I like counterintuitive arguments as much as the next guy. They are interesting and thought provoking. The problem with such arguments is that they are usually wrong.
Remember the “flypaper strategy?” Some people made the argument that having terrorists enter Iraq after the war was a good thing because we could get them all in one place to destroy them.
That argument had a nice counter intuitive ring to it. Every news story of death, destruction or havoc in Iraq could then be spun as a sign of victory. Does anyone still believe in the “flypaper strategy?” The intuitive position that death, destruction and havoc are bad proved correct.
I was reminded of the flypaper strategy today when reading about the political firestorm caused by No Child Left Behind.
The New York Times reports:
Democratic legislators in Oklahoma were so unhappy with President Bush's No Child Left Behind school improvement law that they drafted a resolution calling on Congress to overhaul it. But at the last minute one of the state's most conservative Republicans, State Representative Bill Graves, stepped up with his own suggestion: Tell Congress to repeal it entirely.The resolution passed, and Mr. Graves got a standing ovation…
[T]he unusual alliance in the Oklahoma Legislature reflected the widespread outcry that the president's signature education initiative has provoked. Like similar measures being debated in legislatures across the country, the Oklahoma resolution brought together liberal Democrats and states' rights Republicans, angry over what they see as a cumbersome federal intrusion on local schools.
Legislation or resolutions that call on Congress to amend or repeal the law, prohibit spending state money to carry it out, or otherwise criticize the law have been passed by one or both legislative chambers in at least 12 states. And the actions reflect broader public discontent.
"The pot is definitely boiling on this law," Senator Arlen Specter, the powerful Republican chairman of an education subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on Friday, noting that 138 Pennsylvania superintendents protested provisions of the law in a meeting Monday…
Mr. Bush is portraying the law as one of his major domestic achievements. At a fund-raiser on Thursday in Santa Clara, Calif., he called it "a really good piece of legislation."
Yet the outpouring of objections from state legislatures has forced the White House and Department of Education officials to travel the country, putting out brush fires.
In Utah, the White House won a hard-fought victory. Last month the Republican-controlled Utah House embarrassed the administration by passing a bill to prohibit Utah authorities from spending state money to carry out the federal law. But after three visits to the state by Bush administration officials, the Utah Senate consigned the bill to a committee, where Senator David L. Gladwell, a Republican sponsor of the bill, said it would be studied for the foreseeable future.
But criticism of the federal law appears to be continuing elsewhere. The Idaho Legislature last week approved a resolution praising the law's objective of raising student achievement, but urging major changes. On Wednesday, the Connecticut Senate unanimously approved a resolution asking Congress to grant waivers from the law's provisions to states like Connecticut that have high education standards.
Susan Aspey, a Department of Education spokeswoman, said that the responses of the legislatures and protests by some superintendents were to be expected as provisions of the 2002 law, which seeks to shake up public education, are put into place… "No one should be surprised, and we certainly aren't, that there is some anxiety about change. It's a sign the law is working."
I read that some schools now award extra credit for kids who bring in supplies, like paper towels or toilet paper, from home. Sort of makes it the "no child's behind left" law, doesn't it?
Class warfare in another guise, and our children are the targets.
Ed