A major annual poll shows that a majority of Americans support following the 10th Amendment on education, preferring to have states in charge rather than the federal government.

PDK/Gallup reports the interesting findings, as local/state control of education increasingly gains support as federal policies fail to deliver results that were promised:

More Americans say state authorities, versus local or federal, should be responsible for holding schools accountable, paying for schools, and determining the amount of testing in schools, while slightly more Americans said local units of government, generally school boards, should be responsible for selecting textbooks and teaching methods. Only one in five Americans believe the federal government should play a role in any of these four areas.

We have seen the momentum build for decentralization of education in the fight to resist Common Core. A handful of states are refusing the standards outright, while state and individual opt-out efforts are gaining momentum.

However, the survey wasn’t all good news. The federal government still has substantial support for its centralized educational power in many respects. From the report:

After receiving a lower rating last year, President Obama’s performance in support of the public schools rebounded a bit this year with 37% of Americans giving him a grade of A or B.

With potentially tens of millions of people still in support of the status quo, much more work needs to be done before everyone realizes the folly of federally-controlled education. A point that may be lost among its supporters is the sheer unconstitutionality of federal education programs.

The real debate here isn’t the efficacy of federal education. Even if federal education did work well and even if it were popular, it would still not be permissible in our Constitutional Republic. The states and the local governments were meant to decide matters on education under the Constitution by the framers, and that is the argument that still needs to be made.

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