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left.

No genius held back?

I agree with the nominal goals of the No Child Left Behind Act (badly organized official site here; slightly more accessible Wikipedia article here):

• Teachers should be highly qualified

• Teaching methods should be wisely chosen

• Student progress should be tested

Unfortunately it appears that the Act isn't really achieving all of these goals, and that in pursuit of these goals, other important purposes of the public education system are being neglected.

This isn't the place for a full overview of the Act and its consequences, but I would like to plug an important article that … Read more

A PTA for the 21st Century

Over the past several years I have watched in dismay as the budgetary consequences of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) force schools to adopt zero-tolerance policies toward education. I have seen in my own neighborhood a "successful" school reduce its science instruction down to 20 minutes a week for 1st-3rd graders because of fears that a single child's lack of performance on a standardized test might result in a budgetary take-down. Mr. Holland's Opus was a poignant and sadly prescient story of a bureaucracy that had its sites set far too low when it came to … Read more

New Web site proposes creating congressional legislation online

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate leadership, has opened the virtual doors of law writing to Internet citizens. This is a compelling idea as the Internet continues to find ways to democratize information and support the flattening of the political process in our country.

The senator writes in OpenLeft.com, the new project hosting this:

"Today I'm writing to invite you to participate in an experiment--an interactive approach to drafting legislation on one of the most significant public policy questions today: What should be America's national broadband strategy?"… Read more