Education: Limit Federal Power by Killing ESSA Regulations | National Review

Education: Limit Federal Power by Killing ESSA Regulations | National Review:

"December 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, dubbed the “largest devolution of federal control to the states in a quarter-century” by the Wall Street Journal. Republicans and Democrats alike had grown frustrated with the Obama Department of Education’s operating like a national school board, dictating everything from teacher evaluation to school-turnaround strategies. Massive bipartisan majorities passed ESSA with an eye to returning Washington to a more modest and appropriate role.

But before the ink on the law was even dry, Arne Duncan, Obama’s secretary of education, mocked the will of Congress, boasting that it would be easy to get around the law’s restrictions: “We have every ability to implement, to regulate the law. . . . Our lawyers are much smarter than many of the folks who were working on this bill.”