Rick Hess and I have a piece on National Review Online today about President Bush's education legacy. I guess you might say it's not really in the Christmas spirit. We argue that Bush??sold out??his principles when negotiating the No Child Left Behind act:
The compromises that the administration struck...led Bush to champion a law that dramatically expanded the federal role in education; adopted an explicitly race-based conception of school accountability; focused on "closing achievement gaps" to the exclusion of all other objectives; proffered a pie-in-the-sky civil rights-oriented approach to school "accountability" (even for students with cognitive disabilities and English language learners); created a burdensome federal mandate around teacher qualifications that hampers outfits such as Teach For America; devised a compliance apparatus that is even more burdensome than the previous regime; and significantly increased federal spending on education.
But we were just warming up:
Decades ago, Newt Gingrich and other reform-minded conservatives used to savage Bob Dole as a "tax collector for the welfare state" - arguing that "green eyeshade" Republicans were simply enabling Democrats who gleefully maneuvered the budget balancers into backing the tax increases needed to fund expansive programs. Democrats got the credit while Republicans got tagged as grim-faced disciplinarians. It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that Bush permitted himself to become the "hall monitor for the civil rights lobby" - taking the hits from angry suburbanites and the blame for an unpopular law, while civil rights groups basked in their new status and doubled down by pushing for new and more aggressive federal programs.
It should surprise no one that the "Democrats for Education Reform" love No Child Left Behind. It's a progressive law, through and through, and I suspect that 2009 will be the year when most conservatives (and most Republicans) abandon it entirely.
