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Bush administration developed a school reform agenda which was broadened by our President and Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education. As a result, there is increased attention on teacher pay, teacher evaluation, higher education and charter schooling.

The administration challenges colleges to keep their costs down even as they stress on the need to spend intelligently the school dollars. The focus is also on innovation on a generic basis and there is a lot of talk on flexibility especially with regard to certain burdensome elements of the NCLB or No Child Left Behind Act.

Our President no doubt has the best of intentions but his reforms lays out a sprawling, prescriptive role for Washington bureaucrats. There is a push towards reading standards and common math which is voluntary and state-led. If you notice closely, all Obama’s reforms are based on huge new spending pledges even though there is a lot of talk about doing more with less.

As with any previous administration, Obama team has again stood in the way of dynamic innovators and problem solvers even though we must give them credit for innovation and charter school support. Colleges are now facing draconian new regulations as the administration shows open hostility and has declared war on for-profit organizations. These colleges are barred from participating in the ‘investing in innovation’ fund in K-12.

What would be the best for US education system is to completely take it away from Washington, as far away as possible. Jon Huntsman spoke of an idea on what can be done to our Education department during the GOP presidential campaign.

He said that this department must be limited to normal market information gathering and regulation and it should be a clearinghouse of ideas. Education department must enable local actors to effectively measure performance by giving them objective measures.

Jon Huntsman will transform this department into an Education Advisory Council that will work efficiently and will work ceaselessly towards defined responsibility. From inside the White House, a cabinet level status is maintained by the United States Trade Representative and our education department will work on similar lines, he said. Other appropriate agencies will be allocated with other responsibilities that are not aligned with important objectives.

The idea of a ‘grand swap’ was put forth by Sen. Lamar Alexander in the WSJ. According to him, 100% of Medicaid will be taken over by the federal government. This is a healthcare program designed to help low income Americans. Responsibility of our country’s 100,000 public schools will be taken up completely by the states.

This is in fact a good idea. Workers should be given the liberty to spend their pre-tax dollars on the health insurance of their choice. Nationalizing Medicaid and pushing back education to the states will ensure there is no disruption of innovations.

In order to achieve this and ensure that all this happens, there must be depowering of teachers unions and modification or complete elimination of Obamacare. Taking bold steps is the only way to move forward.