The Department of Education announced the latest wave of NCLB waivers this week, bringing the grand total of states freed from the law’s most cumbersome strictures to nineteen (counting D.C.). While myriad challenges remain for those winners, Congress is by far the biggest loser; round by round, the Obama Administration is making Washington’s role in education increasingly the product of executive-branch decision-making.
The “digital divide” in access to technology of the 1990s has morphed into a “time-wasting” gap reports the New York Times, with children whose parents lack college degrees exposed to 90 minutes more media daily than their wealthier peers. While the government’s proposed response is misdirected—$200 million to create a “digital literacy corps”?!—this is a useful testament to policymakers that technology is no panacea and to parents that it’s time to turn off the TV and put away the Wii.
