Jerry Pournelle has frequently said (in various ways),
As to the role of the federal government in education, the proper role is for the Congress to set up, in the District of Columbia, the best system of education it can devise, and let that be a beacon to the world. And if it cannot do that, it ought to abandon the pretense that it knows how to run schools In Kansas City, Missouri, or Mineral Well, Mississippi, or anywhere else.
The feds have no legitimate business whatsoever meddling in local schools, tinkering with the education process. Period. As Pournelle says, until they can operate ONE school district well–the only one they have a clear mandate to supervise–the feds don’t even have a reasonable excuse for messing about in our local schools. As it is, the D.C. pubschools are THE clearest example demonstrating the failure of the feds to have anything worth contributing to local schools.
BTW, the link above is to a post that meanders through several topics, all of current interest and all cogently reasoned. Worth reading.