A Local Lesson That Democrats Fail

 

Cohen with a brilliant piece on how lame every Democratic presidential contender is on school reform -- Obama only a tiny bit less so (we'll know more after he addresses the NEA later this week)...

The eight Democratic presidential candidates assembled in Washington last week for another of their debates and talked, among other things, about public education. They all essentially agreed that it was underfunded -- one system "for the wealthy, one for everybody else," as John Edwards put it. Then they all got into cars and drove through a city where teachers are relatively well paid, per-pupil spending is through the roof and -- pay attention here -- the schools are among the very worst in the nation. When it comes to education, Democrats are ineducable....

Insofar as the Democratic presidential candidates talked about public school education and insofar as they mentioned the Supreme Court decision, they largely mouthed Democratic orthodoxy. It must have sounded reassuring to big-city education unions and politicians with a gift for exacerbating racial paranoia. But to the kid in the classroom, to a parent bucking the bureaucracy, the rhetoric must have sounded as unreal as the hot air that comes from Baghdad's Green Zone -- a "surge" of money instead of men or, as we used to say, throwing good money after bad.

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A Local Lesson That Democrats Fail

By Richard Cohen, Washington Post
Tuesday, July 3, 2007; A15

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/02/AR2007070201558.html

The eight Democratic presidential candidates assembled in Washington last week for another of their debates and talked, among other things, about public education. They all essentially agreed that it was underfunded -- one system "for the wealthy, one for everybody else," as John Edwards put it. Then they all got into cars and drove through a city where teachers are relatively well paid, per-pupil spending is through the roof and -- pay attention here -- the schools are among the very worst in the nation. When it comes to education, Democrats are ineducable.