Opportunism knocks. Leave it to education’s hysterics and hucksters…There is a real crisis in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast and the early response to it at all levels of gov’t was pretty disgraceful leaving a lot of Americans hurting more than they should have been. But now, along come the anti-NCLB hysterics to create a three-ring anti-NCLB circus around the relief efforts.
There are straightforward steps the government can take (and provisions in the law) to ensure that there are not perverse incentives in NCLB’s accountability requirements for schools accepting displaced students short of just suspending the law (though it will be ironic if Earth Mother decides to draw some arbitrary line here after her last few weeks of waivering on various provisions…). Regardless though there are a lot more immediate things to do for the kids there than worry about this — it’s gotta be like #344 on the list…
Along those lines, not sure a national virtual school makes a lot of sense here either. Perhaps the government should think about using non-profits like New Teacher Project and Teach For America to ensure that there are teachers for displaced students, even those in temporary housing, while this gets sorted out.
Worrisome though that all of education’s hucksters seem to be descending on the region…Also, per the final graf in the story above, worth nothing that Dillon doesn’t fall fall into the same trap as Usually Reliable…
Update: Kaus notes that if the NEA succeeds in some sort of blanket waiver for kids from the region then they’re going to be very hot commodities…Earth Mother also released a sensible letter about this.