. . .leaving Liberal Democrats holding the bag:
Conservative and liberal "reformers" were joined at the hip in supporting top down mandates by the Obama administration that put NCLB-type testing on steroids. Now, presumably, conservatives will step back at let the Democrats take the full blame for Race to the Top, School Improvement Grants, and other coercive policies that by "any fair accounting, got way out ahead of practice."
Conservative Kathleen Porter-Magee is a former teacher who has long shown a willingness to balance her allies' ideological presuppositions with facts on the ground. She attributes the failure of "reformers" to their "group think," and worries that their feelings of misguided certainty may drive them to an educational "Bay of Pigs." She says the true believers in test-driven accountability have suffered from:
- a feeling of moral superiority among group members;
- collective rationalization, where members discount warnings or fail to rethink assumptions;
- overly negative and stereotypical views of the groups "enemies"
- and censorship of dissenting opinion--either via self-censorship or direct pressure put on those who disagree. If the unions or the most vocal anti-reformers were against it, it must be a good idea.
Kathleen Porter-Magee even questions the fundamental assumption that the only cure for our dysfunctional school systems is rapid transformational change. She agrees that "Time is of the essence, but moving quickly at the expense of smart decisions and effective policies is worse than doing nothing at all.
Part of the reason, I fear, that conservative reformers can be more honest than their liberal counterparts is that they, alone, have an exit strategy. Conservatives can conclude that they tried to work within "the status quo," and learned that public schools are irredeemable. They can then move, supposedly in sorrow, to the next logical step - privatization." (Source)
Privatization has always been the end game.
See also Michelle Malkin dissing the common core, an important reform goal. I mostly have to agree with her. The Obama administration is just plain butt ugly wrong in its top-down education policy.