Washington should mostly back out of the education-fixing business. For starters, the No
Child Left Behind project should be, if not abandoned, recast to embrace diverse “best practices”
(much as the old AFDC regime was, through the expensive use of waivers).
And if the
quandary for Congress is that it doesn’t trust the states with federal money, it should shovel them
less, not regulate them more. For the United States is, if anything, a country that overspends on
education.
Environmental Policy
While much pollution crosses boundaries and so cannot be handled by local governments
operating solo, not every environmental challenge calls for a national template.
The solid waste
landfills in Southwestern states such as Arizona, where there is little rain, ought not require the
same stringent specifications as in, say, the Pacific Northwest. Let the states set their own
standards. In all but rare circumstances, any added risks would only befall the residents of those
jurisdictions alone, since leaking landfills seldom spill into adjacent states. “Similarly,” writes Paul
R. Portney of Resources for the Future, “for all but a few biological contaminants in drinking
water, the risks linked with higher concentration of most contaminants would be borne only by
those who consume the affected water for a lifetime. Why, then, not allow the states, or perhaps
even individual communities, to decide how stringently they wish to regulate their drinking
65
Section 9401 of Title IX gives the Secretary of Education broad discretion to waive requirements of the law.
66
In 2001, the United States was spending 77 percent more than the mean annual per pupil expenditure among
OECD countries (based on purchasing power parity). U.S. spending per pupil was about 22 percent higher than
the next highest countries, Denmark and Norway. OECD, OECD Indicators 2004: Education at a Glance
(OECD, 2004), p. 199.
67
See in general Pietro S. Nivola and Jon A. Shields, Managing Green Mandates: Local Rigors of U.S.
Environmental Regulation (AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, 2001).
68
Paul R. Portney, “Environmental Policy in the Next Century,” in Henry J. Aaron and Robert D. Reischauer, eds.,
Setting National Prioties: The 2000 Election and Beyond (Brookings, 1999), p. 379.
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Convention