Adios to Hickock, Budget Blues, and Sexing Up Abstinence Education (Washington News)

Surprising few, Gene Hickock announced his resignation on Thursday -- not nearly as problematic or portentious as the exodus of top officials from the CIA under Porter Goss, but it will have to do. Hickock was a tireless defender of NCLB. He must be tired.

Meanwhile, pundits and advocates continue to ponder the impact of Margaret Spellings on federal education policy -- School Choice Advocates Worried About Spellings (Education Week), Ms. Spellings (New York Post).

On the Hill, Congress passed a budget bill: 2005 Budget Drops Below Bush Request (Education Week), but on the whole didn’t get as much done as it was supposed to: Congress Gets an Incomplete on 3 Major Education Bills (Education Week).

Post-mortems on the just-passed IDEA reauthorization suggest that the full impact of the changes may not yet be entirely known: Reauthorized IDEA Could Shift Power to School Districts (Education Week), Congress finally OKs Senator Sessions' crackdown on special ed discipline (Associated Press ).

Last but not least, red-state issues like abstinence and intelligent design seem to be popping up more and more: Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says (Washington Post), Millions allotted to sex education (Washington Times), Verdict Out on Abstinence-only Sex Education (USA Today), and Anti-evolution foes gain foothold in education (San Francisco Chronicle). Or maybe it was just a slow news week and writers needed to sex up the budget bill.