But while granting NCLB waivers, he keeps the church under his thumb regarding the HHS mandate:
The Obama administration has given 10 states a waiver from the federal law known as No Child Left Behind — once a bipartisan hope to raise education standards, but now generally regarded as too cumbersome and draconian.
The White House announced the first round of waivers for 10 states Thursday morning. The administration had said that it would grant the waivers because efforts to revise the 10-year-old law have become bogged down in Congress even though members of both political parties agree that the law has problems and is in need of major changes.
“After waiting far too long for Congress to reform No Child Left Behind, my administration is giving states the opportunity to set higher, more honest standards in exchange for more flexibility,” President Obama said in a statement released with the announcement.
Blah blah blah. He doesn’t mean a word of that. It’s very telling that the president is here feigning flexibility over a mildly unpopular law that was mostly written by Ted Kennedy, while reinforcing his inflexibility over the ObamaCare abortifacient mandate.
Even this show of flexibility is just that, by the way: A show. Conn Carroll and the Heritage Foundation have read the fine print on these waivers. They come with a lot of strings attached, from a president who by law has no authority to grant the waivers in the first place, according to Brookings. Today’s action was therefore illegal.
Like Race to the Top, these waivers end up tying state education ever closer to Washington. Slavery is freedom.
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