Libby Sternberg, a writer and onetime Gadfly contributor, issued the right retort to Representative Pete Hoekstra*, not to mention Neal McLuskey, in the letters section of the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra criticizes the No Child Left Behind Act, using it as an example of the foolhardiness of "compassionate conservatism" (Letters, Nov. 14).But NCLB was premised on a simple fiscal conservative principle: If you take federal money, you must be accountable for what you do with it. And if you don't want to live by those rules, you can opt out by refusing to take the federal money with its attached strings.
Republicans who disagreed with NCLB could have put their local-control principles into practice by voting to cut federal funding to schools entirely. But that would have been politically unpopular. So instead they joined with teachers unions and Democrats to help undermine this worthwhile, if sometimes flawed, education reform effort, making it very difficult for grassroots education reform and school-choice activists to push forward the principles of choice and accountability embodied in NCLB.
She's right; Republicans that want to kill No Child Left Behind in its entirety should also propose to eliminate its $25 billion or so dollars for k-12 education. If that sounds like a poison pill, here's an idea: push for transparency, via national standards and tests, instead of "accountability" via the heavy hand of Washington.
* Checker's retort ain't so bad, either.
