July 28, 2004

The Right is Winning on Education

Here's the Brookings Institute's commentary on John Kerry's education proposals for K-12:


Kerry advocates exempting education spending from [his proposed] cap on discretionary spending by proposing a ten-year $200 billion entitlement to the states for education spending.... Roughly half the total...would be devoted to No Child Left Behind (the signature Bush education law).

One of the most important things that can happen to a partisan initiative championed by a president is to be confirmed by the next president of the opposing party. It's something like the way a boa constrictor tackles a meal, you squeeze down and then hold firm. The problem in education has always been long and ineffective feedback loops


That No Child Left Behind is being confirmed this way shows that over the next generation or so we will see the end of the teacher led war on productive reform. With testing and standards for performance the dead wood of bad theories, bad administrators, and bad teachers are going to retire early or be thrown out. It's not going to be a pretty process and far too many children will still be lost before we're done but even when the federal government changes hands, we're not going to have disastrous levels of backsliding.

That's real news.

Posted by TMLutas at July 28, 2004 09:56 AM