DeRosa Debunks Miller

It is posts like this one that are the reasons why I like reading Ken DeRosa's De-d Reckoning blog. Last week, House Education and Workforce Chairman George Miller (D-CA) gave a speech about NCLB reauthorization and DeRosa starts to break it down and tear it apart. After dispensing with the notion that our "investment" in public education has "fallen off," which is so much horse puckey as to almost be laughable, DeRosa notes this and what NCLB has done:

If NCLB has achieved anything it certainly has made the many failings of our education system more transparent and has shown us "exactly which students, and which groups of students, are not learning and performing at grade level." And, as this embarrassing data has come to light, it has certainly sparked debate since the public now knows that those in charge of providing a quality education to our children have been failing miserably at the task. Unfortunately, the debate has largely been about the opponents of NCLB trying to do away with or water down NCLB so this data could be more easily suppressed rather than improving education outcomes under NCLB. Pity that.

Even more unfortunately Miller appears to be succumbing to this mentality. He spends the rest of the speech trying to come off as a champion for NCLB will systematically offering revisions that would undermine the efficacy of NCLB.

To be fair, Miller has not been one of the standard bearers of the Democratic push to water down NCLB, but he has been justifiably critical of its implementation.

So far though, most of the rhetoric I have seen on the issue has not really talked about better implementation.