The election of Donald Trump and his selection of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education provide our nation with the opportunity to step back from the failures of the past and institute policies that have a chance of improving American education.

The “reform movement” has been in charge of American education since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. These reforms, substantially hijacked by the Obama administration, have centralized control of American education in the federal government while leaving the delivery of the product to states and local school districts. The federal intrusion has covered everything from required approval of standards and of the standardized tests that measure those standards’ achievement to policies on issues like bullying and restroom use.

No Child Left Behind had two stated goals: to eliminate the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their middle and upper middle class counterparts, and to improve educational performance of all American children. The act failed to achieve either result. Should we continue the educational practices of the past 15 years, we will be approaching the well-known definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Our children deserve better.

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