SACRAMENTO, CA -- In early April, state schools chief Delaine Eastin and several business leaders journeyed to Washington D.C. to endorse President Clinton's call for national education standards and testing. Mr. Clinton gleefully seized Eastin's endorsement and announced that, "Today, America's largest school system and leaders of its most forward-leaning high-tech industries have joined together to put California alongside Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina and our military schools in support of a national standards movement."

Trouble is, Ms. Eastin's endorsement did not represent California's endorsement. Under state law and court rulings, it is the state Board of Education, not Ms. Eastin, that is responsible for setting education policy in California. A dismayed Board president Yvonne Larsen shot off a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley warning that, "Any endorsement given to you by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin on behalf of the state exceeded her authority." Ms. Larsen said that California was committed by law to state standards and assessments and, barring a change in that law, "there is simply no way for us to entertain a commitment to a national standards and assessment process."

Eastin tried to excuse her insubordinate actions by claiming that the White House misinterpreted her endorsement. Let's think about that a minute. A seasoned veteran politician, who holds the title of State Superintendent of Public Instruction, travels to Washington to endorse the President's showcase education agenda item in a highly publicized meeting, and then professes to be surprised that the President thinks she is giving California's endorsement to the plan. Yeah, right.

More disturbing than whether Ms. Eastin had the authority to deliver California's endorsement for national standards and testing, however, is the problem that such standards and testing are simply a bad idea, period. Do we really want to allow Washington "educrats" to have the power to devise national standards and testing for education in all fifty states, especially in light of such past grand failures as the national history standards that ignored basic U.S. historical events in favor of liberal p.c. indoctrination? Bill Clinton claims that we shouldn't worry about the dangers of setting national standards because "reading is reading and math is math." Perhaps, but Lynne Cheney, former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has observed that the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Council of Teachers of Math, powerful advocates for de-emphasizing phonics and basic computational math in favor of failed methodologies such as "whole language" learning and "new, new math" concepts, will have great influence on any national standards and testing scheme.

Yvonne Larsen was correct to note that California cannot commit itself to participate in a national standards process "until we can see exactly what the national standards and assessment system would be." Given the crew that currently controls education policy in Washington, that system will likely be something that Californians will want to avoid rather than embrace.

-By Lance T. Izumi