From Deseret News archives:
Think tank says No Child Act is destined to fail
We're a red state that is seeing red over a program the red people tout as their biggest domestic-policy achievement. Of course, it's also an underfunded program from Washington, where people like to spend in the red.
I'm not sure what all that means, living as I do in a state where "red" tends to refer most often to the sports teams of the state's largest public university. Color schemes don't tend to work well with the intricacies of politics.
Still, those two facts Utah's rebellion against the law and support for the president are indeed ironic. But they are not contradictory. Utah voters tend to prefer conservative candidates, and President Bush fits that description in many ways. The No Child Left Behind Act, however, is definitely not one of them.
That's the theme behind a recent essay Lawrence A. Uzzell wrote for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington. Uzzell is a former staff member for the U.S. Department of Education as well as for the House and Senate committees on education. His feeling is that the No Child law is destined to fail because, like any centralized program, it tries to force local officials to do things they'd really rather not do.
When people are forced to do something, they'll look for shortcuts. Over time, states will find ways around the law's requirements. If too many schools are failing, or not showing "adequate yearly progress," states will want to relax the standards. Uzzell predicts this will lead to a "race to the bottom" that is typical of centralized programs.
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