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Rothstein offers an excellent critique

Rothstein offers an excellent critique of the Leave No Child Behind Act.

You have to make a choice. Either you leave standards to the states and allow them to measure themselves or you institute standards nationwide. If you do it half-way, you create an incentive for low standards.

USA Today lists the number of failing schools by state that have to allow transfers to better schools. This isn’t really true because there isn’t enough room in other schools in the same district. But it sounds nice.

Here is a Rand Report on test scores over time to compare states.

Montana has more failing schools than does Missouri. Controlling for population that looks strange doesn’t it? Of course, it could be that Missouri has better students, right? Wrong, Montana does pretty good on nationally normed test compared to Missouri. So how are there more failing schools? Montana tries harder..

As Rothstein points out, even if you measure the same way, states performance is based on what their goals are. Arkansas has 0 failing schools? ROTFL….sure. Louisiana has 24? New Orleans itself should have 24 let alone the whole damn state.

Michigan has 1500? Michigan isn’t at the head of the pack, but it isn’t that bad. It is above average according to the Dept of Ed.

What does this mean for the future of education reform? Given state funding is dependent on this, states have every incentive to lower their standards. So it isn’t going to leave no child behind, it is going to leave every state behind.

One might also notice that Vermont and Iowa do better than the national average. Dean is pointing this out and how much it is going to cost states that have been effective in education in the past. It is a critical point.

A hell of an education president.

More on Bob Greene at

More on Bob Greene at Chicago Magazine. I think he covers the issues very well and much better than the weird posts by Kaus.

Additionally, in the move on category he offers up Steve Johnson as a potential candidate. I like the idea and Johnson did some great work on TV and Media. Zorn would be okay, but frankly his best columns are when he does hard news. He does it to seldom, but when he does he adds an interesting perspective.

Another option, now that Chicago Magazine is a part of the Tribune family—Steve Rhodes.

At the end, Rhodes mentions Neil Steinberg of the Sun Times. The quote is quite funny:
“?I hope that Smarmy Nostalgist isn?t an actual job slot at the Tribune that they have to fill,? he said.”

He adds to that at Salon

His descriptions of Greene’s extracuriculars makes it clear why him and Michael Jordan got along so well.

The Freepers haven’t let me

The Freepers haven’t let me down. One of the more amusing comments claims our cars cost 10 times as much and our air conditioners don’t work as well. The first claim is absurd and the second is empirically false–they actually work better, though that has little to do with CFCs being banned.

Will Cal Thomas or Mona Charen make my prediction come true for the major media? I’m betting so….

The Great Illinois Republican Civil

The Great Illinois Republican Civil War has started. Circle up and fire folks. O’Malley and his clan have decided to committ hari kari in the same fashion as Republicans in California and New Jersey.

As a Democrat, I suppose this should make me happy. It doesn’t. I grew up in Illinois and always admired the moderate Republicanism of Jim Thompson and Jim Edgar. They provided a great check excesses of the left and still respected education funding, infrastructure and individual liberties. Jim Thompson provided the infrastructure that makes Illinois an ideopolis now. Without him, Illinois may well be Missouri with good farmland and a big crumbling city. Instead, Chicago is a world class city (Washington and Daley deserve credit for this as well), education is good in most areas (see posting on Blog St. Louis about rural ed), and Illinois is relatively good on social issues.

No more. Now there will be a huge blow-up in the Republican Party between those moderates who have a motto of “Let’s not get excited,” and the jihad wingnuts who are more worried about homeschooling and abortion than infrastructure. I imagine the wing-nuts will eventually win and we’ll see the Democrats take over the state for years to come. Wingnuts are bad for bidness and Illinois is a bidness state.

That is too bad. Many Democratic leaders in the State of Illinois need to be checked. I like Madigan for what he gets done, but he is all too happy to use state resources to further his political goals (separate from policy goals). Republican cronieism provides a check on that. But it won’t if there aren’t any Republicans left in office.