against a colonial government that tried music history education to impose modest taxes on it from afar. in education, this sentiment came to be expressed as a staunch defense of local control of our schools. during most of the history 19th century, the local school was the primary history of education unit of educational governance for most americans. an individual community built a school, hired a teacher, raised money through local taxes and fees, and implemented education loans consolidation assistance on its own terms. outside help was neither offered nor welcomed. this was the ultimate in local control. even in large cities, control of education tended to rest at the ward level. consider some numbers that suggest the radical degree of decentralization that has long characterized american education. it was not until 1937 that we started recording information about the number of individual school systems in the country.

a modest proposal by president clinton for vague and voluntary national standards provoked strong opposition in congress and elsewhere. a variety of efforts on the part of states to introduce some forms of curriculum history guidelines and to reinforce them with statewide testing have stirred up strong reactions at the local level. reinforcing this local response to setting standards has been the hostility toward government that has characterized the politics of the last two decades. increasingly, elected officials have won office on a platform of being relentlessly anti-government. they see their primary job as an effort to education protect local communities and individual citizens from the intrusion history of government control denver should consolidate its program for gifted middle-schoolers to stop children from leaving for private, charter and magnet schools, the program''s leader said thursday.