by Fred Jackson
A national pro-family group says the education bill signed with much fanfare by President Bush yesterday falls far short of what many conservatives had hoped for.
Dick Carpenter is the education analyst for Focus on the Family. He says the original bill called for a significant reduction in all the federal regulations that govern the nation's schools. But Carpenter says that did not happen.
“President Bush's original plan included an essential provision that would reduce burdensome federal regulations on schools and their districts, called 'Straight A's',” Carpenter says. “The final bill includes only a severely reduced version of this plan.”
Another key recommendation that is missing, Carpenter points out, is any authentic school choice. The bill does not enable parents to seek the most effective approach to their child's education. Carpenter says students in chronically failing schools still have only one alternative: another public school.
And he says instead of reducing education cost, this final bill will cost taxpayers more than $26 billion — $8 billion more than the current budget. Carpenter says rather than prop up wasteful federal bureaucracy, the government should be investing more money in what studies have shown is the most important factor in a child's education success — the family.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
