Executive Order 13791: Education

What the Executive Order says

Executive Order (EO) 13791 is entitled "Enforcing Statutory Prohibitions on Federal Control of Education".  This EO is largely window-dressing.  This EO directs that the Department of Education review all of the guidance documentation and regulations and remove, rescind or modify any such documents that attempt to standardized at a Federal level primary and secondary education.

Section 1

This section lays out the policy direction of the administration which is to allow as much as possible control to State and Local government to define the requirements for primary and secondary education within the current law.

Section 2

This section directs the Secretary of Education to review all Department of Education regulations and guidance documents to assure that they are not overly prescriptive with regards to curriculum, administration and teaching resources that might violate current law.  This includes broad categories of documents, essentially anything that the Federal Government has published that could be used in the classroom.  Finally this section states that the Secretary of Education should take these measures within 300 days.

Section 3

This section provides a definition for guidance document that is broad and encompasses pretty much anything that the Department of Education has published and can be used in the classroom.

Section 4

This section provides boilerplate caveats necessary to ensure constitutionality of the EO.

My Comments

The intention here is to pull back the Federal Government from Education.  There is longstanding concerns as Education has always been considered within the States' jurisdiction and not as a Federal concern.  While acknowledging the constitutional issue, this is nonetheless a dangerous position to take.  Education, and specifically primary and secondary education are key in a number of ways: to assure a common understanding of the current culture; to provide for basic literacy, numeracy and critical thinking in the next generation of workers; to assure a safe space for social growth of students regardless of background.
I worry about having creationism taught as an alternative to evolution.  I worry about an emphasis on rote learning of facts with no aim at a deep critical comprehension of the context in which those facts exist.  I worry about schools and teachers modeling exclusion of the other rather than inclusion and acceptance of all.  Now more than ever, because of the huge challenges we face, not only in America, but around the world, education systems cannot mass-produce conformist consumers of every thing and every media who passively accept whatever comes their way.  We need critical thinkers, but graduates must also have some common knowledge of recent history rather than partisan talking points which may not be untrue, but are designed to mislead.  Given the vast quantities of text and data available at the touch of one's fingers, evaluation of a given assertion, assumption or conclusion is a necessary skill.  Critical thinkers can rationally consider, evaluate and verify the arguments of the other side, not just reject them using pre-planned formulae.
The policy challenges are daunting.  The current gridlock is driven by the marketing of simple solutions that can be summarized in a slogan and repeated over and over again in lieu of constructive argument and debate.  You cannot solve complex problems with simple solutions.  We need the education system to produce citizens who appreciate the complex solutions and are willing to invest the time in their citizenship to critically consider what direction the country should go in.  To achieve these goals, 50 states pushing in different directions will not work.  The Federal Government needs to exercise its power or else the differences across the country will multiply and end up dividing us rather than just adding local flavor to the universal theme which exists at the root of the country.
But on the bright side, this EO is largely window dressing.  It directs the Secretary of Education to push in the direction of disengagement and is merely an announcement of intentions.  For once, it does not even call for a report!  But having announced their intentions, the rest of the country will now have to be alert to resist where possible Federal disengagement from an area where otherwise they could have great positive influence in keeping the country together and bringing us all forward to meet the future.