It’s hard not to get the sense right now that the Democrats are in free fall. Evan Bayh’s retirement is like a major aftershock to the earthquake that was Scott Brown’s election. Now there’s talk about the GOP taking over both houses of Congress in the fall, even of a primary challenge to President Obama in 2012.
To be sure, lots could change in a month, let alone by November, and we might be talking about an Obama-led Democratic resurgence. If unemployment falls, Americans’ optimism rises, and Republicans start sounding like extremists again, this situation could flip once more. That said, this tumultuous political environment is bound to affect every big bold idea coming out of the Obama Administration, from health care, to financial regulation, to cap-and-trade, and more. And the No Child Left Behind reauthorization won’t be immune.
At a time when the Tea Party, anti-big-government, pro-Sarah Palin types have the momentum, it’s hard to imagine Congress embracing another Washington-knows-best, let’s-fix-our-schools-from-the-shores-of-the-Potomac approach to ESEA like it did with NCLB (or like last year’s stimulus). It’s also easy to picture conservative politicians demagoguing the “national testing issue,” as Texas Governor Rick Perry has been doing so effectively.
It’s often noted that NCLB was enacted only after 9/11 and the anthrax scare, with both parties in Congress wanting to show the world that America could still get important things done. But that’s not all; the energy behind NCLB also came from the late 1990s, when peace and prosperity reigned and confidence in government was higher than it is today. (Remember that George W. Bush was positioning himself as “a different kind of Republican”--i.e., not a slash-and-burn Gingrich type.) Those conditions have changed; reformers who think the Congress--or the public--is in the mood for anything as audacious as NCLB just aren’t paying attention.
Arne Duncan often talks about “transforming” our education system, but don’t be surprised if his rhetoric gets a lot more measured in the months to come. And if there is to be action in the Congress on education this year, expect it to be piecemeal and step-by-step--which might not be such a bad thing after all.
A version of this article first ran as a post on Fordham’s Flypaper blog. Subscribe to the Flypaper RSS feed today!
