Education policy: What will happen now
My colleague Jay Mathews, in this column on his Class Struggle blog, asked what would happen to federal education policy if the Republicans take back control of Congress, and then said: “The answer seems to be not much, other than slowing down even further what has been a sluggish effort to rewrite the No Child Left Behind law into something that better fits what we have learned about federal involvement in local schools.” I don’t like to disagree with my inimitable colleague, but Republicans, who retook control of the House in Tuesday's elections, have had an extraordinary taste for federal intervention in local school decisions in the past decade. It was Republican president George W. Bush who championed the No Child Left Behind law, which changed the daily life of millions of schoolchildren.
