in education.
Members of Duncan's reform network were partly the genesis and potentially the beneficiary of a grant program, Race to the Top, that required applicants to expand opportunities for charter school creation, eliminate firewalls between student test scores and teacher evaluation, and commit to so-called "college and career-ready standards".
"We need to do much more to offer education to 23,000 children through school creation, equipment, teacher recruitment and training".
At the community level, the report proposes building community support for girls' participation in school, creation of parents' and girls' clubs, as well help with community infrastructure and economic development, micro-finance schemes, vocational education, and financial support for girls and families.
Subsequently Bush encountered strong congressional resistance to some of his initiatives, such as an educational voucher program that would provide subsidies to parents who send their children to private schools, the creation of a nuclear missile defense system, and federal funding for selected social programs of religious groups.
We are not trying to exclude evolution from public schools, unless creation is also excluded.
Why do tightfisted lawmakers sink federal largess into unproven social engineering that peddles outmoded and often racist values, yet they can't find money for schools, job creation, or child nutrition initiatives--programs that may do more to strengthen families and foster opportunity than exchanging vows ever could?
