January 9, 2007

Meet the New Boss

... Same as the old boss:

Democratic Congressional leaders on Monday called President Bush’s signature education law too punitive in its sanctions on public schools and pledged to increase educational spending, signaling the stance they will take this year in negotiations over the law’s renewal.

The problem with throwing out the old bums (and bums they were) is that you get the new bums who've been out of power (for good reason) for twelve years and, apparently, learned nothing from their time in the woods.

So what's their signature education reform going to be: more money and watered down standards. Yeah, that's the ticket. Might as well legislate rainbows and lollipops as your education reform initiative.

While the tenets of the law enjoy strong bipartisan support, No Child Left Behind has also become a partisan battleground, with Democrats accusing Republicans of underfinancing it by $56 billion.

Which is the only thing they really can complain about since they were the ones who, you know, wrote the law. And, nevermind, that Federal funding for education is at its highest level ever. We need more, more, more, more, more. It is the politically tone-deaf cries like this that do more than anything else to get public support behind privatization of education.

“The No Child Left Behind Act has brought important changes to our public education system, for example, by shining a spotlight on the persistent achievement gap that exists among different groups of students in our country,” Mr. Miller said. “But if we are going to fulfill our original commitment to children and parents, then the law, its implementation and its funding must be improved.”

Let's not let those messy thing like details get in the way of a good sound bite.

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