DLC vs. NCLB

Well, as out-of-touch as the DLC usually is, they still occasionally put up some good stuff:

DLC | New Dem Daily | January 12, 2005 Fumbling Education Reform The No Child Left Behind education reform law is the one genuine domestic reform initiative that has been backed by the Bush administration, and is also the one significant bipartisan policy effort it has supported to date. But as the Progressive Policy Institute's Andrew Rotherham explains in today's New York Times, the administration is in serious danger of fumbling No Child Left Behind, in no small part because it has consistently elevated spin over substance in promoting the law, trying to take credit for the initiative instead of actually supporting its proper implementation. The recent furor over the revelation that the Department of Education paid conservative pundit Armstrong Williams $241,000 for promoting NCLB on his television show and in his newspaper columns is but the latest example of the administration's obsession with spin and credit, says Rotherham. "Ultimately, this is a second-tier scandal, but it takes a place among a series of bad decisions that risk scuttling the most ambitious effort in a generation to improve education for poor and minority youngsters." Over and over, the administration has given ammunition to critics of NCLB and undermined bipartisan support for the initiative, notes Rotherham. "Initially, it was slow to work with states and school districts and explain what the new education law requires, causing confusion among all parties.... Playing politics with the law's financing also gave its critics an easy target. Considering the overall lack of fiscal constraint typical of this administration, its decision to suddenly become stingy on crucial programs called for in the law is inexplicable." This pattern of negligence, compounded by the administration's tendency to dismiss all criticism of NCLB's implementation as a secret desire to repeal it, has consistently undermined bipartisan support for education reform. "The stream of almost entirely avoidable problems and Department of Education gaffes makes it even harder for Democratic supporters of the law to resist the pressure [from NCLB opponents]," says Rotherham. But resist that pressure we must, because the goal of NCLB, which is to greatly reduce the educational opportunity gap that is daily damaging poor and disadvantaged kids, is too important to let it fail, especially for progressives. The most urgent task for Margaret Spellings, who seems certain to become the new Secretary of Education, is clear. It is to convince the White House to get out of the business of trying to close the political gap on education, which has been its operating principle these last four years, and onto the business of closing the achievement gap.

Being married to a Spec. Ed. teacher, I can confirm that NCLB, as it is being carried out by the Bush Administration, is the worst thing to hit the U.S. education system since, well, since ever.