WORLD MARKETS PLUMMET

BLAME IT ON ACORN?

Quotables

Christopher Buckley joins the parade of "real" conservatives bailing on Mav & Sixpack

Eight years of "conservative" government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case. So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven't left the Republican Party. It left me.

Diane Ravitch on "failing schools" vs. failed NCLB

Last year, the federal government reported that 25,000 public schools (of 90,000) were labeled “failing” as a consequence of the No Child Left Behind legislation. There is growing evidence that most schools will become failing schools if the law sticks to its deadline that all children must be proficient in math and reading by 2014. One recent study published in Science magazine predicted that nearly all of California’s elementary schools would fail by 2014 under current provisions of the law.