Oh, good God, I have never read a more slanted article in my life. No mention whatsoever is made of the catastrophic No Child Left Behind Act, which eviscerate

Oh, good God, I have never read a more slanted article in my life. No mention whatsoever is made of the catastrophic No Child Left Behind Act, which eviscerates any attempt to teach children anything substantial. The fact that their reading comprehension scores are falling is no surprise at all - if they're left to simply read and learn to love reading (which is the only way to read well) their school is put on academic probation and federal funding is cut off. The author - who was a drug czar, which hardly makes him an expert on anything education-oriented [edit - whoops, he was the sec'y of education, my bad - I just saw "Drug" and freaked] - complains that conservatives couldn't say that diversity is at fault. As though the College Board were made up of flaming liberals, apparently; the entire piece is full of righteous indignation at the vast sums of money Americans are forced to spend on liberal teacher's unions, which are clearly at fault. This is the other half of the one-two punch. NCLB makes it impossible for schools to function, then assholes like this one say, "See? Public schools are a waste of our hard-earned money!" This is no different from drowning any other part of government in the bathtub, and it's truly dismaying not only to see CNN print it as though this guy were qualified or in any way disinterested, but for it to appear here on HNN where it can raise my blood pressure.