No Demagogue Left Behind
The dishonest assault on Bush's education reform.
by Katherine Mangu-Ward
3/20/2004 12:02:00 AM, Volume 009, Issue 28
FOLKS OVER AT the National Education Association headquarters are gloating. "Clearly, the ground on [No Child Left Behind] has shifted," said a statement released by the national teachers' union last week. "While publicly castigating NEA for what he called 'obstructionist scare tactics,' U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige is beginning to follow suggestions from the Association."
From the day it became law--January 8, 2002--Bush's education initiative promised trouble. Senator Edward Kennedy and Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, stood by, beaming with semi-forced smiles, while Bush signed the bipartisan bill. "The White House was eager to have George W. Bush and Sandra Feldman embrace," says a Kennedy spokesman, "and they did." But the NEAwas already rumbling its disapproval, and a short three weeks later, the odd couple's honeymoon was over.
Which, when you think about it, isn't the least bit surprising. The NEA, along with its political action committee, had donated $2.8 million to Democrats in the last presidential election cycle. The group has never endorsed a Republican for president.
And there's a lot to fight about. More than 1,000 pages long, No Child Left Behind lays out a scheme for educational improvement with a 12-year horizon. As a result, it's impossible to tell yet whether or not it is succeeding. When today's first-graders graduate, we'll know whether it worked. But the law's numerous testing requirements, tight compliance deadlines, and consequences for schools that fail to measure up--extra tutoring, then vouchers, then "reorganization"--are making beneficiaries of the status quo nervous even ...
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