http://www.reason.com/0411/co.cy.defending.shtml
It is useful, too, to remember that defending the indefensible has long been a popular sport on the left, whose own revisionist historians are busy trying to sugarcoat not McCarthyism but Stalinism. (See "Fools for Communism," April 2004.)Also at work, however, is the dark side of modern American conservatism. The left�s obsession with America�s allegedly unique evilness, and in particular with real or imagined racism, has prompted a fully justified backlash. But that backlash can morph into an ugly and disturbing mind-set -- one that regards all efforts to confront America�s past wrongs as the province of sissy liberals and wild-eyed lefties.
As the revisionists plow ahead, sometimes one wants to ask, "Have you no sense of decency, folks, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
http://www.reason.com/0410/fe.ls.no.shtml
Since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, less than 2 percent of parents nationwide have transferred their children to other public schools. Teachers unions, school administrators, and journalists have argued that the low transfer rates prove parents do not want more choices and that they prefer their local schools. But while parents have more information than ever about the quality of their children�s schools, in most cases they still have no way out of a failing institution.Districts have not made a good-faith effort to implement public school choice. Sometimes parents are not notified of their option to change schools at all; other times they�re told only after the school year is well under way. Some districts send parents letters discouraging them from transferring their kids. The choices themselves are limited to marginally better schools, with superior institutions often refusing to accept low-performing students.
In the end, though, the problem is not the parents but the law itself. Under NCLB, Title I federal funding -- money used to provide extra educational services to disadvantaged students in high-poverty schools -- does not follow children to better-performing, non-Title I schools. The result is that better-performing schools have no financial incentive to admit low-performing children.In practice, children are offered transfers only to other Title I schools. Since most Title I schools are mediocre performers at best, parents have a choice of schools that are only marginally better. Furthermore, the school districts decide which schools parents will be allowed to "choose"; often they offer only one or two alternatives.
Many parents are offered "choice" schools that are just as low-performing as the failing school they are trying to break away from. In the words of school choice advocate Angel Cordero of the New Jersey-based Education Excellence for Everyone, "Camden children are transferred from one bad school to another bad school."