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Quotes: Latest Version Of NCLB Puts Obama In Tight Spot

Quotes2[The conference version of the NCLB overhaul] puts [President Obama] in a difficult position to be signing onto something that clearly empowers states to be less aggressive in addressing inequity.

-- Peter Cunningham, former assistant secretary at the Education Department and a past adviser to Secretary Arne Duncan (quoted in Politico (Growing anxiety on left over NCLB deal)

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The "left" here, the status quo ruling class, is actually very conservative with regard to the issue of educational and social inequality, representing a minority committed to continuing with the educational and social policy of George W. Bush, as if it had been working for the last 13 years. The only future these people appear to be able to see is a repeat of the past, as if there were precisely two choices available: stay the course or go back to the 20th century. Some of us would like to go back to the 20th century only as a means to chart a different path, one that might work, given that the Bush-Duncan strategies obviously haven't worked to produce their intended consequences. Social and educational reform going forward should empower states, and through them local communities, to address these inequities with a large variety of strategies more effective because more precisely tailored to local circumstances, rather than the cumbersome Soviet centralizing regulatory strategy that has obviously failed to achieve its original objectives.

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