The American testing system has often been blamed for the simplification of curriculum, the cutting of art, music, and physical education classes, and the decline of quality education overall. Perhaps a laser-like focus on reading and math has produced some unintended consequences but it's a far cry better than recent developments in the United Kingdom. This weekend, the Telegraph reported that traditional subjects are being foresworn for "lifestyle" classes, like sex ed, citizenship, and British national identity. In fact, one survey found the amount of time spent teaching geography has dropped 70 percent. Students certainly should have a civics curriculum, but let's not cut history to do it.

On Saturday, the Washington Post advised Barack and Michelle Obama that as they think about the pros and cons of various schools here in D.C., they might also want to keep in mind the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which gives District parents the same power of choice for their own kids. The Post won't weigh in on the whole public vs. private debate, of course. But the piece muses:

Let's hope the experience of moving his girls and finding the place where they will flourish resonates with Mr. Obama so that he reexamines his stance on the District's voucher program. How is it right to take away what little choice there is for needy D.C. children?

Interesting thoughts--in fact, very similar to thoughts offered up by our own Mike Petrilli not too long ago! Mike unabashedly admitted he is pulling for Georgetown Day, specifically because it participates in the D.C. voucher program.

It's one thing for Candidate Obama to oppose publicly funded vouchers on principle. It's quite another thing for a President Obama to eliminate an existing program and kick his daughters' classmates out of their beloved school.

The Post piece today echoes that sentiment. It notes that both Georgetown Day as well as Sidwell Friends --two schools Michelle Obama visited recently --participate in the voucher program.

That means classmates of Malia and Sasha might lose the ability to attend their chosen school if the vouchers were eliminated. That wouldn't seem fair.

Libby Sternberg, a writer and onetime Gadfly contributor, issued the right retort to Representative Pete Hoekstra*, not to mention Neal McLuskey, in the letters section of the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra criticizes the No Child Left Behind Act, using it as an example of the foolhardiness of "compassionate conservatism" (Letters, Nov. 14).

But NCLB was premised on a simple fiscal conservative principle: If you take federal money, you must be accountable for what you do with it. And if you don't want to live by those rules, you can opt out by refusing to take the federal money with its attached strings.

Republicans who disagreed with NCLB could have put their local-control principles into practice by voting to cut federal funding to schools entirely. But that would have been politically unpopular. So instead they joined with teachers unions and Democrats to help undermine this worthwhile, if sometimes flawed, education reform effort, making it very difficult for grassroots education reform and school-choice activists to push forward the principles of choice and accountability embodied in NCLB.

She's right; Republicans that want to kill No Child Left Behind in its entirety should also propose to eliminate its $25 billion or so dollars for k-12 education. If that sounds like a poison pill, here's an idea: push for transparency, via national standards and tests, instead of "accountability" via the heavy hand of Washington.

* Checker's retort ain't so bad, either.

Last week I made the fairly obvious argument that GOP governors are the key to the Republican Party's renewal, including on the education issue.

Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, agrees:

I believe renewal and reform will come from the states. There will be, in Washington and New York, a million symposia, think-tank confabs, op-ed pieces, columns and cruises; there will be epiphanies on the Amtrak Acela while delayed at Wilmington; there will be polls and books, and pollsters' books. All fine and good, and a contribution. But the new emerging Republicans are likely to come in the end from the states, because that is where "this is what works" will come from. It is governance in the states that will yield the things that win-better handling of teachers' unions,* better management, more effective, just and therefore desirable tax systems. And, of course, more clean lines of accountability.

So what bold reforms could energetic governors embrace, particularly in a time of economic distress? Here are three ideas; if you have others, please post them below or send them to me at [email protected].

--??Put great curricular materials into the hands of teachers, via the Internet. This is an easy win, doesn't need to be terribly expensive, but is sorely needed. Ask your Department of Education to partner with curriculum developers to take your state standards and turn them into usable, clickable resources for the classroom. Include lesson plans and videos of master teachers delivering them; embedded assessments; readings; digital snippets; the whole shebang.

--??Make schools' finances and results transparent, via the Internet. Empower taxpayers and parents with easily accessible information. It's a crime that nobody knows how much individual schools spend. Change that. Put it online, down to the last penny. And link spending with results, displayed in user-friendly ways.

--??Provide excellent coursework to students, via the Internet. Lots of states are already doing this, of course, via virtual schools, virtual charters, and the like. But there's still a ton of room for growth, and some gubernatorial leadership could ensure that the resources provided to kids are top-notch, paid for by the state in a way that will keep them getting better, and accessible to the children who need them most.

And yes, this soup has a theme. One thing the Internet is really good at is creating efficiencies. And we all know that we need those now. So get to it, guvs.

* GOP heads-of-states might learn a thing or two about that from a couple of Democrats in that non-state called the District of Columbia.

Our ten Washington insiders are back at work today, making their predictions for who will lead the U.S. Department of Education. And not much changed over the weekend, though Arne Duncan has certainly solidified his overwhelming lead:

But there is some interesting news to report. Among the honorable mentions today* were Michael Lomax, the head of the United Negro College Fund, and Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico. Lomax brings higher education experience, which is a commodity the Obama team might value. And Richardson needs to find a home if State goes to Hillary Clinton. He's already led the Energy Department and served as Ambassador to the U.N. And while he said plenty of nasty things about NCLB on the campaign trail, at the state level he's been strong on accountability and charter schools. (We found New Mexico to be among the most reform-minded states a few years ago .) Oh yes, and he's Latino. Let's see if his star rises.

* The others were Caroline Kennedy, Beverly Hall, Peter McWalters, Ted Mitchell, Tim Kaine, Erskine Bowles, Jim Shelton, Alan Bersin, and Jon Schnur.

Yes. indeed, there are rifts nowadays, rifts almost as wide as the Great Rift Valley within both political parties when it comes to education policy, particularly at the national level.??That's??probably necessary, as both parties go through some??soul-searching and repurposing. But this weekend it feels as if the anti-reform crowd may be winning among both Democrats and Republicans.??Friday brought two distressing hints.

First, we learned that the nascent Obama administration has picked Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond to lead the policy side of the transition operation at the U.S. Department of Education. She is a??pleasant and??smart woman but she surely does harbor a lot of retro ideas about education. She's Public Enemy #1 of Teach for America, for example, and for twelve years (since her report, "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future," came out) has been the nation's foremost embodiment of the view that improving teachers ought to be America's chief reform strategy, the heck with standards-and-accountability on the one hand and school choice on the other. If her policy views dominate the new administration's education-policy stance, groups such as Democrats for Education Reform might as well take a LONG vacation.??The unions and the ed schools will be overjoyed.

Friday also brought??letters to the Wall Street Journal and Detroit News from Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra, a GOP stalwart and, on the whole, a terrific guy. As ranking Republican on the House intelligence Committee, he has served his country well. But as a member of the Education and Labor Committee, he is increasingly inclined to blame No Child Left Behind (and John Boehner) for the party's political decline and to urge upon his colleagues a return to something akin to blind support for local control and school choice. Maybe that formula still works well in the??pastoral precincts of western Michigan where Hoekstra's district is located, and the local electorate seems to like him well enough. (Earlier this month, he got 62 percent of the vote in his House race.) I don't doubt that his view of education is pleasing to the party's "base." But if it prevails, members of that base may cast the only Republican votes??in future elections--and all those poor, minority and inner-city kids who live in districts other than Hoekstra's will continue to be??trapped in the miserable schools that NCLB, however clumsily, sought to transform (or extricate them from).

Great Rift Valley photograph from University of Guelph