I'm interested to see that the opposition to the "No Child Left Behind Act" continues to grow and gain media coverage. On Friday, the Republican-controlled Virginia legislature overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Congress to exempt the state from provisions in the act.

The Washington Post article states, "By a vote of 98 to 1, the House passed a resolution calling on Congress to exempt states like Virginia from the program's requirements. The law "represents the most sweeping intrusions into state and local control of education in the history of the United States," the resolution says, and will cost "literally millions of dollars that Virginia does not have."

The federal law aims to improve the performance of students, teachers and schools with yearly tests and serious penalties for failure. In his State of the Union speech Tuesday, Bush said that "the No Child Left Behind Act is opening the door of opportunity to all of America's children."

Officials in other states also have complained about the effects of the act, signed into law in 2002. But Friday's action in the Virginia House represents one of the strongest formal criticisms to date from a legislative chamber controlled by the president's own party.

In other news, it appears -- shockingly -- that we still can't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Richard Stevenson wrote in Friday's NY Times, " David Kay, who led the American effort to find banned weapons in Iraq, said Friday after stepping down from his post that he has concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the start of the war last year.

In an interview with Reuters, Dr. Kay said he now thought that Iraq had illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but that the subsequent combination of United Nations inspections and Iraq's own decisions "got rid of them."
Asked directly if he was saying that Iraq did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country, Dr. Kay replied, according to a transcript of the taped interview made public by Reuters, "That is correct."

It's snowing in Baltimore again. In the last month and a half, I've only been in a non-snowy environment for a handful of days. Weird. After the negative temperatues in NH, though, today's high of 30 sounds pleasant. Oh, yeah. For those of you who don't know, I was quoted in a Dallas Morning News article about my experiences doing outdoor visibility work for the Clark campaign when it -40F or so.

My plans for the weekend? The basics: get healthy again, start eating on a regular schedule, catch up on sleep, start reading for classes, and get ready for the NHPC next week.


Current Mood: Calm
Current Song: Norah Jones, "Come Away With Me"