Australia Cross Federalism Analysis

Cross indicates that the answer to the problem of federalism lies within the governmental structure. Using the example of Australia, Cross explains that the States there have educational ministers as well as federal educational ministers. These ministers have a council in which all parties have to reach consensus before a policy moves forward. This is decidedly different from the way laws are made in Congress. If decisions were agreed and accepted by this council, it would be the council that is held accountable for their actions, and that would effectively put an end to the finger-pointing between States and the federal government in education (Ferguson 74). By using the example of Australia, Cross is able to point out that the policy shaping agenda used by Australia helps to see different …show more content…
One of the provisions of the NCLB allows the Secretary of Education to “waive any statutory of regulatory requirement” with scarcely any exclusions (No Child Left Behind…). The executive administra-tion under President Obama used this provision to relinquish States from some of the more bur-densome requirements of the NCLB (Pozen-Bulman 833). Even though the purpose of this pol-icy shift was a response to frustration at Congress’s failure to amend the NCLB, the effect was a shift of power back to the States pursuant with a doctrine of federalism. It is convenient to trace the effect of this policy back to a fortunate side effect of the administrations frustration with Congress. Conversely, an argument can be formulated that the NCLB was crafted with the un-derstanding of the issues of federalism in the background. Perhaps, this provision was an attempt to embrace the underlying doctrine of federalism by allowing a safeguard against the federal government concentrating power in educational