When it comes up for reauthorization, Congress should repeal No Child Left Behind ("NCLB"), a Bush Administration initiative which clearly has failed to deliver what it promised.  The Obama Administration's tinkering will make matters even worse.

What works to improve educational outcomes? If massive federal financial aid to education actually produced huge improvements in pupil performance, I'd be waving a big flag in favor of it. It has failed, so I oppose it. Instead, to get the federal money, state and local government have figured out ways to game the system (by watering down the tests) to get the federal money without delivering real improvements in pupil performance. That's cheating. If the people running the education system are cheats, what do you expect of the pupils?  In cheating the federal government, New York State and its municipalities are among the worst offenders.

There are financial and moral dimensions to the problem. If the children sent to school come from homes where parents, part of the underclass dependent upon the welfare state, feel contempt for education, and despise educated people due to the class warfare and identity politics in which they have been marinated for decades, those attitudes are likely to trickle down to children. Such children, in turn, are unlikely to be interested in learning. Culturally speaking, the odds are stacked against them.

It's hard to blame teachers who struggle with children like this. On the other hand, teachers' unions promote identity politics and class warfare in their political alliances. Some teachers teach identity politics and class warfare in their classrooms. If we teach underclass children to feel contempt for middle class values, what chance is there that they can improve themselves, and become middle class? The American Dream itself is under attack by leftists. Education Professor Bill Ayers is winning this battle. </span>