Suing the Government over the Common Core

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is suing the Obama administration in federal court for its implementation of the Common Core academic standards.  Jindal claims that creation of educational curricula and assessment policy is the exclusive province of state and local government, and the federal government’s usurpation of this function violates federal law.  He bases his suit on several federal educational statutes: the General Education Provisions Act of 1965; the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965; and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. According to Jindal, these statutes add up to the proposition that state and local governments get to control academic curriculum, and the federal government doesn’t get a say.

Jindal says that the Race To The Top program and the Common Core impermissibly federalize education policy through economic incentives and duress.  Louisiana received over $17.4 million in education funding after it agreed to join a consortium of states and adopted the Common Core developed by those states.  Jindal argues that although the funding was greatly needed, “the loss of State and local authority over education curricula and assessment policy is unmeasurable (sic) and irreparable.”  He also says that the Tenth Amendment prohibits federalization of educational policy, and that the Spending Clause does not save it.

Will Jindal be successful in court?  Unlikely, in my opinion. The Spending Clause of the Constitution gives the federal government fairly broad discretion to condition receipt of federal funds on certain state actions.  A federal grant of funds need only be related to the particular national interest at issue.  Jindal says that educational curricula cannot be a national interest due to the statutes mentioned above.  But I’m sure the federal government will argue that having an educated workforce is in the national interest.  

Winning the lawsuit may not be Jindal’s motivation, though.  In fact, he might have won just by filing. A strong federalist stance would look pretty good on a Republican presidential candidate’s resume.  This lawsuit gives him the ability to campaign on a “keep the federal government out of our state affairs” platform later on.

This lawsuit says nothing about the outcomes of the Common Core curricula and assessments or whether students have benefitted.  Nor would I expect it to.  According to this line of argumentation, it doesn’t matter how good the outcome of a specific policy or program is.  If the federal government is not permitted to do something, it shouldn’t be done.  I’d love to hear from some teachers about their experiences with the Common Core, though.