The GOP'S New War on Schools
The rise of Michele Bachmann reflects a shift in the party's education agenda.
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2011, at 6:04 PM ET
Michele Bachmann's victory in the Iowa straw poll Saturday represents many obvious things: the mainstreaming of the Tea Party, the overnight ordinariness of female presidential candidates, the increasing irrelevance of also-ran moderates like Jon Huntsman. But her growing popularity among the Republican base also signals something that's been less widely acknowledged: a sea change in the party's education agenda. It's safe to say that the political era of George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind is now officially over, even as the law's testing mandates continue to reverberate in classrooms across the country.
As recently as a decade ago, Republicans like George W. Bush, John McCain, and John Boehner embraced bipartisan,
The GOP's Shifting School Reform Agenda
I have a new piece up at Slate about how the Tea Party-Christian conservative mind meld on education--anti-standards, pro-homeschooling, pro-culture war meddling with curriculum--has become more and more mainstream within the Republican Party. The trend is epitomized by figures like Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, who have both made protest against the federal role in school reform a cornerstrone of their political careers.
I didn't have space to get to this in the Slate piece, but there are two other major things happening right now