For too long, federal regulations and funding have helped stymie education reform in California. Attention here and across the country should be directed to finding a substantive but limited role for the federal government to play. Washington can help by stepping out of the way, while empowering California students, parents, teachers, and policymakers to bypass federal bureaucracy and to improve the state’s schools.
At a legislative hearing last year, prominent Democratic State Senators John Vasconcellos and Tom Hayden warned representatives of the public-education establishment that unless California’s public schools improved soon they would consider supporting school-choice vouchers.
