Lance T. Izumi delivered a speech on Federal control of education on October 6, 2010 at St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe, PA.

Download a full transcript of the speech here. 

In order to appreciate the full dangers of the Obama administration’s attempt to centralize education policymaking and decisionmaking in Washington, it is important to understand the historical context of the provision of education in this country.

According to Nancy Beadie of the University of Washington in her essay “Balancing Local Control and State Responsibility for K-12 Education,” in the colonial and early national period the responsibility for educating children belonged with parents and other legal guardians, and it was successful for its time: “As a result of such parental responsibility, common schooling and basic literacy were already widespread through many parts of the colonies by the 1740s and 1750s century, one hundred years before publicly supported state systems of schooling were in place.”...