Norman, Is That You?
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist–and predictable liberal–Norman Lockman gets behind a new Bush admin rule that says all schools receiving federal money (read: all of them) must accommodate transfer requests from kids in rotten schools. Previously, good schools could claim they couldn't fulfill requests due to lack of space, etc. Now they have to build out capacity.
A rule that threatens to empty bad schools and swamp good ones with underachieving kids is indeed a scary idea: scary enough to force some new thinking on how to deal with it. This is exactly the kind of lash necessary to keep self-satisfied school officials from slogging along as usual.
I doubt this rule will be enforced fully, but it's interesting nonetheless to see even liberals taking aim against the educational status quo.