Early in 2001, when I was the chair of the education committee on the Council of the District of Columbia, I was talking with the D.C. Public Schools Superintendent Paul Vance about the intense debate over standards at the time. Federal lawmakers were debating whether to tie federal dollars that were earmarked to the states to having the state’s school age children academically proficient by 2014. Under this proposal, those states whose students failed to meet this standard would lose their expected federal education dollars.
