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Washington Becomes First State to Lose its Waiver from No Child Left Behind

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Photo Credit: Rachel La Corte / AP

Photo Credit: Rachel La Corte / AP

Washington state lost its waiver from implementing certain parts of the No Child Left Behind education law, an action that could lead to layoffs and program cuts, Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement Thursday.

In a letter to the state superintendent, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that he would not renew the waiver because the state had failed to implement promised changes to how it evaluates teachers and principals. The state is the first to lose its waiver.

In February 2012, the state committed to making student learning growth a substantial factor in those reviews. Last August, it was placed on high-risk status for failing to implement that and other changes, giving the state until May 1 to produce a plan. Because that would require a legislative change and Washington’s legislature won’t reconvene until next January, Duncan said the state would be losing its waiver.

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There Are No Indispensable Men

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Photo Credit: SenRockefellerThere are no indispensable men, but go to Washington and everyone treats everyone else as indispensable.

Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have been in the United States Congress since 1985. In that time the national debt has grown from $1,823,103,000,000.00 to $16,066,241,407,385.89. In that time the GOP went from being the part of small government to the party of slightly smaller than the Democrats. No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, TARP, the General Motors bailout, and so much more happened on their watch.

But they remain and voters who vote party and not person keep supporting them. But they are not indispensable. No man is indispensable. The longer one stays in Washington though, the more desperate one becomes to stay in Washington. They collaborate in a system of arrangements whereby they get more power and more influence. Their staff leaves to K Street creating a feedback loop. They and their Democratic counterparts reward friends and steer policy not toward ideas and ideology, but toward power with themselves in the center of it.

No man is indispensable. Mike Enzi (R-WY) is right there with them.

Mike Enzi is a fine Republican, but he is not putting points on the board for conservatives. We need more like Ted Cruz and less like . . . well . . . Mike Enzi. We need less rudderless Republicans who shuffle around at the direction of their leadership and lobbyist friends.

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Common Core: In Pursuit of the New Soviet Man

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Photo Credit: APThe Common Core State Standards Initiative is a federal initiative designed to homogenize diverse state educational curricula.

It is also the latest example of destructive federal overreach into the education system.

Like its predecessor No Child Left Behind, Common Core will not produce vibrant, inspired thinkers eager to tackle the world.

Instead, Common Core is designed to churn out young people who will be educated enough to work, consume, and pay taxes, but who are not encouraged to be creative, or to use critical thinking, or to develop anything remotely characteristic of those who possess superior minds and the ability to achieve great things.

Common Core proponents seem more interested in producing what Russian communists called “New Soviet Men” — people who are selfless, moderately educated, and stripped of all nationalist sentiment — than they are in delivering the next Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, or Steve Jobs.

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Rep. Paul Ryan: Voting record conservative, with notable exceptions

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Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republicans’ presumptive vice-presidential nominee, has amassed a very conservative voting record during his seven terms in Congress, including repeated votes against spending bills, unemployment-benefit extensions and most of President Obama’s agenda.

But he also voted for some of the Bush administration’s most controversial accomplishments, including the No Child Left Behind education bill and the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law that added a new entitlement to the government’s books without finding a way to pay for it.

He also voted for the Wall Street bailout in 2008, which has become a flash point for both ends of the political spectrum.

His chief breaks with most Republicans usually came on spending bills, where he regularly voted against his party leadership when they controlled the chamber before 2007. In 1999, he voted against expanding the Peace Corps, and voted against expanding debt relief to impoverished nations.

Mr. Ryan voted for the Patriot Act and later voted to preserve federal authorities’ ability under that law to seek library records in their investigations — a major test point for the legislation.

But he’s also had some more pointed dissents, including being one of relatively few House Republicans to vote for a bill that would have outlawed workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act.

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