we have increasingly held high the view that education is a private good, which should serve the individual schools interests of educational consumers, rather than a public good, which should serve the broader public interest in producing competent citizens and productive workers. First, consider our high traditional commitment to preserving local control. The core issue here is schools the wide and deep strain of libertarian sentiment that lies at the heart of the American psyche. The urge to preserve individual liberty is a key to understanding American society, and it is what defines our distinctive approach to politics, economics, and education. Don''t tell me what to do" has long been our national slogan. By it we have meant in particular that government should keep off our backs -- especially government that is far removed from our local community. All you need to do is remember that this nation was born of an uprising

A modest proposal by President Clinton for vague and voluntary national standards provoked strong opposition in Congress and elsewhere. high A variety of efforts on the part of states to introduce some forms of curriculum guidelines and to reinforce them with statewide testing schools have stirred up strong reactions at the local level. Reinforcing this local response to setting standards has been the hostility toward government that has characterized the politics of the last two decades. Increasingly, elected officials have won office on high a platform of being relentlessly anti-government. They see their primary job as an effort to protect local communities and individual citizens from the intrusion of government schools control Denver should consolidate its program for gifted middle-schoolers to stop children from leaving for private, charter and magnet schools, the program''s leader said Thursday.

The School Board''s new policy reflects the spirit and intention of the state''s original law allowing provisional custody in the first place, an issue involving the legal status of children whose parents are divorced. Board member Catherine Davis, chairwoman of the board''s Policy Committee, said parents or custodians with provisional custody agreements that are not court-ordered by the beginning of the next school year will have to take their children out of the school they are attending. For the last several years, homeschooling has been the fastest growing educational alternative in the country. Estimates of its growth rate typically range from 15-25% annually. Homeschoolers are notoriously difficult to count, however, the National Homeschooling Research Institute believes that currently 1.2 million children high homeschool schools today. While this constitutes only about 2% of all school age children, it’s more than 20% of those outside the government educational system. And, with a 20% annual growth rate, another quarter million children will join the homeschooling movement this year.

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