...is that the federal government has absolutely no Constitutional authority to set educational standards for the states. As a matter of fact, it is completely prohibited by the Tenth Amendment. (That's the one Washington wishes would go away.) When NCLB was even proposed, we should have had fifty state governors say, "Over my dead body." That didn't happen, of course, because Washington threatens to withhold the tax dollars the residents of any rebellious state have already paid in if they don't cooperate....plus, standing up to Washington requires a backbone. Education is rightfully the realm of the state, and if Connecticut wants to have fantastic schools while Mississippi is willing to have acceptable schools, that decision is the right of those states. We must never loose sight of the fact that we are a federation of fifty, individual, supposedly-sovereign states, with a federal government that serves ONLY those functions designated by the Constitution. (The Interstate Commerce clause gives them a lot of power relative to services such as the FAA, FDA, etc., but it should not extend to education.) The problem with NCLB is that it takes a lot of flexibility away from the states and counties in dealing with situations that don't fit the standard, white-bread, Leave-it-to-Beaver mould. The problems of the Durham Public Schools are totally different than the problems of the Bladen County Schools, but NCLB mandates the same, cookie-cutter approach. On a tangential issue, I believe that making all schools "wonderful learning factories" with no drop-outs and nothing but success stories is as big a pipe dream as people like Edwards and Obama wanting to end poverty. Neither is ever going to happen. We are always going to have poor people and people who fail miserably at their education. The two issues are inexorably connected. The best and the brightest aren't going to go teach in a school where they fear for their own safety, and parents who dropped out of school themselves, are in prison, or are simply "gone" are never going to give the involvement and assistance that a child needs to succeed and break out of the endless cycle. The best hope we have (and it is working, albeit slowly) is the individual child who grows up in that situation and decides, "This is not for me. I am not going to live like this. I want something better."