Have plans for reform? Sure. Break down a few barriers that could stand in the way of reform? That's in there, too.

But the money is a one-shot deal—once paper promises are accepted and the money delivered, it's over.

Mostly this plan, while not requiring any real reform, pushes an unprecedented centralization of education power. It calls for state data systems to track students from pre-kindergarten to college graduation. It calls for states to sign onto "common"—meaning federal—standards. It tries to dictate state budgets. In other words, it does exactly what's been wrong with American education for decades: centralize power in the hands of ever more distant, unaccountable bureaucrats rather than leaving it with the communities, and especially parents, the schools are supposed to serve. And it does it with bigger and bigger gobs of federal taxpayer money.

According to the report, almost no state has set its "proficiency" levels on par with those of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the so-called "Nation's Report Card." Indeed, most have set them at or below NAEP's "basic" level. Moreover, while some states that changed their standards between 2005 and 2007 appeared to make them somewhat tougher, most did not. Indeed, in 8th grade reading all seven states that changed their assessments lowered their expectations, and in 8th grade mathematics nine of twelve states dropped their bars.

Some will argue that this demonstrates an obvious need for national curricular standards. But that is the opposite of the report's clear implication: Politicians and bureaucrats will always do what's in their best interest – keep standards low and easy to meet – and will do so as long as politics, not parental choice, is how educators are supposed to be held accountable.

Rather than continuing to drive headlong toward national standards -- the ultimate destination of the pothole-ridden, deadly, government schooling road – we need to exit right now. We need to take education power away from government and give it to parents. Only then will we be on a highway to the excellent education we want.

In anticipation of the president's planned September 8 address to students nationwide, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent a letter and detailed "classroom activities" to schools with all sorts of troubling buzzwords and guidance. In his letter, Duncan asserts that the work of educators is "critical to…our social progress." It's a statement that strongly suggests – as many educators have held and continue to hold – that it is the job of public schools to impose values, often collectivist, on students.

The fear that this might be the case is reinforced by classroom activities for pre-K-6 students that encourages children to make posters setting out "community and country" goals. Perhaps even more frightening is the lesson schools are pushed to teach that it is important to listen to "the President and other elected officials." Possibly most distressing of all, though, is guidance that appears explicitly designed to glorify both the presidency and President Obama himself, encouraging schools to prepare for the speech "by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama." And schools are told to ask students how president Obama will "inspire" them in his speech before he gives it, and how they were inspired after Obama has spoken.

This is very disturbing, making crystal clear the huge dangers of government controlling education. Ultimately, politicians will use power over education to indoctrinate children, something completely antithetical to a free society. And this is just the starkest manifestation of the inherent problem with government control of education. Every day free people are pitted against one another in defense of their freedom and basic values because they all have to support a single system of government schools. Evolution vs. creationism. Prayer in school. Books with offensive material in schools libraries. Decisions over whose history will be taught, and whose won't. The curtailment of freedom goes on and on when government takes everyone's money and provides schools with it. Which is why the only system of learning compatible with a truly free society is a system of school choice – public education, not schooling – in which the public assures that all people can access education, but parents are free to choose their children's schools, and educators are free to educate how they wish.