Worse Things to Worry About (Election 2004)

Everyone who woke up Wednesday morning thinking that, alas, there would be no Kerry administration to ‘undo’ NCLB only grasped a small part of the election and its implications.

First off, Kerry couldn’t have won the election by tearing into NCLB and would have been unlikely to have paid that much attention to education or to have done that much about it. One article that talks about this is this one: Regardless of Tuesday's winner, NCLB won't likely change much (Stewart News).

Second, NCLB is now not just here to stay, it might get fully implemented and even expand to high school: Bush Education Agenda Headed for Renewal. (Education Week). Alternately, states and the USDE might simply fall apart implementing the law, which is just as likely come to think of it. For more on this, see Two approaches to school accountability (Christian Science Monitor).

Last but certainly not least, Senate Republicans with their 55 votes only need a few willing or easily cowed Democrats to push through all sorts of other things they have long wanted to do (school prayer, abstinence only sex ed, evolution/creationism, and more vouchers). For some hints of this possibility, see The Great Relearning (National Review via Eduwonk).

A surprise to many, one of those willing Dems on vouchers might be Illinois superstar Barak Obama, who seemed mighty open minded on the topic of vouchers in a 2003 cable TV interview. For more on this, see the posting from earlier this week: Strong on Charters, Open-Minded on Vouchers