[The LOCAL school can set a policy.]
So, when it comes to clothing, it is a LOCAL issue.
But, when it comes to the required education and classes, should that too be a LOCAL issue? Do you support No Child Left Behind? Do you think state-level mandated testing is a good thing?
Yes. The States can set whatever standards they would like, but it's best left to the locality. Localities compete and cooperate for economic advantage and for pride (the good kind of pride), the less regulations imposed the more effective such competition and cooperation is.
There is no legitimate authority for Federal regulations or standards in the schools, save only national defense -- and that should be interpreted narrowly. The current Federal regulations, laws and bureaucracy are outlaw -- that is the Federal government was granted no charter to engage in such activity.
Do you support No Child Left Behind? Do you think state-level mandated testing is a good thing?
No I do not support No Child Left Behind, and only and sufficient to object that it is an illegal bill with no authority under the charter of authority granted the Federal Government in the Constitution. There are for practical purposes some provisions in it I agree with, actually the only one I know -- the allowance for teachers to use whatever force as they deem necessary to protect students. But that is just common sense. (Albeit common sense is highly impaired these days.)
States have the authority to establish standardized testing, or other performance metrics, state by state.
Still I do not like, in general, standardized testing -- it becomes either faddish or a drudgery, depending on the mood of the time. I think of NY Regents of forty years ago as an example of a drudgery, and the modern national standardized tests as an example of politically faddish year-to-year changes. The cohort of educators that developed those tests are know retiring -- the tests are about to enter, have entered, a downward spiral that will end in useless drudgery (imo).
Local is best. More adaptable. Less prone to catastrophic systemic failure. More adaptable for the INDIVIDUAL household, by moving or switching to private schools, or neighboring districts.
I would be interested in seeing a system where individual districts individually contracted for standardized testing from free market testing providers -- meaning no legislative or state bureaucratic regulation.