Democracts and NCLB

Sam Dillon's Times front-pager on NCLB-bashing among Democratic presidential candidates came out a few days before I hit the road to spend Christmas with the fam, but apparently I'm not the only one who didn't get to it until after the New Year. As Eduwonk notes, the buried lede in that piece was the major thought division between the candidates and House Education and Labor Committee chairman George Miller. Now Miller's counterpart in the Senate, Ted Kennedy, comes with a Post op-ed saying the same thing, in stronger words:

The administration continues to speak glowingly of the law while Democratic candidates blast it. But simplistic campaign rhetoric hardly reflects what's actually happening on school reform.

So what gives? I actually think there's no mystery here. The politics of NCLB suck for Obama, Clinton, et al because a certain number of people really hate the law and those people disproportionately vote in the primary, while there's no comparable counter-contingent with strong feelings running the other way. But the candidates don't actually want to engage in "all-out opposition not just to specific details but to the entire thrust and ideology of NCLB," to quote Jonathan Kozol quoting NEA President Reg Weaver on the union's position, because they don't actually think that way. That's why the end of Dillon's article is a litany of "buts"

Mr. Obama, for instance, in a speech last month in New Hampshire denounced the law as “demoralizing our teachers.” But he also said it was right to hold all children to high standards. “The goals of this law were the right ones,” he said. When Mr. Edwards released an education plan earlier this year, he said the No Child law needed a “total overhaul.” But he said he would continue the law’s emphasis on accountability. And at the elementary school in Waterloo, Mrs. Clinton said she would “do everything I can as senator, but if we don’t get it done, then as president, to end the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind.” But she, too, added: “We do need accountability.”

That's classic pre-general campaign hedging. To say that we need to radically overhaul or jettison the law while maintaining accountability makes no sense; accountability is where the core meaning of the law begins and ends. The candidates are just pandering as much as they think they can get away with, and Kennedy and Miller are sending public signals about where those limits lie. Given the way things are going for Senator Clinton, winner of the New Hampshire NEA's endorsement and strongest NCLB basher among the major candidates, my guess is that the high water mark of anti-NCLB rhetoric from the D side has passed, with relatively little effect on the public discourse in the long run.

Some things are just what they seem.