Mike Smith, a senior education advisor to Ed. Secretary Duncan, expressed concern yesterday about the possible ill effects of federal government standards. In a Library of Congress presentation, Smith told the crowd that if common national standards are funded by the federal government, “you can’t keep ideology or politics out of the ball game.”


This is a pearl of empirically validated wisdom. The problem is that it has been empirically validated at the state and district levels as well as the national level, as Neal McCluskey demonstrated in “Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict.” And the U.S. is not alone in finding that official government schools cause social conflict over what is taught.


What can we do about it? How about real educational freedom that gives choice to both parents and taxpayers, eliminating the source of the problem?