Interversity.Org

CNN.com has a story up now, Most states fall short on testing, government says about how a number of states still aren't toeing the NCLB line, failing to do some things that really ought to be done if you're going to fashion an education system around standardized testing, like making sure students are tested over what they've actually been given an opportunity to learn, etc.

But of course the means of bringing states up to standard is, er, problematic. They get docked pay. Fix your tests or lose part of your funding, is the message from feds to states.

Jack Jennings, president of the independent Center on Education Policy, said withholding administrative money from states could be counterproductive. State education departments rely heavily on federal money to hire the staff that oversee testing.

"They will be weakening the very agencies they expect to carry out the law," Jennings said.

This isn't just a Department of Education problem or even a feature of Republican or Democratic administrations. It's a feature of parental bureaucracies that sport a "strict-father" approach, I'm afraid. The assumption that this approach is based on is that states are like children who should obey the federal parent, and if they don't, they will be penalized. The assumption behind this tactic is that children will always want to gain the approval of parents and will do whatever necessary to avoid the penalties associated with disappointing the parent. Therefore, tough financial penalties will, in theory, bring the states into compliance.

And if they don't comply, they've only themselves to blame.

The truncation of concern for consequences and the transfer of responsibility from parent to child (if the child doesn't obey the parent't only duty is to levy the punishment without regard or concern for the consequences of the punishment) will succeed only to the extent that the children, or in this case, the states, buy into strict-father morality and believe that their primary obligation is please and appease the parent.

What of the state's other obligations to other constituencies, like its own voters? it's own children? That's not the fed/parent's concern. It believes that the state will best serve its constituencies by best serving the fed.

And if it doesn't...

Well, if it doesn't serve in the manner the state deems best, its ability to serve at all will be eroded by the loss of funds.