The Myth of Conservative Love for NCLB

Kevin and Matt and Andy have done a good job explaining why claims that NCLB is a secret plot to privatize public educaiton reflect paranoia more than reality. I want to tackle one piece of the argument neither has adressed yet: The perception that hardcore conservatives and the religious right support NCLB. This is wrong. Hardcore conservatives and the religious right were not excited about NCLB; they held their nose and voted for, or did not oppose it, because they were told that it was part of the price for the 2000 electoral victory of a President who would do other things they supported.

Before the 2000 election, most of the major conservative groups had coalesced around an Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization proposal--"Straight A's"--that was primarily focused around local "flexibility" and converting existing federal education funding streams to block grants. The NCLB proposals Bush put out during the campaign were a break with this. Conservatives accepted it though, because they were told that the "softer," more soccer-mom friendly line Bush played on education during the 2000 campaign was important to winning over centrist voters in a year when voters unprecedentedly claimed education was their top concern. Conservatives were also placated by voucher proposals that were included in Bush's campaign plan (as well as in the proposal he initially introduced to Congress, though vouchers were basically DOA there) and, to a lesser extent, Reading First's emphasis on phonics. But they were never crazy about NCLB, and it's certainly not the policy they would have written if they had been in charge.

Just look at the roll call votes on NCLB's passage in the House: Of those voting "nay" on the NCLB conference report, 33 were Republicans, 6 were Dems, and 2 were Independents. And those R names include ones like Delay, Hoekstra, Pitts--the House's most conservative.

Conservatives became increasingly unhappy with NCLB during the course to its passage and have become even more unhappy since then. They got very little that they initially wanted in the law: No vouchers, very little in the way of increased "flexibility" and consolidation of federal programs, and large increases in funding for NCLB programs over the past 5 years. Several of the prominent conservatives who stood behind the law in 2001 have turned their back on it, and conservative leaders are once again coalescing around an NCLB reauthorization proposal that looks shockingly like where they were in 1999--a reheated version of the Straight A's Act.