<p>From this morning's NY Times:</p>
<p>College Aid Plan Widens US Role in High Schools</p>
<p>When Republican senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools.....</p>
<p>It leaves it to the secretary of education to define rigorous, giving her a new foothold in matters of high school curriculums.....</p>
<p>... Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president at the American Council on Education, the nation's largest association of colleges and universities, said the new program "involves the federal government in curricular matters in a way that opens a new chapter in educational history. I'm very sympathetic to the goal of getting more students to take more math and science courses, but this particular plan has the potential to turn the Department of Education into a national school board," Mr. Hartle said....."</p>
<p>Here's the link (free registration required):
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/education/22grants.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=81cd1a4fda833059&hp&ex=1137992400&partner=homepage%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/education/22grants.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=81cd1a4fda833059&hp&ex=1137992400&partner=homepage</a></p>
<p>Color me skeptical (and a little bit scared ...)</p>