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U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's bullying behavior threatens Vermont children and Vermont values.

Using bags of money--taxpayer dollars--the U. S. Department of Education pushes Vermont into corporatized eudcation, imposing a catalogue of schools requirements shipped in from distant consultants-for-hire.

With the Federal demand for standardization, Vermonters should affirm the 1968 Vermont Design for Education declaration: "The school's function is to expand the differences between individuals and create a respect for those differences."

• The Feds place schools at the center of commerce, declaring children to be future workers in a global economy. 

Vermont knows a better way: Keep schools local.  Put schools at he center of the community and encourage students to explore forests, ponds, farms, artists' studios, industrial sites, museums.

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• The Feds impose timetables, labeling young children winners and losers in the global economy.

Vermont knows a better way: Treat 8-year-olds  like 8-year-olds, celebrating their diversity and variety  and uniqueness.

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• The Feds insist all students muar take the same pre-college curriculum.

Vermont knows a better way: Encourage students  to work with their hands as well as their heads so they learn that farmers, carpenter, lumberjacks, and musicians are valued as well as engineers and chemists.

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• The Feds demean and disparage teachers.

Vermont knows a better way: A community that values its teachers as professionals has confidence that they, with the advice and consent of local school boards,  provide an appropriate and vibrant learning environment for the children. Senior projects reveal not standardization but the diversity a community  needs.

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• The Feds demand a national timetable: National Standards and a National Test. 

Vermont knows a better way: We must ask, "Who's in charge?" and we must refuse to turn over the control of our schools to the Feds. We must insist on Vermont schools by and for Vermonters.