Sounds good to me!

I should point out, of course, that I have not been in love with many ‘existing’ systems of public education (particularly in urban districts like Chicago), and I’m all in favor of firing shitty teachers, etc. In fact, I wish they would just find a way to do that, because all the rest of it is basically a big, stinking lie.

People should know how cynical/superficial ‘reforms’ like NCLB are. For instance: the systems of supposedly ‘hard data’ that are used to judge the ‘quality’ of a school are completely bogus: the numbers are all cooked. Republicans in particular get off on the idea of ‘accountability’, but they’re often too stupid to realize that any set of ‘numbers’ with which we hold schools ‘accountable’ is by definition arbitrary and that if it were that easy to judge, educating non-wealthy populations of students wouldn’t be present a challenge in the first place.

Actually, many Republicans probably do realize that (having gone to expensive private schools), but basically they don’t care. All they care about is lower taxes….

(And the GOP claims to be the party of ‘moral values’….)

@Zirgar – He’s a huge pussy. Just like the rest of the Democrats.

Aha! But that’s where they get you w/the fine print: As a purely punitive measure designed as a means by which to accelerate the transfer of control over schooling from the public sector to the “invisible hand” of the marketplace (in the form of charter schools, etc.), No Child Left Behind has never actually been funded!

Of course, now Arne Duncan has been allocated unprecedented amounts of dough to distribute among the nation’s needy school districts. In and of itself, that’s a good thing, but there’s a catch: in order to qualify for receiving it, most districts will have to expand the number of charter schools that they are willing to found.

On the other hand, I amke a killing from calling the drug problem a criminal issue rather than a health problem. The health problem model accepts that drug abuse will happen and work to treat it.