all political stripes, library including long-standing Tories - are hoping their grassroots movement will bring about a groundswell of support. The full-page ad reads, in part: ``Large classes. Fewer special education classes. Reduced library staff. Fewer arts programs . . . Does this sound like your school?'''' The first one appears in today''s Star. The funding formula is not meeting needs of kids in Toronto, or anywhere,'''' said Joanne Pauli, speaking on behalf resources of the newly formed Friends of Public She has three children, one at North Toronto Collegiate. Most of the parents library have some connection resources to the collegiate; the idea for the ad campaign came out of a library parent council meeting. The one-size-fits-all resources formula isn''t really fitting anyone at all,'''' Pauli said. In 1998, library the provincial government seized control of education spending, taking away individual boards'' ability to raise their own taxes depending on their needs. It now spends $13.4 billion a year.

In that year, which was some 40 years after the start of a massive effort by reformers to consolidate districts into larger administrative units, there were about 120,000 resources individual school districts in the U.S. This meant that on average there were only two schools per district. Now, that is really local control. Even now, after consolidation has continued for another 60 years, we still have about 15,000 separate school districts -- each with primary control over financing, staffing, and setting curriculum standards for our schoolsCertainly state governments have taken library steps over the years to resources assert greater control over these matters in K-12 schooling, and even the federal government has made tiny and tentative moves in this direction. But all these efforts have been undertaken in the face of enormous resistance by local communities, library which have vigorously fought to preserve the autonomy of their schools.

A modest proposal by President Clinton for vague and voluntary national standards provoked strong opposition resources in Congress and elsewhere. A variety of efforts on the part of states to introduce library some forms of curriculum guidelines and to reinforce them with statewide testing 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 resources won office on 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 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.

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