STOP THE PRESSES! (There have been a lot of these recently – exciting times in the ed reform world…) 

 

The Obama administration has released the outline of what it's proposing vis-à-vis the renewal of NCLB, a deeply flawed and unpopular piece of legislation that, despite its warts, has been the single greatest piece of civil rights legislation in decades.  Whether and how it gets renewed is BY FAR the most important education battle we will fight this year (if not this decade), as it affects every one of our nation's nearly 100,000 schools and 48 million schoolchildren, so I'm going to limit this email solely to this topic.

 

Overall, my take is that there's a lot to be encouraged by in the initial outline the Obama administration, but the devil will be in the details, which will be hammered out in many tough fights in the coming months.

 

What IS clear is that the unions (and The Blob in general) will not settle merely for a kinder, gentler accountability system and a reasonable middle ground – instead, they want to completely eviscerate the federal role in ensuring that a quality education is a right of all children.  Oh, they say all the right things in public about wanting a partnership, yada, yada, yada, but behind closed doors, the long knives come out and they start acting kinda crazy.  Needless to say, what's best for children is the last thought in their minds…

-------------------------

Obama Calls for Sweeping Overhaul in Education Law

By SAM DILLON

Published: March 13, 2010

www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/education/14child.html