Education’s “Remote” Control

In one of his first public appearances since the controversy over his appointment, “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings came out of hiding to address a group of teachers yesterday at the National Press Club. Later, when CNS News pressed him about the Hill’s campaign to fire him, Jennings refused to answer.

He did, however, respond to a question about the role of the federal government in promoting homosexuality. “The federal government is not allowed to dictate any curriculum of any kind about any subject, whether it’s history, math, science, health, education, so forth and so on, because Congress has laid out very clear rules that they want curriculum decisions made at the state and local level… [T]he federal government doesn’t [dictate] in any area,” he said.

Does Jennings really expect us to believe that the Department of Education, an agency with a budget of roughly $48 billion, has limited authority? As FRC pointed out in a recent Washington Times op-ed, that doesn’t include the additional $33 billion that President Obama requested in the so-called “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”

With those purse strings—and a massive web of federal bureaucracy—it’s difficult to swallow Jennings’s claim that Washington has little influence on our children’s classrooms. On the contrary, it has too much!

And so does Jennings. Log on to our website to learn more about this czar’s checkered past.

Tony Perkins heads the Family Research Council. This article is excerpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.