No Child Left Behind

I've never been a fan of a federal Department of Education, and George Bush's early signature legislative win with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has never been the kind of legislation I like. I would prefer that the Federal government, to the extent that it involves itself in elementary education at all, should restrict itself to block grants to the states for their use.

But since that isn't the case, I applaud the strings and performance measures associated with NCLB, and I am glad to see that it is actually doing what it was supposed to do....raise the performance of underperforming schools and entire swaths of underperforming children.

The fact that it pisses off the teacher's unions is simply an added bonus.